Many if not most people have come across the rule of holes: When you’re in a deep hole, stop digging.

It seems obvious enough when you think about it. Don’t compound the problem by doing more of the same thing that got you in the hole.

Unfortunately, too many people, especially politicians, seem never to have heard the rule of holes or, if they have, they’ve forgotten it.

If government is running a deficit and the national debt is increasing at a dangerous rate, you’re not getting out of the mess by more deficit spending.

If you’re fighting a war that you can’t win without enormous losses, either in dollar terms or increasing casualties, you might want to try something different instead of pursuing more of the same.

If more and more students can’t read or effectively make simple calculations without electronic help, continuing to rely on teaching to standardized tests, inundating students with meaningless praise, watering down primary and secondary education, and judging educations’ success on how good students feel might not be the best approach to getting out of the educational hole.

If we’re seeing more and more corruption in government, business, and public life, re-electing and praising and supporting politicians and business people who’ve continually demonstrated a lack of honesty and little concern for public welfare isn’t exactly likely to improve the situation.

When AI-created algorithms are addicting more and more people to waste time buried in iphone and computer screens, what sort of sense does it make to pour billions into AI and associated data centers to enable even more electronic addictions and to increase the power drain on an already fragile electric grid?

But almost no one seems to want to stop digging.

Expectations play a huge role in everyone’s life, but more often than not, they’re seldom talked about directly. You perform well in a job, and there’s an expectation you’ll be noticed, possibly rewarded. If neither happens, you get dissatisfied.

Sometimes, expectations are unrealistic. Virtually all of the voice students taught by my wife enter the voice program expecting praise, even for average or sub-average performances. Those expectations come from their background in secondary school systems that toss out praise for almost anything. Those students expect praise. When they only get it for noted improvement or above average performances, many feel disappointed and cheated, and they often complain.

For decades, the most common pathway to a better life was a college degree or even a post-graduate degree, but millions of young Americans with recent degrees are having a hard time finding a job that will even cover their living expenses and student loan payments, and forget about buying a house. So that expectation has been thwarted for many and will doubtless have an ongoing political impact.

The costs of unfulfilled expectations are everywhere. Trump promised lower prices; they’re going higher, and the result is that Trump’s approval rating has dropped significantly. The tech barons promised prosperity through technology, but it appears to most people that the tech prosperity is limited to the barons, while the cost to their employees is more and more jobs lost to AI.

Likewise, readers have expectations about the books they buy, and they buy books based on those expectations. Some books fulfill a wide range of expectations, and those books are invariably best-sellers. In effect, book sales reflect reader satisfaction with the authors meeting or exceeding their expectations. The books that never get published or those that are self-published and do not sell are generally those that fail to meet the expectations of either editors or readers, if not both. At times, even best-selling authors can fail to meet expectations.

Some reasons for failure to meet expectations are obvious, if seldom discussed. There’s a reason why the majority of successful books are written in the past tense, and that’s because the past tense is the “default” tense in the English language, which makes it easier for most readers. Viewpoint makes a difference in expectations. Most readers prefer third person narratives. From my experience, some men have trouble getting into books with a female protagonist (and the sales numbers of even Recluce books with female leading characters are lower).

Some readers have firm expectations about plot structure and pacing, which is why I don’t appeal as much to readers who want action and more action. And, as I found out with The Green Progression, too much precise political reality contrary to popular beliefs definitely goes against the expectations of many readers.

All of these observations are scarcely new, and editors have known them for years, but I’ve never seen them discussed in terms of reader expectations

When Last of the First was released a week ago, I was pleased and elated. Only once before have I written four books with the same main character. [For those who don’t know or recall, I wrote five books in The Imager Portfolio about Quaeryt.] It’s work, if rewarding work, to spend all that time with one character, particularly in fitting that character into an existing history while making it interesting.

Then I began to get comments, and they were good comments, for the most part [no matter how hard authors work, there’s always something that falls short for some readers, usually, thankfully, a small percentage].

But I noticed something about many of those comments. Some readers wanted more about early Cyad and Cyador. Several asked for a book set in the Rational Stars. Another wanted more background on the book of poetry mentioned through several books. Another group wanted a book about Saryalth. Another wanted an entire novel about Kiedral, and another wanted a novel about Alyiakal after he becomes emperor.

Then I realized, even more than I had previously, that I’ve created enough intriguing characters that there’s no possible way that I can tell all the stories arising out of Alyiakal’s books, let alone do justice to the possible stories of other intriguing non-protagonists in other Recluce books.

All I can say is that I’ll continue to do the best that I can, for as long as I can, but remember, I’m not exactly a spring chicken, as the saying goes.

Over the past several days, I’ve received a few inquiries as to why some big box stores weren’t stocking Last of the First. I asked my editor whether she could shed any light on the matter. Her response dealt strictly with Barnes & Noble.

Elliot Investment Management bought first the British bookstore chain Waterstones and then later bought Barnes & Noble in 2019 at a time when B&N was suffering severe financial mismanagement. Both chains are now effectively run by James Daunt, who imposed new management practices on B&N in an effort to reduce the cash drain. While those efforts have apparently been successful, certain aspects have adversely affected authors who are not mega-best-sellers.

As it was explained to me, if an author’s previous book shows no sales at a store, then the next book is not ordered for that store, based on previous low demand. But, of course, if the previous book wasn’t ordered, how could there be sales?

One way around this is for readers to order or pre-order that book from that store. Merely asking the store to order it won’t suffice; there have to be physical sales.

Unfortunately, in this world where Amazon tends to dominate book sales, many readers who don’t see a book they want at their local B&N are more likely to order it from Amazon and get it at a lower price. But the only way to change a B&N store’s order pattern for a given author is to physically order his or her books from that store.

While some local managers can order books beyond those selected by the B&N algorithm, from what little I’ve seen local ordering initiative is often not done nearly so much as it was when I was actively touring. But then, the entire publishing industry has been transformed, especially over the last fifteen years.

Last Friday, the Texas State Board of Education approved the required reading of Biblical stories and Bible verses as part of the state’s K-12 English and literature curriculum. While the Biblical “literature” requirements do not take effect until 2030, part of the new requirement is that any literature selection on the required list must be “read in its entirety.”

This follows last year’s requirement for all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, a law recently upheld by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

While the U.S. Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” it’s pretty clear that the Texas State Board of Education has either not read the Constitution or believes that states can disregard its provisions.

According to the Pew Research Center, 67% of Texans identify as Christians; 6% identify as believers in other non-Christian faiths; and 26% are religiously unaffiliated, which means that more than a third of Texas students will be required to read religious tracts contrary to their beliefs.

Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned, but I don’t believe that freedom of religion includes using the government, either federal, state, or local, to require students to read religious texts of a specific faith “in their entirety.”

Those Texas “Christians” (and others) got rather violently opposed to even the thought of students studying other faiths, but they’re more than willing to force their beliefs on others?

But then, the “true believers” have always been willing to force their beliefs on others, or at the least, to look the other way when the zealots did the forcing.