I am working with troubled kids in Mississippi now and writing while the kids are in school. I am nearly halfway through my current fantasy novel. In the previous year I found that having writings out in the public can be good and be bad. It is good because I found a few fans. It was bad becuase I lost a ministry job because of a satire piece I published. To make matters worse when I lost the job I lost the financial resources to continue publishing my fantasy magazine. Anyway to bigger and bolder things.

So a year a three states later I have returned full of spunk and energy! Looking to hear from everyone again.

JB Skaggs

Yeah, satire can be a risky business. One problem is that the most effective satire is one which is recognizably similar to an existing idea. Combined with the fact that ideas change over time and place, it is difficult to draw a sharp line between an idea that is worth satirizing and the satirization of a slightly less extreme idea.

Think of Swift's A Modest Proposal, and how we're currently engaged in a serious national debate over whether it would be okay to buy the unwanted children of the poor to use as experimental material to research possible medical treatments for the ultra-rich. If embryonic tissue ever does become usable as a means of curing diseases, the analogy will be so direct it won't even be worth pointing out.

And of course it isn't just the future that threatens your satire, but the past as well. There are cultures and philosophies in our history which have really recommended or practiced things like killing yourself (or your family) over a loss of "honor", or ritually sacrificing your children to gain material wealth, or imprisoning everyone who's recieved a high-school diploma. And they aren't just in history, or even in other countries. Western culture's embrace of "diversity" and "tolerance" means that real groups preaching everything from universal free love to genocide against the human race are found not only in basements but in our universities.

Survivor I understand exactly what you mean. Some people thought Swift's suggestion to eat orphans to be a literal request.

Mine was similar. I wrote a story about a fast food restaurant that used zombies for employees. The commentary was pretty blatant and toungue in cheek. But the phrase I heard over and over as I fought for my job was: "If you write about magic or zombies then you must be a practioner of devil worship."

Of course I don't think they really believed that- I had just taken over from another person and they felt it was unfair to ask the previous worker to retire (he was 88 and had two heart attacks and a stroke that year, he actually died a few weeks after I was asked to resign. But his family just could not come to grips with the fact he was dying.) Anyway don't think that just because we live in 21st century that small minded people will not attack you. As a writer you'd better have thick skin.

Christine you have a one year old baby! WOW Yes that will keep you busy. Oddly enough you will find days to somehow be longer and shorter at the same exact time! A paradox to be sure- but true. The first year of a baby's life seems to take about ten years to pass, but when they turn ten it will seem like a brief flash. My oldest turned 18 last week so I guess I'm well on my way to becoming a silverback.

To the rest thanks for welcome back.

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(He'll be 1 on Friday...wow, has it really been a year?)

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Welcome back.

Sometimes circumstances change and become such that a particular person's presence becomes inconvenient. It is common in those kind of conditions for the one-in-charge to grasp the easiest, quickest way of getting rid of the inconvenient-one. Often it is by implementing the 'rules is rules' ruse. This trick, conscious or otherwise, is an attempt by the one-in-charge to exculpate themself and shift the blame to another, either the inconvenient-one or the one-who-made-the-rules. It is cognitive misdirection by the one-in-charge. It anaesthetises their conscience. It gives them a means to short-circuit any thought that may lead them to recognise their real motives.

For what its worth, I'm glad you're back.

That's one of my biggest pet peeves. I'm a solid Christian and I've run into this problem before when people saw what was on my bookshelves or, like you, when I wrote a story that had fantasy elements.

Then one day I was in a Christian book store and saw two items in the same section; one was a boxed edition of the Lord of the Rings, the other was a book about why Harry Potter is evil. At that point I realized that I don't need to waste my time worrying about someone else's willful ignorance. But then again, my job has never been on the line for such a stupid, flimsy reason.