This poor guy--Patrick McLaw, a middle school teacher--wrote a story set in the future about a school shooting. The opening reads like a classic detective scenario, and the detective is mourning the losses. It is not glorifying. The school not only took McLaw's job, but also banned him from setting foot in any public school and sent him to a mental institution. The book is fictional. Did anyone actually read his book first?*He does need an editor. Adjectives, adverbs, and Latinate words abound. If he had had a good editor, the negative attention might have brought in a horde of readers.
I do wonder if he wanted some sort of attention. His pen name, Dr. K. S. Voltaer [Que es Voltaire? or what is Voltaire] alludes to Voltaire, who caused not a little scandal with his books. Candide questioned the common assumption of the day that everything happens for the best--prevalent despite the book of Job that explicitly states otherwise (some still hold this view). In the book, Candide, terrible things happen by chance, yet everyone persists in the folly of this perspective.
I hope people help this man stand back on his feet. And get him an editor.
* Granted, I have not either except the openings of his two novels, but from the sample, they seem a serious effort at fiction, not at glorifying destruction. Plus, he's written two books, which shows dedication to the craft at the least.
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