Damn it! The Solomon Scandals novel—topic of a just-posted AI podcast—has become too timely. Billionaires are turning iconic news organizations into propaganda outlets on occasion. Witness The Washington Post’s defense of the White House ballroom. My Kirkus-recommended novel, conceived in the 1970s, exposes the unholy triad of media, business and government. The book’s available in […]
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Could a robot reporter have investigated D.C. sleaze better than I did in the 1970s?
Could a reporter bot have been me in real life in the 1970s—or Jonathan Stone, the far more dashing investigative journalist in my novel The Solomon Scandals? And who would have made a better sleuth, humans or AI? With the above in mind, let me share a cautionary story about a CIA-occupied building and an […]
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Build your own chatbot to promote your book: Lessons from my ScandalsBot
I call it the ScandalsBot. If you ask what Washington sleaze inspired The Solomon Scandals, the bot will oblige. The bot can also compare my corruption novel with All the President’s Men and other Washington books, or it can explain why I mixed genres rather than just writing suspense. What’s more, it can lay out […]
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Beware, genre cops! The Scandals Scandals mixes suspense, naturalism and satire
Does your stomach churn if a novel mixes genres? As the author of The Solomon Scandals, I cheerfully plead guilty. My book blends suspense, naturalism, and satire. The goal is to entertain but also explore the oft-bizarre realities of Washington as a white-collar factory town. Scandals is not a quick beach read. But I won’t […]
Read MoreSolomon Scandals Chatbot: Ask it anything
The ScandalsBot below can summarize The Solomon Scandals and compare its strengths and weaknesses to many classics such as The Great Gatsby or The Jungle. It can also opine on ethics questions and others in journalism, politics, business, healthcare, education, law, and other areas—and do plenty else. But it is an imperfect bot, nothing more. […]
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Solomon Scandals hardcover is now out
The November 2023 edition of The Solomon Scandals doesn’t just have an improved cover and a new essay on the difference between my fiction and the actual history inspiring the novel. This second edition also has a hardback version. Here is a detailed PDF of the dust jacket, designed by Nate Allison at Hidden Gems […]
Read MoreA Washington novel, yes–but the senator’s secret CIA-related investment really happened, and so did a deadly building collapse
Washington in the 1970s. Jon Stone is a Spinoza-inspired reporter with a rationalist’s need to see the world as it is, not as Washington’s elite would print it. Stone follows a trail of campaign donations, bribes, regulatory favors, and other fixes leading to Seymour Solomon — an ex-bricklayer with two fingertips missing. Now Solomon is […]
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‘Solomon Scandals’ book-signing Jan. 18
Decades before the ABC-TV series Scandal or House of Cards on Netflix, The Solomon Scandals existed in manuscript form—a quirky look at a darker side of D.C. that you can’t see on the screen right now or read about in the standard bestsellers. Scandals isn’t about a comely fixer in love with Mr. President, or […]
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‘Scandals’ paperback and e-book bundled for $16.95 at re∙reads
A new local bookstore and Twilight Times Books, publisher of The Solomon Scandals, are teaming up to offer the e-book version for free, in major digital formats, for customers who buy the paperback from the store (price: $16.95). The bundling deal will be limited to the first eight buyers. re∙reads Books is south of Alexandria, […]
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On Sally Quinn, money, power, bipartisanship and my inner Veblen
Sally Quinn-bashers have once again been at work—ridiculing an essay headlined Sally Quinn announces the end of power in Washington. Granted, Ms. Quinn has never delighted my inner Veblen. The essay among other things recalled the era when Quinn and her husband, Ben Bradlee, “might have attended five-course dinners a couple of nights a week, […]
Read MoreOnswipe for iPad pretties up WordPress: Some glitches
While this site exists partly to plug The Solomon Scandals novel about old-time newspapering, it’s also an experiment in online technology. iPad owners can see a snazzy magazine-style look from the Onswipe add-on for WordPress (described in detail in an independent blog post by my friend Nate Hoffelder). If you don’t own an iPad, click […]
Read MoreJFK’s murdered mistress: Insider’s book alleges CIA role
On CIA matters, The Solomon Scandals is fiction—not about what happened, but what could have happened. To this day we still don’t know the full story of why a U.S. senator held a secret stake in a CIA-occupied building in Arlington, VA, that the agency leased by way of the scandal-ridden General Services Administration. What has been established over the years is […]
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