Something for the Journey

Hey, I'm a recalcitrant cheapskate when it comes to my fiction writing - meaning, I almost never write for no pay.   It could be a flat fee upfront, a royalty on sales, or, better yet, both, but in just about all cases, I need to be paid.  Stewart Brand used to say that "information wants to be free," and my response has always been, yeah, but writers need to eat.  In the academic world, I've written many a scholarly article for no direct pay, but that's because such publications help my career in indirect ways - you know, tenure, promotion, that sort of thing.  But since fiction usually has no such clout, it's lucre in hand or I'll decline the assignment.

But there are exceptions to all rules.  And so when I was approached with an invitation to contribute a short story to Something for the Journey, an anthology whose sales would all go - every penny - to a children's charity in Bristol, England, I gave it some thought.  Bristol is one of my favorite places in England after London.   Its chocolates and its university are both top-notch.  It was also the day before the anniversary of JFK's assassination, and I had a story in the trunk, which needed some updating, a new ending ... and, before I knew it, I had finished "Transfer of Power" at a little over a thousand words and sent it in to the anthology.

Something for the Journey was published yesterday (as an ebook on Kindle, with paperback soon to follow).   "Transfer of Power" is one of twenty-four short stories in all genres - short enough to be read on a bus or a train ride, hence the title.   The authors are

Dario Solera, Neil Bursnoll, T.L. Champion, Kathy Molyneaux, RJ Kennett, Peter Cawdron, Jamie Campbell, Sarah Dalton, Vincent Trigili, Cora Buhlert, Paul B. Kohler, Stephen Drivick, Stacy Claflin, Al Stevens, Sheila Guthrie, Dan Fiorella, Pru Moran, Paul Levinson, Melanie Nilles, James Griffiths, Seun Odukoya, V. A. Jeffrey, Frank Zubek, and Stella Wilkinson. 

Stella Wilkinson is the editor and Frank Zubek is donating his publicity.   You can get the book here - and, by the way, you can download a free Kindle app for Mac or PC if you don't have a Kindle - and there's more about the book and some brief interviews with authors here.

And, to pique your interest in "Transfer of Power" a little more, here's a famous photo that plays a central role in the story -


Bill Clinton shakes JFK's hand, 1963

The Good Wife 2.16: Information Wars

A great Good Wife 2.16 tonight, with so many excellent stories swirling around, some with neat and excellent resolutions, that it was hard to keep track.  All to the good in entertainment, making it just like real life.  Here are some highlights -

1. Will and Diane have a client - played by Miles from Lost (Ken Leung) - who was in prison in China for five years.  His social network gave up his name - and those of other blogging dissidents - as the price of doing business in China.   (In our world, Google for a while played along with Chinese requests for censorship, but never turned over any one's names.)  The head of the social network defends his actions as necessary to keep the door open in China to the democratizing influences of new media (or what I call "new new media," or online media that put power in people's hands).  He gets off an amazingly current line about this - "look what happened in Egypt" - which I bet was dubbed in the past two weeks, good for the producers of the show or whoever did his.   (See the special lecture I gave at St. Francis College last week for more on these Internet revolutions.) Will gets to quote Steward Brand's "information wants to be free" (unfortunately without attribution - one reason I like Criminal Minds so much).  And there's a great, surprise resolution of this case, which involves the firm's Zuckerberg-like client that we saw in a previous episode.

2.  Will and Diane's attempt to outsmart Bond and give him the boot comes to a head and a vote.  Lots of good ingredients in this one, including Diane enlisting the help of some "alteh kackers" (the "al" pronounced, by the way, like the "ol" in "Ollie" and not as Will said it, which made the "alteh kacker" seem to come from an alternate universe).   By the way, the leading "alteh" was played by Jerry Adler, of Hesch on The Sopranos and Chief Feinberg of Rescue Me fame.  And that wasn't even the best part of this thread, which featured a great triple agent feint in the final voting as to who will be thrown out of the firm.

3. Peter has a good episode with his political aspirations, thanks to the sharp work by Zach.  It was great to see them hug at the end.

4. Kalinda is under serious investigation.  Cary brings her this news, and kisses her.  They obviously had something going that we don't quite know about in the past, maybe just last year.

Add to this that "Google's" lawyer expressed interest in hiring Alicia away from the firm, Zach and Becca are getting close again, and you have one superb episode in this fine series, indeed.


See also  The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS ... The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl ... The Good Wife 2.4: Surprise Candidate, Intimate Interpsonal Distance ... The Good Wife 2.9 Takes on Capital Punishment

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The Plot to Save Socrates



"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book