This Blog Has Moved

Visit my old new blog at http://ptdilloway.blogspot.com for all the latest on my books and other stuff.

Andrew Leon and the Case of the Missing Blog Entry

Wow, some people really do not want the truth about Andrew Leon to get out.  See, for over a month now Andrew Leon has been smearing me on his blog every Wednesday like clockwork.  Whenever I comment, my comments mysteriously vanish shortly thereafter.  I used two Gmail accounts and a Wordpress account.  I used my computer, my phone, and my Kindle Fire.  And gee, when my sister posted a comment it too was deleted shortly thereafter.  Yeah, my sister posting from a completely different computer in a completely different city from a completely different account.  Weird, isn't it?  Just a great big coincidence.

Finally getting tired of the deleted comments I decided to a little expose on Indie Writers Monthly.  Since it's "Star Wars Day" I thought it seemed appropriate to talk about petty dictators who crush anyone who tries to get in their way.  Here's the article preview:

And just over an hour later the article is deleted and I'm deleted as a contributor of the site.  Weird, isn't it?  Another great big coincidence.

You might say, "Well you were writing a smear piece!"  You know, which is completely different than what he has been doing for a goddamned month now.  More to the point, everything I said was absolutely true, supported by FACTS.

But that's the problem with Andrew Leon and whoever is covering for him:  they can't deal with facts, so they just try to erase them.  Post something they don't like?  Delete it.  Then lie about deleting it.

One part of my expose was quoting Andrew's ridiculous "proof" that he wasn't deleting comments because there wasn't a delete notification. 

Pat: I can honestly tell you: I have deleted nothing.
Period.
You're not worth deleting.
In fact, if you had any brain at all, you would notice that there are no "delete" notifications. So there you go.

Of course there aren't.  As someone who has many blogs--at least until Andrew & Company get done--I can tell you that all you have to do is check the "Remove forever" box and the comment is completely erased.  Don't believe me?  Here's one of Andrew's comments trolling my blog:

There it is, the "Remove forever" box.  It exists no matter how Andrew might not want you to think so.  If you have a blog you can find it yourself.  Then you too only have to leave what you want people to see.

What other terrible things was I saying?  There was Andrew's lie that I went on Facebook to encourage people to give him bad reviews.  What I actually said was:

"Someone want to tell this asshole "Enough already?" This is like the fourth post he's made in a month badmouthing me. Get a life! http://strangepegs.blogspot.com/2015/04/whos-sad-puppy.html"

It's pretty obvious I wasn't saying for anyone to give him bad reviews.

And there was Andrew implying I gave him far more bad reviews than I did:

Well, to be fair, he didn't do it to -all- of my books (yet), but I do think he's lost four of the fingers off of his counting hand if thinks he did it to only one.

I only gave 2 of his books bad reviews.  Like I said, even my niece can count to 2 and she IS 2.  (Almost 3.)  If you don't believe me, you can wade through my reviews on Amazon.  Of special interest are pages 2 and 40 (at present) but if you don't believe me, you can check out all the others.  It's your time to waste.

Oh yes and he claims I had comments of his buddy "Knox Kingston" removed from Amazon:

As an addendum:
Another reviewer pointed out on Amazon exactly where these tense shifts are (there is actually one in the sample passage on Amazon), and Pat, after first claiming they didn't exist then, once they were pointed out, trying to rationalize why they were okay, had Amazon remove the comments.

He had them REMOVE the comments.
Guess Pat can't handle the truth.

And then ironically all my comments to respond to that disappeared.  But he didn't delete them.  Because there would be a delete notification if he did!  That's almost as hilarious as deleting my article complaining about the censorship on his blog.

One of the comments I supposedly had Amazon delete was made and then erased while I was asleep, so I guess I must have gotten up, turned on the computer, complained to Amazon, turned off the computer, and went back to bed all while remaining unconscious.  But it's OK because Knox Kingston then said all the same crap in a "review" of my book, which if I had so much pull with Amazon, couldn't I get that taken down?  And wouldn't they not remove MY comments saying it's a fake review?

Hilariously, Mr. Kingston claims to be a "neutral party" while 15 of his 26 reviews are raving about Andrew Leon's books.  Sounds real neutral to me.  The funniest part of his comments that were erased was when he accused me of creating a fake name to troll Andrew Leon's bad review of my book.  I did create a fake name...14 years ago!  Maybe I traveled back in time to create an account.  Though if I were using a fake name just to troll him, would I have used first person "I" instead of third person "the author?"

BJ Fraser says:

First off, to anyone reading this review, the author is upset that I gave one of his books a bad review. This is his idea of revenge.

Second, I've had people mention that before and it's very easy to explain. As Doc Brown would say, You have to think 4 dimensionally. To put it simply Frost isn't telling the story NOW. Think of it as Frost is an old man writing his memoirs. This allows him to add more information he would not have known at the time but learned about later. When I changed it from third to first I didn't just change the pronouns; I rewrote the novel entirely, so it was not because I just plumb forgot how to write in first-person. I suppose it would have been smart of me to put a prologue in to explain when exactly Frost is writing this for people who simply can't get that concept otherwise and make all sorts of silly accusations.

I'm sure you're wrong about it shifting from past to present tense. I haven't read it in a while, but I flipped through my paperback copy. If you want to actually point out some of these shifts I'll look it up.

I don't think so.  Even the biggest Andrew Leon fan would have to acknowledge that it's ridiculous to think I would use first person if I were trying to pass myself off as a neutral party like Knox Kingston.

Of course in the world of Andrew Leon it's completely coincidental that he wrote a bad review of my book just 2 weeks after I gave his book a bad review as a taste of his own medicine for giving someone else a bad review.

Anyway, the original article was better.  I knew I should have saved it for just this kind of contingency.  As you can see, I have plenty of facts on my side.  I'm not just blowing smoke out of my ass here.

My article concluded by comparing Andrew Leon to someone who also likes to suppress any and all dissent:  Kim Jong-un of North Korea.  You know, the guy who was so pissed off about a satirical movie being released on him called "The Interview" that he had people hack Sony to scare them into not releasing the movie in theaters.  He's also the guy who doesn't let journalists see his country because they could bear witness to how awful his rule is.  And he makes ridiculous claims about his proficiency at golf, basketball, and mountain climbing.

Come to think of it, maybe it was Kim Jong-un and his minions who had my article pulled from Indie Writers Monthly and staged a coup d'teat to remove me and Sandra Ulbrich Almazan from the site's contributors.  Or maybe it's the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files.  I guess if this article disappears in an hour and I get kicked off my own blog then we'll see just how high up the conspiracy goes.

(But this time I'm saving a copy.)

It Happened Today...Hooray!

The ptdilloway.com domain finally expired.  But you can still find the blog at:
http://ptdilloway.blogspot.com/

Hey Goodreaders!

Apparently you can't combine profiles on Goodreads because their software is too primitive for that.  So I can't link my own profile to my own blog.  So I am linking this profile to this old blog.  Here's the link to my real blog:
http://www.ptdilloway.com where you can enjoy all sorts of fun articles and games that will help you while away your days when you should be working.

And here's a picture of bulldogs playing tug of war:

Don't Wake A Grumpy Bulldog

Grumpy Bulldog's Blog is now closed.  Please visit my new blog for all your blogging needs!  To find out what's on the Grumpy Bulldog's mind, you can visit my new Tumblr micro-blog!

The End of Grumpy Bulldog

So now, much too soon really, it's time to say farewell to another blog.  Of course as I've already announced, the new blog will begin on Sunday for the A to Z challenge.  So that's something, right?

For this last post, I thought I'd talk about endings.  Sometimes you find the end even though it isn't the end.  Like in American Lit class in high school and our teacher didn't make us read the real end of Huck Finn where Tom Sawyer shows up because that part sucks ass.  She didn't say that in so many words, but that was the gist of it.

Or take The Hunger Games because probably more people have read that than Huckleberry Finn anymore.  Unlike say Michael Offutt, I didn't hate the book.  I didn't love it either.  It was fine as a throwaway action-adventure type story, kind of like "Gladiator" meets "Winter's Bone."  This was my review.

And as I mention in the review, I was interested enough in the ending to stay up at 1am to finish it, something I rarely do anymore in my old age.  But when I was finished, that was it.  I put it in my "Read" group on the Kindle, turned the Kindle off, and went to bed.

I know there are two sequels, but I just don't care.  The end of the first book was enough.  (SPOILERS!!!)  Katniss and Peeta win the Hunger Games and go home.  Huzzah huzzah for them.  That was fine for me.  I don't really care about her turning into Luke Skywalker and defeating the Empire or whatever happens in the next two.

And you could make that case for the original Star Wars "Episode IV".  Luke blows up the Death Star, him and Han and Chewie get medals, Darth Vader is off in space somewhere, everything's hunky-dory.  Do you really need to go on?  No, not really.  But most of us did anyway.

Another example was this show I watched a couple years ago--on DVD of course as that or Netflix is about the only way I watch a series anymore.  I got to the end of the first season and the main character was pretty well off.  She got her dream guy, a good job as a book editor, fixed things with her family.  There was only one thing really left unresolved, but so what?  I had little interest in watching her life unravel (again) and then re-ravel and unravel again and so forth just to keep the series going.

Grumpy Bulldog is cleaning out his locker...

In other words, sometimes you just know when something is over.  Grumpy Bulldog's Blog is over.  So it goes.

Of course it wouldn't have been finished if I hadn't gotten a mega publishing deal--or very non-mega publishing deal.  That was as they say "a gamechanger."  Because really the whole game did change.  Few people want to buy books from a Grumpy Bulldog ranting about politics and religion and stuff like that.  Especially a grumpy bulldog who uses a non-grumpy bulldog mascot for his avatar.  People want to deal with real people and they don't want to be offended.  Or so I've been told.

So that changed the nature of the game.  As for why April, I figured the A to Z thing was a good way to ease people into the new blog, plus if it's on the list it should get a few more followers from people checking out the 999 other blogs in the thing.  One or two maybe.  And really what would Grumpy Bulldog have talked about for 26 days?  About all I could think of was a swear a day.  A is for Asshole, B is for Bitch, C is for Cunt, and so forth.  That would have been hard when you get to q or x or z.  So fuck it, may as well use the opportunity for a month of schilling.

I have the new schedule worked out for the other blog for after April.  It won't feature anything "controversial" though.  Because that's scary.  Ooh no, I might have to think!  Save me!  As Neil Vogler says it's time to be an affable bulldog.  Boo!

There you go, there's the whole story.  And now it ends...

Down the drain the blog goes!!!

Politics According to '80s Sci-Fi

All right, here's a little political science quiz for you:

Question 1:  Which leader said, "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."?

Question 2:  Which great political philosopher said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."?

OK, here's some spoiler space while you think about that--if you don't know already.


Tick tock


Tick tock


Tick tock


Time's up!


So was it George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Plato?  Um, no.

Question 1:  Which leader said, "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."?
Answer:  Autobot leader Optimus Prime 

Question 2:  Which great political philosopher said, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."?
Answer:  United Federation of Planets Captain Spock in Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan.  (His father also used it in Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock.  And I can already hear Andrew Leon saying, "Nuh-uh, he actually said..." I say close enough, so pipe down.)

Which really makes me wonder why all the great political ideas these days come from science fiction characters of the early 1980s.  We should have come up with something better than that, right?  All we got is "Change" and "Restore Our Future."  BORING.

And actually I think both the Optimus Prime and Spock philosophies are what we should use to govern.  The point of America is supposed to be that we have freedom.  And freedom should be the right of ALL sentient beings, not just old white guys with money.

Because as Spock said the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the one.  So often these days you got these groups who only care about what THEY want.  As long as they have what they need or want, then screw everyone else.  It's like those people who buy huge SUVs even when gas is $4/gallon, basically saying, "I can pay for high gas prices, so fuck everyone else."  It isn't a real surprise the "ME Generation" and its progeny think that way, but it's not how we should think, especially when making laws.

America is the Great Melting Pot, with a variety of cultures.  It's not a Christian nation or a white nation or a male nation.  America is for everyone.  In my opinion then the easiest way to decide whether a law is a good idea or not is to say, "Who does this help?  Who does this hurt?"  These anti-contraception laws, who do they really help?  (As in, whose lives would be better without contraception?)  No one!  Who do they hurt?  Millions of women!  So the decision should be pretty freaking obvious if we consider that women are sentient beings and thus have the rights of other people.  Anti-gay marriage laws, who do they help?  Uptight Christians?  Who do they hurt?  Millions of gay people.  Tax cuts for the rich, who do they help?  The 1%.  Who do they hurt?  The 99%.  See where I'm going with this?

And yet thanks to lobbyists, special interest groups, SuperPACs, Fox "News", and so forth we often end up governing for the few instead of the many.  We end up saying that only those sentient beings who are like us get to have freedom.

Maybe a lot of the problem is we're just so fucking spoiled we don't know how to make a sacrifice anymore.  All we can do is think of me, me, ME all the time.  Sometimes that backfires too, like when you say, "I don't want a 1% property tax increase" and so you get robbed or your house burns down because your city cut its police and fire departments.  If you had just thought about who that property tax increase helped instead of only about your pocketbook you'd be better off.

But then that would require that most of us actually give a shit about making a better world or leaving a better world for the next generations.  Aye, there's the rub.  Most of us care more what's on TV than what's going on in the world, which is why a Netflix price increase gets the masses riled up while genocide in the Sudan or Syria or other parts of the world doesn't get anyone off the couch.  Are we too small to do anything or are we too lazy?  That is the question.


Tomorrow is the FINAL POST!!!  And what else would we talk about except endings?