As 2010 dawns I have decided to take a new direction with the content presented on the Writing Shop main web site, for a number of reasons, some personal and some related to new business opportunities I will be exploring this year. For the last several years I have faithfully used this publishing place to present my thoughts, observations, predictions, ideas and criticisms of crucial events. In recent years this coverage has been dominated by articles ruminating on the inevitable consequences of our economic schemes, and commenting on the enormous bailout engineered to rescue the bad investment deals concocted by the wealthy banking sector. But in reviewing the numerous articles I wrote on the subject the last several years, I have concluded that there is really very little more to say. I have already said it five times over. So I’m just not going to write about these issues any longer—at least not in biweekly articles threaded by weekly blog posts on the subject. Enough said.
Instead I am going to begin presenting more creative fiction here at the Writing Shop, and also invite contributions from the reading audience. To let those down easy who have come to enjoy my regular rants, the subject matter of the first fiction release is much akin to the topics discussed in the main article index. 9 Days Falling is a fictional look at the road we have been walking on these last several years, and where I think it will inevitably lead. I hope it will educate as much as it strives to also entertain, and I offer it in serial release free of any charge, as all content at this site has always been presented as a free service to readers.
Instead I am going to begin presenting more creative fiction here at the Writing Shop, and also invite contributions from the reading audience. To let those down easy who have come to enjoy my regular rants, the subject matter of the first fiction release is much akin to the topics discussed in the main article index. 9 Days Falling is a fictional look at the road we have been walking on these last several years, and where I think it will inevitably lead. I hope it will educate as much as it strives to also entertain, and I offer it in serial release free of any charge, as all content at this site has always been presented as a free service to readers.
In closing I would like to thank all the thousands of readers, 50,000 or more, who visit my site to read my monthly articles. I hope you learned something, or at least were moved to deeply consider the implications of the things I was writing about. And I hope you will join me as I roll out 9 Days Falling in the months ahead.
The key question in all of this remains to each of us: how can we retain our humanity and build that new world ahead as we pass through this time of crisis and forced change? We will each answer it in different ways, some with courage, ingenuity, assertive innovation, and deep compassion, others with vile thievery and continued selfishness. But no one in this generation will be able to remain indifferent. Like the people in Cormac MacCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road, we must either be the bad guys on the road of life, or the good guys, and carry the fire. We all must choose, one road or another.
I have tried to carry the fire all these years with the only weapon I had to bring to the fight--the power of the pen. Many thanks to all the thousands of readers who have spent valuable time reading my articles. Knowing you were out there was one great motivation that kept me writing, and I hope you will join me on this next turn in the road as I present 9 Days Falling. Just click on the chapter links to read any given scene. The story will update each week with new scenes. So come back often!
You can read about this project here, and to get things started, the first two scenes are on-line now. Taken in tandem they portray a glimpse of the vast difference in life style between the developed and undeveloped world. Half of humanity lives in utter squalor, while the other half indulges in trivial materialism to such an extreme that the very avarice of the wealthy power centers there have triggered the onset of a cascading collapse.
This is a novel of that crisis, as it has unfolded to date and as it may unfold in the days ahead. It is the time we live in now, and the choices we make in facing it will be the history written about tomorrow.
May we choose wisely.
You can read about this project here, and to get things started, the first two scenes are on-line now. Taken in tandem they portray a glimpse of the vast difference in life style between the developed and undeveloped world. Half of humanity lives in utter squalor, while the other half indulges in trivial materialism to such an extreme that the very avarice of the wealthy power centers there have triggered the onset of a cascading collapse.
This is a novel of that crisis, as it has unfolded to date and as it may unfold in the days ahead. It is the time we live in now, and the choices we make in facing it will be the history written about tomorrow.
May we choose wisely.
John Schettler
