Three of My Digital Fiction Publishing Short Stories Are Now "Wide"

Once upon a time, I independently published a bunch of short stories on Amazon.com for the Kindle. Digital Fiction Publishing took a liking to many of them and bought the rights to re-publish them as standalone stories and in collections for a generous royalty package. However, since the short stories are often available elsewhere as part of collections, they and the DFP collections are not part of Kindle Unlimited. This means they can be published anywhere.

After checking with the publisher to make sure he had no plans to publish the stories outside of Amazon (having "his version" and "my version" of the stories on Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc would just be silly), I have published several of my DFP stories "wide" beyond Amazon's borders. They come with their original cover art courtesy of Alex Claw, using the mighty Draft2Digital.

"The Beast of the Bosporus"-This is cosmic horror in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, but instead of being set in rural New England (as his stories typically were) or in rural Georgia (as my novel The Thing in the Woods is), this is set in the early modern Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans have rebuilt their navy after the defeat at the (Battle of Lepanto), but the empire's decline is already beginning. What is Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha to do? It might involve a creepy book bound in human skin. Non-Amazon links here.

"Beast" also had some tie-in short fiction on the blog to go with it. One piece is a faux historical journal article about Sokollu's death that also ties in some incidents in real-history that might be explained by what happens in the story itself. I also have journalistic interviews with Sokollu himself, as well as his rival don Joseph Nasi.

Picking Up Plans in Palma-This is an alternate history novelette set in my Afrikanerverse, in which an earlier Dutch settlement of the Cape of Good Hope leads to a world where the United States and the League of Democracies face off against the apartheid-like Afrikaner Confederation and its illiberal allies. You can see the mostly-completed timeline here. Connor Kelly, an American defense analyst of Irish Catholic background, has to infiltrate the Confederation to retrieve plans for an orbital battle-station. Problem: He has only the most minimal training in espionage fieldcraft and he's romantically involved with an Afrikaner emigre. This is going to be fun. Non-Amazon links here.

Illegal Alien-This is a story about a group of Mexicans trying to sneak into the United States in search of better lives, only to encounter actual extraterrestrials instead. What can I say? I really, really like bad puns. :) Non-Amazon links here.

This story also has some short tie-in fiction. One is a faux report on the aftermath of the incident from a government agency of some sort, while the other is an interview with Patrido Guzman, the story's protagonist. The latter gets into what's going on in Mexico that pushes Guzman to try to emigrate to the United States--NAFTA, the Mexican drug war, mistreatment of women in factories, etc.

Two of my remaining DFP short stories--"Lord of the Dolorous Tower" and "Lord Giovanni's Daughter"--aren't wide yet because they were first-rights purchases and don't have cover art. I'll need to commission some if I want to release them wide as well. The same applies to "Coil Gun," the first story DFP purchased for Digital Science Fiction #3: Pressure Suite, since it was never released as a standalone either. I'll let you know.

Protesters Come From Across Metro Atlanta 6/30

Protesters gathered from across the metropolitan area gathered in Atlanta June 30 to protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement that has separated 2,000 children from their parents.

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, over 4,000 protesters marched through Atlanta from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s Atlanta Detention Center to the Richard B. Russell Federal Building in protest of recent "zero tolerance" immigration enforcement. U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a veteran civil-rights campaigner, spoke to marchers outside the Richard B. Russell Federal Building. The protest was one of many such protests the AJC reported taking place nationwide.

These protesters came from different regions of the metropolitan area. Anna Crumbliss came from Doraville, while Eli Banks came from near Grant Park. Coming a little farther afield was Kara Sweeney from Johns Creek, GA.

"This is a time in the US when we have to resist any and all policies and actions that lead us away from our humanity and compassion," Sweeney said when asked why she was participating in the protest. "The family separation practices at the border, implemented by the Trump Administration, are cruel and unnecessary."

Banks echoed her words, saying that previous U.S. immigration policies were questionable already and that detaining children separately from their parents was cruel and unnecessary. Crumbliss said she participated in the rally because she wanted to show compassion for immigrants mistreated by the government and advocate for compassion and change.

Banks described the protest as "passionate, but friendly." There were no counter-protests he could see, or other incidents of friction. Sweeney said there was a good turn-out when the protesters gathered at the detention center. Protesters cheered and waved to ICE detainees within the building, who waved back. She described the march as not being particularly long, less than a mile.

"The rally was the most beautiful environment I could have imagined," Crumbliss said. "Everyone there was advocating for others, beaming with hospitality, and fighting for the America that we know and love."

She said the love that echoed through Atlanta when the protesters started chanting, "Love, not hate, makes America great!" gave her the chills because of its power. She said she was proud to be part of a movement of people from all walks of live, ages, and religions coming together to fight for justice.

Although representatives from ICE could not be reached for comment, Banks, Crumbliss, and Sweeney did not report seeing any of them there. Banks said that he only saw a few police and members of the Atlanta Fire Department. Crumbliss said the police mainly directed traffic and kept protest participants safe.

"It was a very peaceful and upbeat event where all we felt from the police present was support and respect. We appreciated them being there," she said.

When asked about what they thought the government should do, all three said ICE should immediately reunite separated children with their parents, a process that is still going on despite a court-ordered deadline. Banks went on to advocate for more humane centers for those still detained, citing how illegal entry into the U.S. is only a misdemeanor. He advocated a path to citizenship for those who entry the country without documentation rather than immediately deporting them. Crumbliss stated that although open borders is impractical, the U.S. should spend monies earmarked for a border wall she described as "pointless" by revising existing rules to not count families of skilled workers who get green cards against the 140,000 yearly cap, something she said would eliminate the backlog of Indian, Chinese, and Filipinos in the U.S. on work visas. This would allow these immigrants to start businesses or change jobs without bureaucratic hurdles.

Crumbliss also advocated allowing the states to run their own visa programs alongside the federal one to allow for workers to be brought in for state-specific industries, specifically suggesting that dairy-producing states could create agricultural visas for farm workers as an example. Crumbliss cited regional visa programs like Canada's Provincial Nominee Program or Australia's different regional schemes.

"These programs have created greater population and employment growth," she said.

Sweeney advocated Donald Trump be impeached for his role in the crisis and stated that her ideal immigration system would be based on compassion and human dignity and be free from racial discrimination.

Although Banks said he would be making sure to write his elected representatives and Crumbliss said she believed that the current administration's policies would likely prompt her to protest again, Sweeney had the most elaborate plans.

"We are an activist family," she said. "We believe in being allies to those who are oppressed or harmed."

She attended a meeting a local mosque to learn how Trump's blocking of immigrants from several Muslim nations impacted Muslim communities. Her church Unitarian Universalist Metro Atlanta North is deeply involved in political activism and Sweeney described how she contacted senators and congressmen daily to protest the Trump administration's policies. She also campaigns for local political candidates and will be looking for volunteer opportunities with the communities most impacted by the administration.

"Illegal Alien" Might Just Be Relevant Again...

I wrote my short story "Illegal Alien", which features undocumented immigrants from Mexico encountering extraterrestrials (yes, it's a bad pun) in 2004. This was back when illegal immigration was a much bigger political issue. By the time I gave up submitting to the declining number of paying markets and self-published it on Amazon, things had changed--the recession apparently caused (or helped caused) a net reduction of the number of illegal immigrants from Mexico in the United States. After all, they were here for the jobs and if there aren't as many jobs, why stay here? Consequently, "Illegal Alien" has not been that great of a seller even though it has a beautiful cover.

Well, I follow al-Jazeera America on Facebook and found they're running a series entitled "Borderland" about people who've died trying to immigrate to America by illegally crossing the southern border. If illegal immigration from Mexico is becoming an issue again, maybe there'll be more interest in the topic and I'll make more sales.

(This is not to be flippant about the deaths of border-crossers, which is tragic.)

I've considered writing a blog post about how Kindle Direct (or other self-publishing platforms, like Smashwords) are best for stuff that's timely, since publishing takes awhile. I guess now's the time. :)

I've sold a few short stories and it was months before they were published. George Scithers, the late editor of Weird Tales, told me that publication lead time makes it hard to cash in on timely things--in that case, I had a Lovecraftian King Arthur story that I was trying to pitch when the Clive Owen King Arthur movie was in theaters. Meanwhile, Roger Corman once shot a movie in a few weeks to cash in on the Sputnik launch. He was the publisher as well as the writer, so he could do that.

So if you've got a story you wrote to cash in on a current event and especially if you've got one trying to cash in on a movie that's out, you're better off self-publishing it. Your window of opportunity to make money won't last long.

Hmm...I had an idea for a story set in the future where Japan, having shut down its nuclear plants, invades Indonesia again in order to secure the fossil fuels it needs to sustain its economy. Since people are going to forget about the tsunami, how Japan went (hopefully temporarily) nuclear-free, etc. pretty fast, that's something I'd Kindle if I intended to actually write it.

(I probably won't, so if you want to write it, go ahead. Pro-nuclear speculative fiction for the win!)

News Article Round-Up...

It's been awhile since I've done a "new article round-up" blog post, but given how little blogging I've done this month, this is a quick and easy way to get new content up.

California Farmers Short of Labor, and Patience

The gist of this one is that California farmers are short of workers due to prior immigrants getting too old to do the heavy work, native-born Americans not wanting the jobs, and increased border security keeping out new illegal/undocumented immigrants who ordinarily do this kind of work. It's getting to the point that these fiscally-conservative sorts are considering voting Democratic due to the Republicans lack of interest in immigration reform.

Now, one could say that these farmers should increase their wages and that'll attract native-born workers, but many farmers, especially the smaller ones, won't be able to afford that and will go out of business. This would lead to a further concentration of agribusiness that might not be desirable.

A solution to this particular problem might be a revival of the old bracero program, which ran from the 1940s until the 1960s. Obviously the old program had some issues, but the point of studying history is that we learn from it.

This'll horrify some of my fellow conservatives, but I've given some thought about how an overly-strict concern about illegal immigration has actually infringed on the rights of the native-born. There's no natural right to have cheap labor, but how I need to produce documents in order to have a (non-contractor) job is annoying. "Your papers, please" is something one generally associates with Communist countries. And lest anyone think this is something that's been in place too longer to change, the I-9 form and what-not have only been requirements since the 1980s. That's after I was born.

Heck, if I wanted to be really radical, I'd start advocating open borders. After all, before WWI, international travel without a passport was pretty easy and passports were viewed by many as an unpleasant government imposition. Of course, in an age of international terrorism, that'd be pretty reckless, but on the other hand, the 19th Century had in the Anarchist movement its own version of al-Qaeda.

25 Drug Companies Agree to Limit Antibiotic Use on Farms

This is excellent news. Although people in the medical field complain about patients demanding antibiotics for viral infections and the like, if anything's contributing to a coming antibiotic-resistant super-plague, it's going to be stuff like this. The SCALE is just so much larger than stupid patients. I've got a doctor friend who straight-up advocates banning antibiotic use in agriculture.

Voluntary steps are good first steps, but if this doesn't drastically reduce the reckless use of livestock, it might be time to get more regulatory. I'm generally a fan of less government regulation, but risking the end of the antibiotic era and a return to the time one could die from a scraped knee is a pretty scary thing. My great-grandfather and my infant great-aunt died of pneumonia that could've been treated by antibiotics, just to make it personal. And one of the big killers of childbirth is actually puerperal fever, not more immediate problems like bleeding. For Westerners, death in childbirth is typically something one reads about in books and that's something that shouldn't change.

What Makes the Muslim Ms. Marvel Awesome

Those of you who know me know that I'm a conservative, but on the issue of increasing minority representation in media, particularly the field of speculative fiction, I've lined up (some) with the obnoxious Internet Social Justice mob. I'm not going to act like portraying Muslims as terrorists on TV is worse than the existence of al-Qaeda, but let's be frank. If I were an Arab or a Muslim, I'd get sick of one of the the dominant media portrayals of my demographic being bomb-throwers pretty quick even if on an intellectual level I might recognize it as having a valid basis.

Besides, this makes good business sense. The United States is a lot less white and a lot less Christian than it was in the 1930s through the 1960s, when most of the major superheroes were created. If media creators ignore this growing market, they do so at their peril. I've made some money thanks to Arab fantasy writer Saladin Ahmed tweeting "The Beast of the Bosporus" to his thousands of followers, many of whom I imagine are Muslims/Arabs/Middle Easterners who'd like to see characters like them.

Furthermore, I've complained in the past about filmmakers' reluctance to have non-Western villains, with the rather Aryan "Mandarin" of Iron Man III and the British Khan Noonien Singh of Star Trek Into Darkness being particular targets of my ire. This isn't solely due to Hollywood PC-ism (although it's certainly there)--foreign markets are increasingly important and one doesn't want to offend audiences (or governments which will keep them from audiences--even democratic India banned Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). It'd be easier to have historically non-Western villains like the Mandarin or Khan (or some kind of superpowered jihadist) if there are more non-Western characters on the side of good.

One suggestion I remember to avoid the political problems of an Asian Mandarin would be to have a particular character (who I think was a female employee of Stark Industries of Chinese background, but I can't find her online) filling in for that kid in Tennessee. If they'd made the Mandarin primarily Asia-based, Tony could travel over there to fight him and after a gratuitous beat-down, Stark Industries' Asian staff could help him get ready for the second round. There's also the Red Ronin, who could team up with Tony on an equal basis rather than just being a helper.

(Since it's been revealed there's a real Mandarin with a cult-like army out there who isn't pleased with being impersonated by a British crackhead, maybe we'll meet him someday. Since the Ten Rings is portrayed as being similar to al-Qaeda, I'm wondering if the Iraq-based Desert Sword superhero team can make an appearance. Perhaps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe they can be an Iraqi spinoff of SHIELD established after the fall of Saddam.)

Hmm...the Muslim Ms. Marvel's brother is depicted as a fundamentalist. Maybe he becomes some kind of super-jihadist and they fight each other in their superhero forms not knowing who the other is? That could get real tragic real fast.

Kindle Fiction Update: Oct. 2013

I've decided to examine the sales figures for my Kindle short stories now that it's been a little over a year since I self-published the first two, I am the Wendigo and Melon Heads. I went through all the sales spreadsheets Amazon has provided and have totaled them up.

For starters, "Wendigo" has been an unqualified success. I sold fourteen copies in 2012 and nineteen so far in 2013. Thirty-three copies at 35% royalty copies out to $11.55. Considering how I sold it for the first time (in late 2006, to the now-dead webzine Chimaera Serials) for $20, this is a profitable second run indeed. And it's pure profit, considering how Udo Wooten did the cover for free. A lot of paying markets pay $10 or less, so I've made a good business decision self-publishing this one rather than scrounging for a market that would accept a reprint (rare) and pay a decent rate (rarer).

"Melon Heads" came out of the gate strong, selling twenty copies in 2012, sixteen in the release month of September. However, it faltered in 2013, selling only five so far. That's $8.75, which is better than giving it away for free or selling it to one of those $5 magazines. Not as good as I could have gotten if I'd sent it to a $10 magazine, assuming they'd buy it. Unfortunately I tried to promote it using Google Adwords that proved to be an epic fail (no sales whatsoever during the period the ad ran), so this one is still a net money loser despite its stronger sales.

My Lovecraftian tale The Beast of the Bosporus was released later, in November 2012. I sold fourteen copies in 2012 and eleven through September (I've sold one so far this October). Not including the October sale, that's $8.75. Still better than the freebies. This was the first story I've tried to promote with a post on this blog that I managed to get hosted some other places--a faux excerpt from a historical journal implying the story was gleaned from newly discovered Ottoman manuscripts. Fortunately I'd gotten the cover done free as well, so this one has been profitable.

Despite commissioning a beautiful cover, Illegal Alien has proven a disappointment. Only five sales in 2012 and eight sales thus far in 2013 for $4.55. Considering I paid $45 for the cover, this one won't be making a profit for awhile. A pity Kindle publishing didn't exist when I wrote this at the height of the 2006 immigration reform protests or else I could have pulled in some major money due to the timeliness. Life lesson--if you're writing a story to cash in on a current event, Kindle-publish it because by the time a traditional market runs it, it'll be too late. Roger Corman made one of his movies in a month or so to cash in on the Moon landing, but that's not really possible with written fiction.

In August, as sales begin to fall for my original four (only ONE sale in July), I put out three new stories. That spurred sales back to the level they'd been earlier this year, although they never reached the euphoric heights of September 2012. So far the alternate history spy adventure Picking Up Plans In Palma has sold only five copies, all of them in August. Combined my two stories starring superveillain protagonist Andrew Patel, Übermensch and Needs Must, have sold nine copies, with "Ubermensch" selling seven of those. However, it's too early to write them off as failures, since although "Wendigo" started weak (only six sales the first month), it proved to have good staying power.

This year-long experiment in Kindle publishing has led me to reach some conclusions:

*More "mundane" creature horror sells better than more niche Lovecraftian stuff. However, there's a complicating variable--"Wendigo" is explicitly advertised as a reprint of a traditionally-published story, which no doubt makes it more attractive.

*Horror sells better than science fiction.

*Alternate history and superhero/supervillain tales do worse than standard science fiction.

*If you can get good covers for cheap enough rates, self-publishing can be financially more profitable than sending them to markets that pay only a small amount ($5 or $10) and definitely more profitable than giving them away for free.

You may be tempted to write off Kindle publishing short fiction as a waste of time or a poor investment. However, there is such a thing as a tipping point and it'd be a shame to give up just before you get successful (there's a rather sad cartoon showing a miner giving up when, if he'd dug a few more inches, he'd have found a trove of diamonds). My friend Jeff Baker, in the addendum he added to my guest blog post, said that at LibertyCon, the consensus one needed 20-25 items available on Amazon before they started feeding off each other. And I've just bought a Kindle e-book on guerrilla marketing one's self-published fiction, so hopefully I'll get some good advice and my sales figures will go up.

Still, at DragonCon one year some panelists said short fiction isn't worth the amount of time invested in it. Although I'm going to try to sell my unsold stories and Kindle-publish the ones I can't (I have two fantasy stories submitted to traditional markets at the moment), I'm going to focus on my novels Battle for the Wastelands and The Thing in the Woods. If I can sell one of those, hopefully it'll spur sales for the short stories.

If You Support More Inclusiveness In Speculative Fiction...

Over the last few months, there has been a big kerfluffle in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror about inclusiveness. Most of that pertains to gender, but there has been some controversy about race/ethnicity as well.

Well, if you want to support inclusiveness in speculative fiction, I would like to recommend to you some of my independently-published short stories:

Ten Davids, Two Goliaths-Set in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire science fiction universe, the lead character Geun Choi is a Korean Buddhist fighter pilot in the distant future. The other POV character Tamara Watson is a female fighter pilot who is recovering from drug addiction and is a practicing polytheist to boot. Five reviews, all pretty good.

Discovery and Flight-Also set in Buroker's Fallen Empire universe, this continues Choi and Watson's adventures in the rebellion's early days, and brings them into contact with Buroker's canonical characters.

Übermensch-This came from a "Southern superheroes" anthology my writing group attempted that didn't go anywhere. The protagonist is an irreligious half-Indian biomedical engineer who lives by the creed of Nietzsche and provides cybernetics services for Atlanta gangs in the vein of David Duchovny's character in the film Playing God. Superhero stories are pretty common--how about a supervillain story instead?

The Beast of the Bosporus-I started writing this story when I was in college after I realized that most of Lovecraft's fiction takes place in rural New England in the early 20th Century. I decided I was going to be a bit different and write a Lovecraftian horror tale set during the glory days of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century. Although the protagonist Sokollu Mehmed Pasha is a white man (he was a Serb by birth), he is a Muslim and the setting is distinctly non-Western. One of my writing friends Matthew Stienberg gave it a very good review.

Illegal Alien-Protagonist Patrido Guzman is a Mexican who seeks a better life in the United States and employs the services of a coyote--an immigrant smuggler--to get him there. Guzman himself is mestizo (I don't really get into racial politics in the story--this is Word of God) and another major Mexican character is more distinctly Indian. And never is the word "illegal" used in a pejorative fashion. Stienberg reviewed it on Amazon and gave it high marks too.

I am the Wendigo-Although the Wendigo is a monster, I drop some hints that when he was a human being, he had at least some Native American ancestry. For starters, he knows that the Algonquin language is more properly called Abenaki.

Although I am a straight, white Protestant male (and therefore get a lot less crap from society than those who aren't), most of my independently-published short fiction has protagonists who are minorities, at least in my own country. Ironic, isn't it.

And I've already had a cover made for a second Andrew Patel story, "Needs Must." I will keep you posted.

Incursion Report: Highway 86, Arizona

ABOVE TOP SECRET

TO: (Redacted)

FROM: (Redacted)

SUBJECT: Arizona Incursion

THE INCIDENT

The day we have all feared has finally arrived. The extraterrestrial conflict that has been brewing in the outer solar system since the late 1990s has finally spread to Earth.

Although our reconnaissance has been spotty at best, our space telescope detected energy spikes indicative of a large space battle near Jupiter. (Redacted) will have more information as to the specifics of the battle, but we do know three small Snake vessels pursued a larger Gray craft toward Earth. Based on the report of a surviving eyewitness, the Gray craft was damaged and its crew was making repairs. That they would need to land here seems odd given how both species have space technology centuries in advance of our own, but perhaps the Grays' extra-vehicular repair capability was damaged or destroyed.

The first reports of a shooting star were made at around noon, while radar from the Tuscon airport briefly detected the Gray ship as it passed over the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The three Snake ships came hard after it and just barely avoided a massive follow-up radar sweep by the alerted airport and some local National Guard aircraft. Our supplying them a fabricated report from Kitt Peak National Observatory about an expected meteor shower got them to stand down their AWACS aircraft and impose delays on local civilian aircraft for much of the day, avoiding an immediate breach of secrecy and likely preventing the substantial human casualties unprepared National Guard units would have incurred encountering even a small alien force.

By the time our personnel arrived, the battle was largely over. Two Snake craft had been forced down in different places, while the third was in the process of finishing off the already-wounded Gray ship a fair distance from the original landing site. Fortunately two companies of our specialist troops were close enough to move overland and surprise and destroy the remaining Snake craft and detain the survivors after an hour-long firefight, albeit at the cost of twenty dead and forty wounded.

If any head must roll for the deaths of our brave men and women, let it be mine. Any spacecraft would probably have radar or something approximating, but unless it was a dedicated ground attack platform, I doubt it would have anything resembling JSTARS. It was my decision to limit aircraft involvement to helicopters lifting off from trucks once the aliens were engaged rather than hitting the aliens from beyond visual range with artillery and aircraft to soften them up first. Alerted, the craft would have been able to inflict significantly more damage and if not triumph (a very real possibility), flee and alert the Snake fleet.

Captured in the incident were three small Snake craft suffering varying degrees of damage and a larger Gray craft that was all but destroyed. Five live Snakes and seven live Grays have been captured, while we have recovered twenty Snake and twenty-three Gray bodies.

IMPLICATIONS

It appears we've retained secrecy, but we were lucky. The one surviving civilian eyewitness, apparently an illegal immigrant from Mexico, died of wounds inflicted by the Grays before the battle despite our best efforts. He did not know if others survived, but there's been no noise even from the usual suspects. If anyone else saw what happened, they're being awfully quiet. That will suit our purposes for now, but if there were any other witnesses, rumors will spread and this will attract unwanted attention. (Redacted) is already cooking up a sufficiently gruesome "training accident" to account for the military dead and wounded, which will hopefully at least delay any deeper investigation into the incident.

Even if their arrival was a fluke, the fact a battle has taken place between the two species on our own ground has changed the situation drastically. Both will no doubt suspect we have captured some of their technology and may attempt to retrieve it, which we will not be able to successfully conceal. Although either side will try to prevent the other from attacking, we cannot count on their being successful. We may face a larger alien incursion in the very near future, especially if secrecy efforts fail and the aliens learn from Earth-based transmissions what happened.

As long as the war was stalemated and they thought us ignorant, we had a chance to build our capabilities in secret, unmolested by any preemptive strike or attempt at alliance. We cannot count on this any longer.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The nuclear mines and kinetic projectiles launched into orbit along with the private-sector satellites over the last five years have given us a bare-bones orbital-defense capability, but a small incursion was able to avoid them and a larger incursion would simply overwhelm them. I recommend increasing the number of mines as quickly as possible, increasing the production of aircraft-deliverable anti-satellite weapons, and constructing thunderwells near strategic sites. Perhaps the president can be nudged to resume strategic-arms reduction talks with the Russians, which will free up strategic weapons for this purpose. Now that we have substantial alien technology, I strongly recommend shifting black-budget monies toward reverse engineering so we can have something more capable than Cold War projects to defend ourselves.

If the alien forces in our solar system alone turn their full might against us, there is no way we can withstand them. However, as long as each species keeps the bulk of the other's military power occupied, we might be able to defeat a smaller incursion and use that (and the alien prisoners in our possession) as bargaining chips to preserve some semblance of independence or the more likely outcome, inclusion in one species' sphere of influence under somewhat better terms. When elephants fight the mouse best stay unnoticed, but we may no longer have that option.

So just what happened in the Arizona desert? Were there other survivors the Feds don't know about? Find out by reading "Illegal Alien," available in the collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire and on other eBook platforms.

Character Interview: Patrido Guzman

Today we're sitting down with Patrido Guzman, a former farmer from Zacatecas, Mexico.

(Guzman is a shorter man, but taller than a stereotypical Mexican. He has thinning dark hair.)

Me: Buenas dias, señor Guzman.

Guzman: Buenas dias to you as well.

Me: So let's get started. When were you born?

Guzman: I was born in 1989 in Zacatecas. My father was a farmer, like his forebears before him. We were better off than many campesinos, since we owned our own land and could occasionally hire help. We grew corn, mostly, but we also had chickens and even some cattle.

Me: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

Guzman: Oh yes. I have an older brother Juan and sister Carolina, my younger brothers Eduardo and Quinto, and a younger sister Pilar.

Me: How was the land going to be divided?

Guzman: Well, there wasn't enough to sustain every member of the family, so we couldn't all get a piece. My father thought it best that all of us get work and education so that whoever didn't inherit the land could still make a decent life. My older brother and sister went to Zacatecas City, where my brother found work in the silver mines and my sister as a teacher. I was in secondary school and studying for university when NAFTA came.

Me: What happened then?

Guzman: Free trade is great in principle, but Mexican farmers cannot compete with American corn, especially when it's subsidized to the point it can be sold below cost. We worked harder than ever before and managed to sustain ourselves in the face of American imports for years, but in the end, we couldn't compete.

Me: Your family lost its land?

(Guzman sadly nods.)

Guzman: Losing the land that had been in our family since before the Mexican Revolution was too much for my father. He died of heart trouble a year after we were forced to sell our land and move in with my older siblings in the city. My mother followed him soon afterward.

Me: I'm sorry to hear that.

Guzman: I couldn't attend university and had to go to work right away to help support the family. My younger siblings had to finish school themselves. I went to work in a maquiladora, one of the new factories NAFTA made possible. The Lord takes and He gives, you know?

Me: Job 1:21?

Guzman: The very one. The money was better than many of the other jobs I could have taken, but I hated working there. The supervisor was a real mula who mistreated some of the women in the factory. I didn't want to lose my job and didn't do anything for the longest time and then when I saw him hassling a widow working to feed a child, I told him to go to hell. I got fired the next day.

Me: Yikes.

Guzman: He got his. When the government started fighting the drug cartels, he was found dead. Whether he caught a bullet meant for someone else or someone decided to take revenge for a sister or daughter he put his hands on, I don't know. Good riddance either way.

Me: So what are you going to do now?

Guzman: Well, I've had friends who've gone to work in El Norte.

Me: El Norte?

Guzman: The United States. They made good money doing even the most menial work, enough to send home and build big houses for their families, put siblings and children through school. I once heard of a man who took over a concrete business when the gringo owner retired and he's a millionaire now.

Me: How are you going to get in? I've heard it's hard to get in legally unless you've got special skills and you said you never got to go to university...

Guzman: Well, I knew a man from the factory whose brother knows someone on the other side of the border. A coyote, a smuggler. Juan and Carolina, they loaned me the money to pay him up-front. No need to work for him for years. We're going to meet up in...well, I don't know you. Maybe you work the limones verdes.

Me: Limones verdes? Green lemons?

Guzman: Sorry. Your Border Patrol. They drive around in green trucks.

Me: Got it.

Will Guzman make it to the United States? If you want to find out, check out the short story "Illegal Alien," which appears in the short story collection Flashing Steel, Flashing Fire. Non-Amazon e-books here.

"Illegal Alien" Cover Preview

Sometime this week, my goal is to post a new short story on Amazon.com entitled "Illegal Alien." It's another example of my love for bad puns--the storyline involves a group of undocumented immigrants lost in the desert who encounter extraterrestrials.

Here's the cover to tide you over for awhile:

In terms of image quality, this is the best cover art for any of my short stories. Adrienne Langston, whose work I've promoted here before, is the artist. Here's a link to her new Etsy site where you can buy her artwork and here's a link to her Facebook gallery, where you can see even more.

Attack of the Mexican Lake Pirates

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/new-details-emerge-in-deadly-shooting-on-us-mexico-border-lake/19658735

Heard about this on Neal Boortz's radio program yesterday while driving into Atlanta for an appointment.  This is not the first time this has happened--there have been several other incidents as well, although this is the first time someone has actually died.

It turns out that all the shenanigans take place on the Mexican side or close to the maritime border between the US and Mexico, so it is primarily the Mexican government's responsibility.  And to be fair, it's not like the Mexican government is stonewalling on the issue.

http://www.reporterherald.com/news_story.asp?ID=29730

That being said, the Mexican government's control over much of its territory is rather tenuous right now.  Like what's going on in Somalia, if a state cannot police its own territory, someone else should.

Were I the governor of Texas, I'd base some National Guard attack helicopters thereabouts and have them periodically patrol the area.  In the event of anything like this happening again, the perpetrators get shredded.  The purpose of the State is to protect the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens and that's at risk here.  Chopper patrols might also be useful in deterring incursions by the Mexican military or armed cartel types as well, which have been known to happen.

Boortz went so far as to suggest American search teams with Apache helicopter escort cross over to the Mexican side to find Hartley's body and if anyone attempts to interfere, they'll get put on the bottom with holes in them, but given how the Mexican government is (allegedly) helping try to find the body, that might be rather premature.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2024162,00.html?xid=rss-mostpopular

The above article said that signs the cartel violence has crossed the border (two shot-up Mexicans in a truck) are more troubling than Hartley's death, and since that happened in the U.S., she has a point.

However, what happened on that lake is pretty darn bad.

Hmm...maybe it's time to say something politically inflammatory, like "Out of Iraq, Onto the Mexican Border?"  One might need to modify the Posse Comitatus Act though, since border-security is primarily a law-enforcement issue at present and military involvement in law enforcement is restricted.

News Article Round-Up

I periodically send myself Internet links home to blog about, but they stack up in my Inbox because I find something else more immediately interesting before I can get to them.

So I'm going to put all of them together in this entry, with commentary.

http://www.slate.com/id/2255385/

This article compares the Drug War to Prohibition and does a good job proving why the Drug War, like Prohibition, is a bad idea.  The author also compares the end of Prohibition during the Depression--to get tax revenue from alcohol--and said the current economic climate provides an incentive to legalize and tax currently-illegal narcotics.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20006930-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

An offshore wind farm in the Great Lakes.  This would be a really good idea.  It might cost a bit in the short run, but it would reduce coal/fossil fuel consumption in the long run and provide high-tech jobs.  And luckily, there aren't any Kennedies to muck up this project like they did with Cape Wind in Massachusetts.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/17/lawmaker-warns-drug-cartel-danger-public-parks-intensifying/

Okay, this is getting ridiculous.  We can't go into our bloody parks because hooligans have taken it over.  Although legalizing and taxing drugs will take business away from the cartels, getting that accomplished will take far more effort than changing the laws to allow the Border Patrol and other law enforcement to use vehicles in national parks.  The criminals are already damaging the environment in the parks and are going to keep on doing it, so it's not like avoiding using vehicles in this scenario is going to be a net benefit for the environment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100617/wl_time/08599199697300

Some good news from Afghanistan.  The Iraq War was an unnecessary distraction from fighting al-Qaeda and other Islamists, but copying the successful "Sons of Iraq" model used to help quell the Sunni insurgency seems to be working in Afghanistan.

Of course, we need to be sure these militias are being integrated into the Afghan government as to ensure long-run stability after we leave.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20008016-54.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

This deals with one of the problems with electric cars--where to recharge--rather nicely.  Some privacy concerns, but electric-usage data is something the power company already collects (and the government could subpoena if it wished), so no need to flip out.

Dumping on Mexico

I got a couple of comments on the farm subsidies article, which was posted on my friend Fred's blog "Seeking Liberty," and when I went to read them, I found that Wordpress automatically generates links that readers of blog articles might be interesting.

So I found this one here:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/dumping-on-mexico/

It elaborates on the point I made about "dumping" subsidized crops on Mexico, which undermine Mexican farmers that cannot compete with them because they can't get the same kind of subsidies our farmers can.

No comments in the article about illegal immigration--one logical consequence of Mexican (and I believe other Central American) farmers not being able to make a living anymore and understandably not wanting to starve to death--but some people in the comments section pointed this out.

My Farm Subsidies Editorial

Imagine you’re a cotton farmer in West Africa. One day, the man who comes to buy your cotton to be exported does not show up. You go to the marketplace and find there is nobody willing to buy your cotton. In fact, there is cheaper cotton available from abroad.

You now cannot sell your crop, or at least you cannot sell it for very much. You need to buy food and fertilizer, and your children need medicine and money to pay for schooling. You’re in trouble now.

Are these the workings of the free market? No. The reason the foreign cotton was able to price the West African cotton out of the market is because it came from the United States and was heavily subsidized.

Cotton subsidies are one of the most notorious examples of government agricultural supports and it gives American cotton producers an unfair advantage over more efficient producers abroad. For example, in Burkina Faso, it costs one-third as much to produce cotton as it does in the United States. According to the British aid agency Oxfam, the only clear advantage American cotton growers have over competitors in Africa is their ability to get government subsidies.

If American cotton subsidies were eliminated, the income of West African cotton farmers would increase 2.3 to 5.7 percent. This additional income could pay for health care for four to ten individuals for an entire year, schooling for one to ten children, or enough food to feed one or two children for an entire year. American cotton subsidies are more than double the amount of humanitarian aid we send to these countries every year.

Cotton subsidies aren’t the only villain. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, heavily-subsidized American corn has flooded Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement, never mind the fact that “dumping” is illegal. According to The Public Citizen, this corn is 30 percent below cost and Mexican farmers cannot compete with this. This has destroyed much of Mexico’s agriculture and caused widespread hunger among the 15 million Mexicans who depend on the corn industry.

According to the World Bank, if First World nations eliminated all agricultural subsidies and tariffs, 144 million people would be pulled out of extreme poverty by 2015. In the case of Africa, if the continent increased its exports by 1 percent, it would generate an additional $70 billion each year, more than five times the amount the continent receives in foreign aid.

Not only are American agricultural subsidies destructive to foreign economies, but they are destructive to our own. American agricultural producers already received enormous sums of money when then-President George W. Bush added an addition $190 billion over 10 years in farm subsidies to the federal budget. In a time of deficits, recession, and war, this kind of spending to essentially secure the votes of Iowans cannot be tolerated.

Furthermore, the practice of subsidizing agriculture puts the U.S. government in the position of both causing and treating major American health problems. Corn subsidies make products containing unhealthy high-fructose corn syrup cheaper and thus more easily purchased and consumed in enormous quantities.

High-fructose corn syrup contributes to many health problems like obesity and diabetes and those cost money. According to the New York Times, three-fourths of health-care spending goes to prevent “preventable chronic diseases,” many of which are caused by a poor diet. For example, U.S. spends $147 billion to treat obesity and $116 billion to treat diabetes, as well as hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular diseases and other cancers that result from the typical unhealthy American diet. 30 percent of the increase in health-care spending in the United States in the last 20 years can be attributed to obesity alone. If corn subsidies were cut, the amount spent on health care in this country would decline greatly.

Furthermore, by destroying the Mexican corn industry, farm subsidies have also contributed to illegal immigration. The former farmers in Mexico, not content to starve at home, have come to the United States regardless of whether it is legal for them to do so. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, illegal immigration costs state, local, and federal governments $45 billion to $55 billion per year.

Although the farm subsidies were originally intended to preserve small family farms, the primary beneficiaries of federal largesse are not these farmers, but large agribusinesses. Nearly three-fourths of all subsidies went to the top 10 percent of agribusinesses in 2001. For example, Arkansas Tyler Farms received $8.1 million in subsidies, 90,000 times the average payment of $899. Several Fortune 500 companies like Chevron and John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance receive large sums. These subsidies enable agribusinesses to buy out family farms or undercut them using economies of scale. This produces what one government official has called “the plantation effect.”

In short, Americans are being taxed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, at home and abroad, and to make themselves fatter besides.

President Barack Obama, in one of the few fiscally conservative things he has done, has advocated cutting these subsidies. In his Fiscal Year 2010 budget, subsidy payments to farmers making over $500,000 per year are being phased out, as are subsidies for cotton storage. The elimination of storage payments alone will save $570 million, while eliminating payments to high-income farmers will save $126 million. Eliminating direct payments to farms with sales over $500,000 will save $9.765 billion, while abolishing federal payment of crop insurance premiums and underwriting gains and fees will save $5.184 billion.

The above figures do not include the reduction in health-care costs that the resulting price increases in soft drinks will entail, the reduction in foreign aid that the enrichment of countries whose agriculture we are destroying will make possible, and the reduction in the costs of illegal immigration.

Earlier versions of this column appeared on the blog “Seeking Liberty,” in The Red and Black, and The Griffin Daily News.

“Seeking Liberty”

The Real Cost of Agricultural Subsidies

The Red and Black

Farm Subsidies Create Poverty

The Griffin Daily News

Agricultural Subsidies a Drain on the Budget