Wonderful advance reader responses for "Hunter"

I'm back from a week's vacation with The Wife in North Carolina, during which time my "beta readers" have been sharing their feedback with me on the manuscript for Hunter.

I'm tremendously encouraged by their enthusiastic responses, and humbled by their detailed critiques and suggestions. The published book will be much improved, thanks to their invaluable input and insights.

This week, I'll be racing to incorporate corrections and tweaks, kick development of a new "fiction" blog into gear; finalize my marketing plan; and prepare the manuscript for ebook and print-book publication. There are many things to do, so my posts will be limited here. But I hope that the book -- which should be available by the end of June in ebook editions, and early July in print -- will be more than a worthy substitute for blog posts.

Finishing my first novel on June 4th

I've just finished the climactic chapter of my novel, HUNTER: A Thriller.

I can't begin to tell you how I feel about it. Let's just say that I've poured wine and am toasting myself.

I'll finish the final "tying up loose ends" chapter tomorrow, and then my first novel is DONE.

The day before my 62nd birthday. As I promised myself.

The book will be available as an ebook by month's end, and almost immediately thereafter as a trade paperback. Details to come.

Thanks to all of you who have either encouraged or endured me during this process.

UPDATE -- C'est fini...just an hour or so before my birthday. Can't tell you how great it feels.

How the Ruling Class manages America's collapse

The inimitable Mark Steyn, in his inimitable style, connects a few dots from the news in order to sketch a telling portrait of America's decline. This time he provides both a macro- and micro-view of the workings, and staggering costs, of our Regulatory State -- designed and managed by Ruling Class grandees and bureaucratic caliphs. Sample:

Plucked at random from the ObamaCare bill:

"The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance."

"Tooth-level surveillance"? Has that phrase ever been used before in the entirety of human history? Say what you like about George III but the redcoats never attempted surveillance of Gen. Washington's dentures. Why not just call it "gum control"?

The hyper-regulatory state is unrepublican. It strikes at one of the most basic pillars of free society: equality before the law. When you replace "law" with "regulation," equality before it is one of the first casualties. In such a world, there is no law, only a hierarchy of privilege more suited to a sultan's court than a self-governing republic. If you don't want to be subject to "tooth-level surveillance," you better know who to call in Washington. Teamsters Local 522 did, and the United Federation of Teachers, and the Chicago Plastering Institute. And as a result they've all been "granted" ObamaCare "waivers." Rule, Obama! Obama, waive the rules! If only for his cronies. Americans are being transferred remorselessly from the rule of law to rule by an unaccountable bureaucracy of micro-regulatory preferences, subsidies, entitlements and incentives that determine which of the multiple categories of Unequal-Before-The-Law Second-Class (or Third-Class, or Fourth-Class) Citizenship you happen to fall into.

And yet Americans put up with it. According to the Small Business Administration, the cost to the economy of government regulation is about $1.75 trillion per annum. You and your fellow citizens pay for that – and it's about twice as much as you pay in income tax. Or, to put it another way, the regulatory state sucks up about a quarter-trillion dollars more than the entire GDP of India. As fast as India's growing its economy, we're growing our regulations faster. Oh, well, you shrug, it would be unreasonable to expect the bloated, somnolent hyperpower to match those wiry little fellows back at the call center in Bangalore. Okay. It's also about a quarter-trillion dollars more than the GDP of Canada. Every year we're dumping the equivalent of a G7 economy into ever more ludicrous and wasteful regulation.

As ever, read it all.