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So you’ve written a short story…

So you’ve written a short story, and you’re wondering what to do with it. You think it’s pretty good and you want to see it published, but you’re wondering what’s the best way to do that.

I can’t guarantee that this is the best way, but it is the way that I do it. Let’s start with the basics.

Indie vs. Traditional

Traditionally, short stories were published in magazines, anthologies, or collections. These were known as the “markets.” The editor was the one who chose which stories would go in and shepherded them to publication. Because of the periodical nature of the markets, there were a lot more short story slots than openings at the big publishing houses for novels, and many editors considered it a way for new writers to cut their teeth and prove their chops. It was also a great way for writers to get feedback, on the rare occasion that an editor wrote a personalized rejection.

In the 90s and 00s, the short story markets entered a period of decline, mostly due to the technological disruption of this newfangled thing called teh internets. Subscription rates for all the major sci-fi magazines went down, just like they did for newspapers. However, several new markets emerged to take advantage of the new ways to reach readers. The same innovations that spurred the indie publishing revolution also gave birth to new short story markets.

Today, when you write a short story, the first question you’ve got to answer is “do I want to self-publish this, or should I submit it to the markets first?” If you’re a happily self-published indie writer like me, the urge will be to self-publish first and ask questions later.

But Wait!

The awesome thing about short stories is that you can get the best of both worlds. How? Because unlike the major publishing houses, the traditional short story markets don’t impose prohibitive measures designed to gobble up your rights and lock down your publishing options. Publishing the same story in multiple markets is not only possible, it’s encouraged.

To maximize your returns, you have to be patient and impervious to rejection. You also have to learn some key terms. But first, as with any job, you have to select the right tools.

Get Thee to the Grinder!

To start out, you’re going to have to need some way to track all of your story submissions. By far, the Submission Grinder is the best free tool on the internet to do that. It’s a massive database for every English-speaking short story market, with stats compiled from user data. Not only does it tell you where you can submit, it gives you all sorts of useful statistics about each market. Create a free account, log your story, and use the Grinder’s search tools to find out where you can submit it.

Because I’m paranoid and believe in redundancy, I also keep a spreadsheet with all of my story submissions. At this point, though, it’s largely a backup. There’s no one right way to keep track of your submissions, but you absolutely need a system to keep track of them, and the best one out there is the Grinder.

Pro vs. Semi-Pro vs. Token

To decide whether a market is worth submitting to, you first have to determine how professional that market is. The best way to do that is by looking at the pay rates.

In the old days, when SFWA was more than just a snobbish in-crowd full of petty drama, you could tell that a market was professional if it was on the qualifying list for SFWA membership. Today, though, any market is considered professional if it pays at least 6¢ per word.

If a market pays between 1¢ and 6¢ per word, it is considered semi-pro.

If it pays less than 1¢ per word, it is considered a token-paying market.

Original vs. Reprint

Some markets want to be the first place where a story appears. If it’s already published elsewhere, they won’t touch it. Other markets don’t really care, though they may pay less for reprints.

The thing to look for here is “original fiction” or “first publication rights.” If a market’s submission guidelines specify either of those, then they won’t take your story if it’s self-published. Obviously, if you want your story to appear there, you can’t self-publish it first.

Most of the markets that accept reprints don’t mind if your story is already self-published. A couple of them do, which is super annoying, but whatever. As always, read the submission guidelines carefully before you submit.

In general, the more a market pays, the less it’s willing to accept reprints. Adjust your publishing strategy accordingly.

Multiple and Simultaneous Submissions

If the first thing you do after finishing a short story is submit it to every market that might possibly accept it, you’re liable to get yourself blacklisted and make a lot of editors angry. There is etiquette and protocol to the traditional publishing game, and if you want to succeed by going that route, you’re going to have to learn it.

A simultaneous submission is when you submit the same story to more than one market simultaneously.

A multiple submission is when you submit another story to the same market where you already have a story in consideration.

Most editors hate multiple and simultaneous submissions. If they like your story and want to buy it, the last thing they want is to find out that another editor beat them to the punch. Likewise, if they’re swamped with submissions (as they usually are), the last thing they want is more stories from someone who’s already submitted something to them.

For that reason, assume that a market does not accept multiple or simultaneous submissions, unless their guidelines say otherwise.

Of course, what’s bad for the editor isn’t necessarily bad for the writer. You can greatly speed up the submissions process by submitting to all the simultaneous-friendly markets at once, or by not having to wait for a response before submitting to a market again. The faster you can get through the submission process, the sooner it makes sense to self-publish.

With That Out of the Way…

Before you decide which publishing path to take, you first have to determine your publishing goals. Are you trying to make money, to build an audience, or both? Can you afford to be patient, or is time not on your side for whatever reason? Once you’ve determined what you personally want to accomplish, you’re able to make the important decisions that will take you there.

As a professional writer, it’s important for me to maximize profits. Also, I’ve found that I can do more to build an audience by self-publishing than by going through the traditional markets. That said, the prestige of publication in a pro market is still important in my field, so I find it worthwhile to submit original fiction to the pro markets before self-publishing.

Here are my criteria for submitting original fiction:

  • Will I make at least $100 from this story sale? ($20 for flash)
  • Is the average wait time for this market more than 60 days?

In a world where I can self-publish my stories and sell them directly, or give them away as freebies to build a readership for my other books, the traditional submission process costs both time and money. Also, if a market has eggregiously long wait times, that’s usually a red flag. Publish with them at your own risk.

However, for reprints I will submit my stories just about anywhere. They cost neither time nor money, because they don’t care if you self-publish first; all they want is non-exclusive publication rights. They don’t typically pay as well, but who cares? It’s free money, and the extra exposure isn’t going to cost you anything.

When making simultaneous submissions, I generally do it by tiers. If the story is at a pro market that accepts simultaneous submissions, I will only submit it to other pro markets. Likewise, if a story is at a semi-pro market, I will only simul-submit to other semi-pros. This is the best way to maximize your potential returns for original fiction.

In practice, though, since most simultaneus markets don’t pay more than $100, I usually end up submitting to them after I’ve already self-published. At that point, it doesn’t really matter where I submit, since a sale to a token market isn’t going to keep a semi-pro market from buying it too.

So in short, here’s my process:

  1. Submit to all the markets that will pay at least $100 and respond in a reasonable manner (usually takes 1-2 years).
  2. Self-publish.
  3. Submit everywhere that accepts reprints and pays at least token rates.

A Word About Royalty-Share

In today’s rapidly changing publishing environment, a few markets are experimenting with non-traditional forms of payment. Royalty share is one of those. Instead of paying up front by the word, these markets pay you a share of the profits after the work is published.

In general, this is what I think of that:

Unless the royalty share arrangements are made against some sort of an advance, the publisher is basically asking you to take the risk for their venture. For original fiction, I’m generally not open to that, especially for markets with long exclusivity periods after publication. Tried that once, got burned, learned my lesson.

However, once I’ve self-published, the reprint rights are basically free money anyway, so I’m happy to give it a shot. Worst case scenario, I neither lose nor gain anything. And there are some places like Digital Fiction that are doing some really interesting things with non-traditional payment methods. I just signed a contract with them this week.

So yeah, that’s my process. The money in short fiction isn’t all that great, but if you’re systematic, organized, and prolific, you can make a decent profit at it. It’s one of the few areas of publishing where it still makes sense to go traditional, but you’ve got to know when to pull out and go indie. If you can afford to wait, it makes sense to run down all the pro and semi-pro markets with your original fiction. Otherwise, you have to figure out the cutoff point where it no longer makes sense to hold out.

Good luck and happy publishing!

Happy Thanksgiving!

In a narcissistic, consumption-driven world where social media preening is ubiquitous, it is remarkable that we as a nation still take a day off to spend time with family, enjoy a hearty meal together, and reflect on the meaning of gratitude. Thanksgiving is a holiday that encourages us to think of others more than ourselves, and for that reason alone, it needs to be practiced and preserved.

I am thankful for many things this year.

First, I am thankful that I live in a free and prosperous country, one that still shines as a beacon of hope to the rest of humanity. Could it be more free? Yes. Could it be more prosperous? Certainly. Is the beacon of hope fading? If it is, then we owe it to ourselves and our future posterity to work diligently to keep it burning.

I am more thankful than I can express to my pioneer ancestors: the ones who made the trek to Utah, the ones who came from Czechy to Texas, the ones who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the ones who settled the Old Southwest and the ones who fought in the Civil War and afterward settled in Southern Illinois. The more I research my family history, the more I’ve come to realize that there are pioneers on every branch of my family tree, and that I enjoy the privileges that I do because of the many sacrifices that they made.

I am thankful to the men and women of the armed services who protect this country from the forces seeking to destroy it, not just those who are living today, but those of previous generations who gave their lives in service to their country. Because of them, we won our independence from the colonial forces of Europe, we preserved our Constitution in the face of a bloody civil war, and we quite literally saved the world from the twin evils of Fascism and Communism. There is evil in the world today that cannot be appeased, cannot be ignored, and cannot be defeated by words alone. I am thankful for the brave men and women who put their lives on the line every day to defeat it.

I am thankful for a loving family, for parents who made the commitment of marriage and still honor their vows to each other. I am thankful for my three sisters who still stay in touch with me and are an important part of my life. I’m thankful for nieces and nephews, for cousins and extended family, and for the many strong connections that still bind us together.

Lastly, I’m thankful for the opportunity to pursue a career as a writer. It’s not every person who gets to do this. Until just recently, there were very few opportunities to get published, and even fewer authors who could leverage publication into a full-time career. Even today, the path isn’t easy, so I am grateful to those readers who support me and make this possible.

Thank you!

November’s book recommendations

So I thought it would be fun to start posting some monthly book recommendations on my blog, both of books I personally have enjoyed, and books like mine that I think my readers will enjoy. I’ve seen a lot of other authors do it, and it seems like a good way to pay it forward and invite good karma (and on a purely capitalist note, it also seems like a great way to bring in some affiliate income and spread my books around in the Amazon also-boughts).

For this month, I’ve chosen a novel, a novella, and a short story, all $.99 on Amazon (some of them are $2.99 on iBooks and Kobo). Two of the authors are personal friends of mine (Kindal Debenham and Annaliese Lemmon—we were both in the same college writing group), but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their books and have no qualms recommending them.

We’ll start with Wolfhound by Kindal Debanham. This is a rip-roaring space adventure, and the first part of a trilogy that I highly recommend. Starship pilots from the frontier regions of space, fighting to defend their beloved home from pirates and invasion. This is exactly the kind of book I used to scour the local library for as a kid.

Nothing Found

I first discovered Date Night on Union Station from the Amazon also-boughts of my own Star Wanderers books, and it did not disappoint. Clean sci-fi romance with a generous helping of comedy. I haven’t read all the other books in the series yet, but I definitely plan to.

Nothing Found

Infant Insomnia is a bit of a departure from the kind of science fiction I usually write, but if you enjoyed Outworlder and Starchild I think you’ll like this one too. Short and tender, the story of a magical seer trying desperately to save her newborn child from the imminent death she sees in every possible branch of her child’s future.

Nothing Found

Thanks for reading!

Dear #ImWithHer and #NotMyPresident

I know we disagree on a lot of things. We live in troubled times, and many of you are scared for the future. I can see it in your eyes. I can hear it in your voices.

There’s a very real temptation now to glory in victory, or to swear vengeance and foment revolution. But that only perpetuates a cycle of hatred. The people who opposed President Bush were not all unpatriotic. The people who opposed President Obama were not all racists.

And so, I offer you this. I mean it sincerely.

Post-Election Predictions

The Good:

James Comey will resign.

Obamacare will collapse and be repealed within the year. We will not move to a single-payer healthcare system. There will be chaos in the short-term, but healthcare costs will go down for most people.

Black Lives Matter, which was always a front for the nationalization of the police, will drift into irrelevance.

Washington will stop backing the so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria, and the proxy war will come to an end. ISIS will be swiftly defeated.

President Trump will appoint a special investigator to the Clinton scandals, and HRC will ultimately face justice.

Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court will be another originalist.

The Bad:

Within three months, we will learn that the United States is officially in a recession. When President Trump takes office in January, we will learn that the economic numbers are far worse than the Obama administration led us to believe.

Not all of President Trump’s protectionist policies will be enacted, but enough of them will pass to depress global trade even more than it has already been depressed. This will be compared to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, and Trump will be blamed for the subsequent collapse.

Unfortunately, the global collapse is unavoidable at this point. It is rooted in our flawed post-Nixon Bretton Woods monetary system, which is already coming apart. However, the Left will use the crisis as an opportunity to pin the blame on Trump, and the Republicans will pay a bitter price politically.

Riding the coattails of Trump’s movement, radical nationalist parties will sweep Europe in the 2017 and 2018 elections. This will lay the groundwork for war.

The Ugly:

Obama will try to pardon Hillary Clinton or otherwise grant her immunity, but will fail. She may attempt to flee the country.

The Clinton scandals will drag on for several years, ultimately surpassing Watergate in sheer breadth and scope. Democrats will circle the wagons for a while, but the insiders and moneyed interests will abandon her, and she will ultimately fall. This will do nothing to unite the country.

With Clinton gone, the civil war within the Republican Party will resume, and expand to include Independents and even some Democrats. There will be a massive political realignment, and individual fortunes will dramatically rise and fall. The current two-party system will pass through it intact, but the parties that emerge on the other end will have little resemblance to what they were only a decade ago.

In the next six months, DeutscheBank will fail and Germany will fall into a recession. Germany will bail them out, but this will sound the death knell for the European Union. There is a very good chance that the EU will collapse before the Brexit negotiations are complete.

The US economy will temporarily rebound as the rest of the world collapses faster than us, sending capital to our shores. However, neither Trump nor the Fed will correctly interpret the indicators, and will not prepare us for the coming storm.

Within 5-10 years, the dollar will collapse and the United States will default on its debt. This may or may not happen on President Trump’s watch, but he will fail to adequately prepare us for it. The middle class will be utterly gutted, paving the way for the resurgence of the radical Left in 2020 and 2024. They are already sharpening their swords for that day.

TL;DR

We have about 1-2 months of schadenfreude/mourning (depending on which side of the aisle you fall), followed by two years of breathtaking political upheaval. After falling briefly into a recession, the economy will temporarily rebound before SHTF in a way that makes the Great Recession look like a walk in the park.

In other words, the election just gave us four more years to buy guns, gold, and food storage. Never say I’m not an optimist.

Shifting Strategies

A couple of weeks ago, Kobo came out with some new terms and conditions for their Kobo Writing Life program. Under the new terms, the list price for a book (not the sales price) cannot be higher than it is elsewhere.

This throws a kink in the works, since the only way I’ve ever gotten traction on Kobo is by taking advantage of their promotions, like the half off box set sales or the 30% off monthly sales. The problem, of course, is that Amazon has the same clause in their TOS, and if you undercut the Amazon price they will 1) match the lower price, and 2) send you a nastygram threatening to close your account if you don’t change your prices to comply.

(This is also the reason why my books are not on Google Play Books. Google will arbitrarily drop the prices of your books, sometimes setting the price to free without any prior warning, leading to a loss of income on Amazon when they price match your books.)

Until now, the way I’ve gotten around that is by pricing my books a little higher on Kobo so that I can drop the price for the promotional sales. But it does feel a little weird to have the same product at a different price on different sites. If I were a Kobo reader, that would turn me off (hence the change in their TOS).

At the same time, it’s come to my attention that unless your book has an ISBN, Kobo will not distribute your books to the many local ebookstores that they partner with. You can still publish on Kobo, but your books won’t go any further.

In the United States, ISBNs are insanely expensive. If you buy them one at a time, it costs $125 for each one. You can get them as low as $1.50 each, but you have to buy 1,000 at a time.

Until now, I haven’t really bothered with ISBNs. Most ebook publishing platforms don’t require them, and for those that do, you can publish through a distributor like Draft2Digital who will assign you an ISBN for free. The catch is that the publisher on record for the free ISBN will be D2D, but that doesn’t impact your publishing rights at all.

(Print also requires ISBN, but CreateSpace also gives you an option for a free CreateSpace-assigned ISBN, which is what I’ve been doing for print.)

In short, by publishing my books directly to Kobo without providing my own ISBNs, my reach is greatly limited. I can publish to Kobo via D2D and get the extra reach, but then I’ll lose access to the promotions tab, which is pretty much the only way to get my books in front of Kobo readers. But that doesn’t matter anyway, since I can’t price my books on Kobo higher than they are on Amazon, and if I drop the price on Kobo for a sale, Amazon will start sending nastygrams.

So here’s my new strategy:

  1. I’m going to pull all of my books out of Kobo Writing Life and go through Draft2Digital instead. There really is no advantage to staying all-in with KWL anymore, and the added benefit of the D2D ISBNs is enough to convince me to go through them.
  2. At the same time, I’m going to create some Kobo-exclusive bundles to take advantage of the KWL promotions tab. If the bundle doesn’t appear on Amazon, then it doesn’t matter how I price it on Kobo because there’s nothing for Amazon to match. At the same time, the contents of the bundle are still available as individual books, so my Amazon readers lose nothing.
  3. For my single-title books, the price on Kobo will be the same as the price on Amazon. For the Kobo-exclusive bundles, the list price will be higher, but they’ll also be on sale more often which should bring more attention to my single-title books.

The biggest downside I can see is that my Kobo royalties will be split between D2D and KWL. To offset this, I’ll have to publish a variety of Kobo-exclusive bundles. Here are some of the ones I have in mind:

  • Bringing Stella Home and Heart of the Nebula, in one double-novel.
  • Desert Stars and Stars of Blood and Glory, in one double-novel.
  • The complete Star Wanderers series, with Brothers in Exile.
  • A first-in-series bundle, with Outworlder, Brothers in Exile, and Bringing Stella Home.
  • The first Sons of the Starfarers omnibus (I-III). This means I will take it down from Amazon.

So that’s the plan. I probably won’t announce these new bundles to my email list, since most of my subscribers are Kindle readers and I don’t want to be too spammy. But I will announce them here.

If it seems like I’ve fallen off the face of the Earth…

…it’s because I sort of have.

First, I went to Iowa to visit family for my birthday. Was gone for an extended weekend, and understandably, updating the blog was not a high priority. But I figured I’d get back into the swing of things once I got back.

Then I took a job that sucked up almost all of my time, making it difficult to write, much less post an update. Perhaps if I had something of a routine before, it would have been easier to manage my time and fit blogging into it. But since the job was only for a week, I figured I’d just soldier through and get back into blogging after it was done.

Then yesterday, I had toe surgery. And a motorcycle accident.

Since I don’t have health insurance (thanks Obama!), getting back onto my feet is going to be tricky. Fortunately, I’ve got enough saved up in the emergency fund to handle both. The toe is healing fine; it’s the shoulder that’s giving me grief. I think I reopened an old injury that never healed properly, which may be good in the long run but really really sucks in the short term.

Point is, I’m all right, but it’s going to take some time before I get back into writing and blogging regularly. Hopefully not too long, but right now, I’m just focused on recovery.

I’ll leave you with the trailer for The Man in the High  Castle, which I’ve been watching as I recover. It’s a fantastic show—I highly recommend it.

The book is blue, the church is true, and God is a Libertarian.

A few years back, I read some advice on a writing blog that said you should never, ever, ever blog publicly about religion or politics, because that would alienate your potential readership. Well, it’s an election year and I’ve already blogged quite a bit about politics, so I might as well go all the way and throw some religion in there too.

I am a devout Mormon. That means that I attend three hours of church on Sunday, strive to make personal prayer and scriptures study a part of my daily routine, hold a priesthood, and worship at an LDS temple as often as I can (about every week or so). It also means that I don’t smoke, do drugs, or drink alcohol, coffee, or tea, and that I practice strict abstinence before marriage and fidelity within. Without getting too deeply into the doctrine, faith in Jesus Christ is at the center of everything I believe and practice.

So why would I say that God is a Libertarian? Aren’t the Libertarians those crazy political fringe guys who like to smoke weed and get the government out of everything? What does a straight-laced Mormon have in common with any of them?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Libertarians basically believe that individuals should be free to govern themselves with as little interference from the government as possible. All of the different schools of libertarian thought basically revolve around the proper role of government in society and where the line should be drawn, but they all agree that the power of the State should be minimal.

Because actions have consequences, however, the only way we can all be free is for everyone to be responsible for their own actions. For example, if a worker does a poor job, his boss should be free to fire him. If he refuses to work at all, he shouldn’t get a welfare check, because that’s forcing other people to support his lifestyle. If a woman decides to be promiscuous, she should pay for her own birth control, because the only other alternative is to force other people to pay for it, infringing on their freedom.

This is why the flipside of the coin of Liberty is Responsibility. If Liberty is the freedom to act without being acted upon, then Responsibility (or the ability to respond) is an essential part of that.

One of the ways that governments take away our liberty is by enticing us to give up individual responsibility for our own life decisions. Gun control? Don’t take responsibility for your own self-defense, just trust the government to take care of it. Mass surveillance? You’re innocent and don’t have anything to hide, so just let those government agencies police themselves. Socialized health care? No matter your lifestyle decisions, health care is a right (never mind that everyone else is going to have to pay for it)!

The LDS church is very opposed to all of this. It teaches that we should all strive to be self-sufficient, or in other words, responsible for ourselves. We believe in charitable giving, but not in the form of handouts. The church welfare system revolves entirely around teaching people how to provide for themselves and, through one-on-one help, bringing them to a point where they can accomplish that.

But the Mormon-Libertarian connection is more than just a practical one: it’s a doctrinal one as well.

According to LDS theology, God is our Father in Heaven, literally. If you call up the Mormon missionaries and start taking the lessons, one of the first things they will teach you is that every human being is a child of God—that God is the father of our spirits, and that therefore we are all spiritually brothers and sisters.

Before we were born, we lived as spirits in the presence of God. As His sons and daughters, He wanted us to grow up to become like Him and inherit everything that He has. But there was a problem. Evil cannot exist in the presence of God, and without experiencing evil, we could never understand or know how to choose the good.

So God proposed a plan. He would create a place called Earth, where we could experience good and evil and learn how to choose between the two. He would make us forget everything from our life in his presence, so we would have to walk by faith. That way, when we did choose good, it would all be on us. We would learn through our own experience.

Inevitably, though, we would make evil choices that would make it impossible for us to return and live with Him. But God promised He would send us a Savior, who would pay the price for our sins and cleanse us of them. This Savior was our elder brother, Jesus Christ. All we had to do was accept His gospel and follow His teachings.

Most of us rejoiced at this plan. It gave all of us an equal chance to learn and grow and become like our Heavenly Father.

But equality of opportunity is not the same thing as equality of outcome. When our brother Lucifer looked at the plan, he saw that those who rejected Jesus Christ would be damned, or unable to return to the presence of Heavenly Father.

So he proposed a different plan: that God would make him the Savior instead, and that he would save everyone. In order to do that, though, he would have to take away our ability to choose between good and evil. Instead, he would make all the choices for us, and we would never be able to learn from our own experience. He would take all the glory.

God rejected Lucifer’s proposal, because He knew that without the freedom to choose between good and evil, we would never be able to learn and grow and become like Him. So Lucifer rebelled against God, and decided that if he couldn’t have the glory, then no one could. He convinced a third of our brothers and sisters to reject Jesus Christ and follow him instead. That is how Lucifer fell and became Satan.

According to Mormon theology, Satan’s downfall was that he tried to create a perfect world by destroying individual liberty. Sound familiar? It should, because the war in heaven never actually ended. When Satan was cast out of heaven, he took his followers down here to Earth. Each one of us faces that war every day.

Satan doesn’t just want to spread evil all over the world. Evil, by itself, does not defeat God’s plan. No matter how horrible our suffering may be in this life, it will all eventually come to an end, and turn to our glory if we are faithful. Satan knows that the way to destroy God’s plan is to destroy our Liberty, and he seeks relentlessly to do just that.

This is why I believe that God is a Libertarian. He wants us to have the freedom to govern ourselves, because that is principle at the very core of His plan—the Plan of Salvation. He wants us to stand fast in that Liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

So does that mean that President Jesus would legalize marijuana? Yes, I think he would. Remember, Jesus spent a lot of time among publicans and sinners. He didn’t condone their stupid decisions, but he didn’t condemn them to prison either. Why should we?

Would President Jesus legalize the death penalty? The man who said “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”? No—not because capital punishment is morally wrong, but because the State shouldn’t have the power to exercise it. After all, just look at the corruption of the Sanhedrin.

Would President Jesus legalize abortion? Here, I’m going to depart from mainstream Libertarianism and argue that He wouldn’t, except in cases that threaten the health (including mental health) of the mother. By legalizing abortion, we have effectively granted the State to arbitrarily define what is and is not human life. Jesus had a profound respect for human life, suffering even the little children to come to him. I cannot believe that this same Jesus would grant the State that power.

(That said, there are cases where the taking of human life is morally justified. That’s why I believe a President Jesus would make exceptions for cases threatening the health (including mental health) of the mother. But for people who use abortion as a birth control method, who think they should have the right just because they made a bad decision and forgot to wear a condom? No.)

What about taxes? If the man who admonished us to render unto Caesar Himself became Caesar, would He raise our taxes? Remember, this is also the man who said that His yoke was easy, and His burden light. Would He want any of us to be yoked to the State? Even the wealthiest one-percent? I don’t think He would.

Would President Jesus build a wall and make Mexico pay for it? Well, apparently even Trump isn’t going to do that anymore, so enough said.

But you get the picture. If Jesus Christ reigned in power and glory on this Earth (and as a Mormon, I believe that He will someday), His government would look a hell of a lot more libertarian than the government we have today. In fact, it might even be so libertarian that people wonder if His government even exists, leaving room for the unbelievers well into the Millennium (and that, too, agrees with Mormon theology).

So there you have it. The book is blue, the church is true, and God is a Libertarian (just don’t go one-star all my books, please).