I rarely pimp my memoir outside of Facebook and here. For one, I’m not thrilled with the publisher (don’t ask). For another, I find the whole self-promotion crap just that (explained in the book). Even when I do indulge the prerogative, it’s usually in some self-deprecating context. How the only thing more rare than a first edition is a second. How it is transiting from the exotic to the extinct.
Still, there is the worrisome matter of depriving would-be readers of its considerable pleasures. And so the occasional plug.
Rest assured it’s not a goddamn shoot-‘em up - although my shooting is included – but a chronicle of day-to-realities of law enforcement in Los Angeles County at the last millennium’s twilight. In other words, before things totally went to shit.
I don’t couch sentiments, don’t shy away from exercising my opinion or vocabulary, and may irritate you (but your ass won’t be bored). There’s humor, pathos, and assholes on both sides of the law. You’ll find tales of woe and intrigue and encounter brow-beaten, weak-willed Winnie-waggers, groupies who took “May the Force Be With You” literally, race card dealers, Huey, Dewey, and Chuy, and all vagaries of the North American dirtbag, replete with County tan and frequent flier miles with Men’s Central Jail. With the advantage of hindsight, I wouldn’t change a thing save for adding a chapter on the naïvete of us practitioners.
A vast majority of Amazon reviews are favorable, with only a couple bad (but I’ve ingested a little too much Charles Bukowski and Ed Abbey to give a rat’s ass, and the comments speak for themselves). Such is my self-assuredness.
When it comes to this whole substack thing, I’m less sure.
With the patrol blog of POLICE magazine, I knew my audience (no high wire act preaching to the choir). The only thing I’m sure of about this platform is there’s as many audiences for plane crashes as there are for good writing (perhaps more).
But what does that audience want to read? More excerpts from the memoir follow-up? Journal entries? Rants? Essays on subjects that interest me? The fire that’s been devouring our landscape?
Perhaps I should fixate on what seems to drive the traction of so many others’ pages. The whole “they’re killing us with gain-of-dysfunction bio-weapons” thing. That our every body has been allegedly augmented by promethean physicians and doubtlessly fucked by any objective standard. That our republic has morphed into a kakistocracy targeting its own republic via skills honed in third world also-ran’s. How I continue to augment my eclectic collection of comic books, art, and ephemera.
Maybe I should just post predigested bon mots here and there, nothing too taxing on the mind or particularly revelatory of my unsavory nature. Play it safe.
Fuck that.
Still, I’d really like to know: message me via Facebook (and if you’re not my friend, yet, hit me up). It’s not pandering if my curiosity is satiated (as it’s no guarantee I’ll change things).
Yes, I have my idiosyncratic edicts, suspect priorities, principles, and paradigms. But for all my hubris I abstain from needless and irritating preambles such as "You need to remember" "What you don't know..." and the particularly irksome "What you may not know...", especially as it implicitly acknowledges that the reader just MAY know - and often does. (That sideways glance is in your direction, Paul “I Told You So But so Did Anyone Else with an Ounce of Common Sense” Alexander)
More accurate and honest than most revisionist texts that pass for history books these days, it is a serialized tutorial that won't bring you peace of mind, but will leave you better armed for the battles ahead - irrespective of your political or philosophical leanings.
When it comes to lighting a fire under my ass, there’s no better accelerant than subsidy. But how does one reconcile that pimping posture and finding an audience? Simple: Have the audience do it for you.
Or not.
I’ll still post stuff on the globalist stranglehold, Big Pharma’s genocide-in-progress, and the thrills of morbid introspection so long as I can, just with diminished frequency, enthusiasm, and discipline. God knows there’s more inhibitors than incentives (by design).
Yeah, the emotional exhibitionism might be distasteful, but at least I never became Twitter or X -dependent. Between it, Facebook, and YouTube's ostracism's of all things right-leaning, they have effectively negated my naïve optimism that the Internet would prove the most egalitarian of technologies. It appears that there are Orwellian types determined to police everything under the sun according to their own whims. If only someone would accord the likes of Soros, Gates, and Schwab what’s truly due them.
Finally, any reviewer of the content herein should remember that I am perfectly capable of blaming others for my transgressions.
Besides, the kid writes most of this stuff anyway.
Dean, whatever subject matter you apply your unique prose style and observations to is fine by me. Mercurial is good. Variety is the spice of life etc etc. Keep going man.