Forgive me, for I have sinned (against good grammar)...

This is something I need to get off my chest, before anyone jumps flunky on me about it.  Because YES I know this is wrong.  I'm well aware of it.  But it's not something I can go back and fix so I might as well embrace the horror.

Here is a snapshot of Keeping the Tryst's page on Amazon (for the Kindle edition).  Notice anything?

The "the" in the title is capitalized.  It shouldn't be.  "The" is such a minor word that it's VERY rarely if EVER used in the title of something (except for songs, it seems like every word in a song title is capitalized for some reason).

It SHOULD be expressed as "Keeping the Tryst", and not "Keeping The Tryst".  What happened?  Blame me for typing it so fast on the hardcover edition's title field and not recognizing it until after I had submitted that one to Amazon.  I did it on the Kindle edition too but then realized what I had done.   I can repair the "damage" on the Kindle version but for some reason the system isn't letting me do it for the hardcover.  So I pretty much am just shrugging and capitalizing it as "Keeping The Tryst" for both of them.  The subtitles are appropriately capitalized properly though.

So, that's the story behind that.  But I hope that readers will be kind and overlook it and still be able to enjoy the book.  And hey, maybe in time it will be that I have established some precedent and it becomes good grammar after all: capitalizing every word in a title, but not the subtitle.  It could be my own humble lil' addition to the English language.

A writer can hope, can't he??

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An open letter to CNN

Look CNN...

Those are not eight "troops" that have been killed in Afghanistan. A "troop" is a GROUP of soldiers. You do not call one soldier a "troop". One soldier is a "trooper".

And in my opinion it's mighty disrespectful to not say what they really are: those were eight SOLDIERS who were killed. INDIVIDUALS who had hopes and dreams and for whatever their various reasons chose to put those dreams aside so they could serve in the armed forces.

Those who sent them to Afghanistan and other places of meaningless war might be a bunch of asshat bastards but that doesn't mean we have any right or reason to disrespect these individuals, each one as unique and precious a creation of God as any of us are, who made a choice to be a SOLDIER.

In the future please refrain from referring to soldiers as "troops", unless you mean to convey the sense of troops plural, as in groups of groups of soldiers.

Thank you.

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