Author: D. L. Keur

Pernicious Impertinence

Posted on by D. L. Keur

I’m part of several writing groups around the Net.  Where I used to be quite active, now, mostly, I lurk, unless the forum is absolutely private, and, even then, most of the time, I offer little input.  Why might that be?  Well, a recent incident in a private forum will illustrate one very pertinent reason.

Somebody asked a question.  Several people cautiously answered with patently safe responses, namely of asking the OP (original poster) tangential questions about aspects of their topic, a technique which neatly avoids having to actually answer.  Finally, somebody was candid enough to give an on-point answer …and immediately that person got piled on by people who hadn’t even yet participated in the thread.

Why?

Because, with typical ignominy, ‘The Collective Miffed’, as I’ll call them (and, yes, there were several), didn’t like the candor and the inherent implications that underlay the truth in that answer, namely that, if you want to target the specific demographic market that the OP was trying to reach, you have to target what that demographic market wants and avoid targeting what it doesn’t.

What caused the upset among ‘The Collective Miffed’ is that, in exposing that truth, the respondent also exposed a truism about one particular, very large demographic target market, a trusim that immediately marked books authored by ‘The Collective Miffed’ as inappropriate.

Can you say pitchforks and torches, feathers and tar?

Yep.  That’s what happened.

The respondent was labeled harmful and rude, never mind that he was the only person to lay it out the way it is.  Darn his pernicious impertinence, y’know? Give not answers of unpopular truth to the mob, but only flowers and icing, baldfaced lies, and lots and lots of steaming [*]! .

It’s Never Safe to Tell the (Unpopular) Truth when Mob Rule runs Rampant

Angry Mob of Four by Robert Couse-Baker
Angry Mob of Four by Robert Couse-Baker

 

 

 

 

Good Morning!

Posted on by D. L. Keur

There are some things in life that make it worth it:

  • Good coffee.
  • Morning light as you get done with barn chores.
  • A gentle breeze.
  • A cat to stroke.
  • And, of course, watching a dog sniff out all the exciting traces of nightly visitors that happened through the yard since he last was out…

all of them appreciated sipping that cuppa while out sitting in the ‘brisk’ on the top porch step.

 

A New Series in the Making

Posted on by D. L. Keur

Yes.  That’s right.  I’m writing a new fiction series.

No.  I’m not going to tell you much about it, yet.  It will be a surprise.

But I will share this: It features a female protagonist.  It’s set in today’s rural West (as in U.S. West), but, unlike Through Better & Worse and To Have & To Hold, it’s NOT a Western Family Saga, and it’s certainly not Modern Western Romance.  It’s got absolutely no profanity and no sex.  It’s got no ‘gruel’ — no gratuitous cruelty, gore, and/or barbarism.

Will you like it?  I think a lot of people will, yes.

Why am I writing it?  Because I need something in my catalog that will appeal to a broader audience than my more literary efforts.

I write good books.  But, unfortunately, what I’ve published doesn’t fit neatly into a genre.  This series will, though.  This series will fit right into one major fiction genre that people love.

More later.

Mystery Cover

 

Blog Gone Live, Again.

Posted on by D. L. Keur

So, in 2019, I eradicated (as in completely removed) my blog.  You see, it wasn’t good enough to just stick it in a corner where, supposedly, nobody would find it, even completely locked down.  In fact, even setting up severe restrictions on access still threw issues because, honestly, even GoogleBot doesn’t respect ‘no admittance’ lockdowns unless you actually set things behind an .htaccess prohibition.  And doing that makes some bots just keep bumping against the door.  So, I destroyed it all in one fell swoop–SHIFT-DELETE–off the server …but not before saving years worth of posts, pages, images, etc.  I’ve reinstalled the posts and the images–the public ones, not the private ones.  And, now, there will never be anything in draft form because, guess what?, Google indexes those sitting in draft, as well, posting them to their search engine for the world to see.  Didn’t know that?  Neither did I.  It’s because Google and all the other bots actually eat of anything in a database …which is where a CMS (that’s Content Management System, for those curious) stores everything.

But Now I’m Ba-ack!

And so are all those historic posts of mine.

Shudder at will, my friends.  The self-applied muzzle is off.

Of course, it’s been replaced by an N99 anti-covid mask, but, well, that’s just thanks to a certain little virus that won’t go away and leave us alone.

Anyway, I hope you are all looking forward to me and mine, mine being my sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes touching, sometimes irascible, sometimes downright obnoxious commentaries on life, living, and the state of being.

Coming to you from the North Country.

From out my office window.