Time to Grow Something

In response to rising gasoline prices, many Americans have chosen to spend more time at home. In addition to slightly reducing demand for gasoline, it presents an opportunity for that “quality time” so many wealth-seeking experts told us in the last decade would fix our family woes. But other things are keeping us at home too.

Grocery bills are rising, but so are restaurant prices. Food costs are helping Americans to decide to eat at home a little more. Some folks say that might be good for our waistlines, but that’s more of a stupid comment than a solution-oriented discussion.

We’re in trouble.

As oil prices sky-rocket, it is producing a cascading effect into everything else we buy.

Petroleum price increases the costs for transportation, packaging, and processing every consumer good we use–including food. Global food prices are just starting to show the systemic influence of high oil prices. This will affect all the nations.

Even in times of feast for Americans, food shortages are all over the world. Americans have a long history of trying to feed the world out of our charity-mindedness. However as Americans feel the crunch of oil and food based inflation, the shortages around the world will increase. When the crunch hits America hard enough, our charitable givings will slow and maybe decrease, who knows–maybe even stop.

People will starve.

Before they starve, they will seek food using all means available to them. They will riot, loot, kill and even form organized raids into other communities. Some nations will go to war. For food. Then the people will suffer from starvation and war.

America will feel an obligation to do something about the wars. It will take a while before we learn to just watch the other folks around the world kill themselves while we try to balance our budget. Thankfully, we’re not at that point yet.

Some have argued that the solution to the food problem is just to grow more food. Sounds simple enough, but that takes energy. Increased energy demands will drive the price of oil higher, making everything, including food, cost more. We really can’t fix this problem until we fix the energy problem.

Interestingly, one solution is to use a portion of our food supply to make biofuels. Using grain that would normally feed cattle to stretch petroleum reserves causes the price of grain and then of beef to rise. At the same time, transportation and processing costs increase because the cost of oil continues to climb.

Billions or maybe even trillions of barrels of oil lay under a frozen north, hidden in shale, or off the coast of the United States. The American government has rules and laws in place that prevent the harvesting of those energy resources. Well, at least it prevents US oil companies from drilling there. The 36 Cuban oil wells operated by Chinese oil companies as close as 50 miles off the coast of Florida will not extract oil fast enough to stop the starvations that will probably happen within the next few years.

All this sounds a little like a well-meaning man trying to survive the winter in a forest. He doesn’t want to hurt the trees because his teacher told him in the third-grade that trees are people too. So he burns his coat to stay warm for a while. Eventually he faces the winter cold without a coat or a fire. He is then faced with the choice of freezing or growing a brain.

We need to grow a brain.

It just makes sense.

13 Responses to “Time to Grow Something”

  1. Anonymous says:

    I really liked this book can’t wait for the next in the series to come out, read it on kindle

  2. Anonymous says:

    You’ll find all of these in the book of Genesis, and C.D. Sutherland effectively speculates about this forgotten and neglected era in The Dragoneers. Sutherland’s captivating take on the Antediluvian age envisions sources of power and methods of war that excite the reader’s imagination and thought process in this fast-paced action thriller.

    Using the first chapters of Genesis as a backdrop, C.D. Sutherland imagines a vibrant post-Eden environment full of colorful characters intertwined with one of Noah’s offspring. Susah is a divinely gifted and supremely blessed daughter of the ark-builder–and of course sister of Shem, Ham and Japheth. After some unfortunate encounters with the kinds of wickedness alluded to in the book of Genesis, Susah finds herself taken with the dream of flight as a Dragoneer. Sutherland’s legend uses well-developed theory and science which explores this and other unrecorded possibilities of the age.

    It is Susah’s journey through military schooling, her innocent yet discerning approach to all situations, and her curious intellect about the world that cause the reader to cheer her through challenges as daunting as any men of that time ever faced. She is the consummate heroine: small in stature yet mighty in youthful courage, not perfect yet obedient and respectful, full of the kind of spunk required to succeed as a Dragoneer. She explores a world oddly parallel to the early 21st Century, struggling with a worldview which was presumably only developing in that era–and missing access to the Truth.

    This book is as diversely appealing as any could be. Children and animal lovers will adore the teenager Susah. Science fiction readers will find Sutherland’s account of life on Earth and the application of available technology particularly unique. Military folks will give a nod to the description of combat training. And if you’ve ever imagined what events could lead the Creator to flood the Earth, this account will occupy your curiosity and satisfy your wonderment until that day when we all find out!

  3. Anonymous says:

    I’m not much of a fantasy book reader but after the first few pages of this one I couldent take my eyes away. I thought all the characters were a story all their own nevermind the book. The plot was slowly developed with care and timing, the end making me want more. I cant wait for sequals.

  4. Anonymous says:

    This is a very unusual story told from an interesting perspective set in a time and place that has rarely been mentioned in this present era. Biblical scholars and science fiction lovers alike will embrace the characters and their circumstances. It is a mystical yet solid study in what could have been or what shall be in the time of man.

    Read the first of the series, The Dragoneers, before you take on this book. And don’t bypass the author information page. It will give you insight to the idea of Susah and her story.

  5. Anonymous says:

    The Bible doesn’t tell us much about the centuries that span from Adam to Noah. Adam’s surviving sons, Seth and Cain, go their separate ways and then, in the words of Spencer Tracy’s character in Inherit the Wind, the book “goes into a lot of `begats.’ `And Aphraxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber’ and so on.” Lamech begets Noah, but before we get to the ark and the Flood, we’re told (Genesis 6.4):

    “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God come in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

    It’s an intriguing passage, but sadly lacking in detail. Recently, author C.D. Sutherland has stepped in to fill the gaps. The Chronicles of Susah transports us to a world with all the elements of other magical lands like Oz or the Harry Potter universe: a gifted protagonist, a dangerous journey, a wise old mentor, and of course, giants in the earth.

    The Lost Dragoneer is the second and most recent installment in the series. Susah, the daughter of Noah, has little interest in her father’s insane boat building project. She has left home and put her ability to control animals with her mind in the service of the Dragoneer Corps, a sort of dragon-powered air force for the nation of Sethica. As The Lost Dragoneer opens, the Sethicans have just won an epic battle against an army of ogres. It is a bittersweet victory for Susah, however. Most of the dragons are dead or dying and Susah must rebuild the corps. Locating and taming wild dragons is the easy part, though. Susah must also confront vicious ogres, bloodsucking trolls, temptation by Satan, and her own vanity.

    Politically, Susah’s world has much that is familiar. The story takes place in a time of transition. The old system of tribal government has given way to a Council of Elders, which spends most of its time taxing and regulating – and undermining the military. Much of what we learn about the political situation comes from the hotel owner Keenan. When Susah tells him how lovely his hotel is, he replies proudly, in a pointed reference to President Obama, “I built it.”

    But it’s the way Sutherland intertwines his tale with the Bible that is the unique feature of The Lost Dragoneer. “I began with the Scriptures,” he explained to me. “Anything in black in white must remain and is off-limits to alterations in my story telling. Using that approach, everything between those gaps are gray-areas and by definition free-game for my extreme fiction. After some of my fans started calling my first book Antediluvian Steampunk, I agreed the term is more descriptive than just `Religious Sci/Fi Fantasy’”

    Sutherland says that some religious traditionalists have chafed at the technology that he injects into Biblical times: there are blasters as well as swords, skyscrapers as well as castles. Nevertheless, I think most Jews and Christians will appreciate the familiar people and places from the core of their faith. Everyone, even jaded atheists such as myself, will appreciate the captivating story.

    Based on some internal chronology, I reckon that The Lost Dragoneer takes place 80 years before the rains start to fall and the animals come on by twosies-twosies. That affords ample opportunities for sequels: I look forward to many more installments in The Chronicles of Susah.

  6. An exciting debut novel by C. D. Sutherland has arrived at Amazon.com Kindle and on facebook. The publisher is Narrow Way PressThis novel has placed as a finalist for three years in the Amazon Break Though Novel Award contest. The author took a year off from contests while improving the story. Improve it has. It’s gone from pretty good to very good and now–great.

    While the plot has remained basically the same, the character development has improved to as good as anything out there. Rumors are the author received some instruction from Donald Maass during a writers conference in Colorado. While C.D. Sutherland did not mention him in his acknowledgements, Donald Maass is the head of Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York, selling more than 150 novels every year to major publishers in the U.S. and overseas. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004) and The Fire in Fiction (2009).

    So what is the novel all about?

    THE DRAGONEERS is a coming of age story about Susah, a talented young woman, who refuses to join her three brothers in helping her father advance the family business. She wants to do something exciting with her life. While this story could have been set in any time, the fantastical world she lives in amplifies each step nearly beyond the bounds of imagination.

    Against her parents’ wishes, Susah leaves home on a quest to become one of the dragoneers—an elite fraternity of warriors sworn to defend the ancient garden of Eden against all trespassers.

    Meanwhile, deep in a lair inside of Sethopolis’ roughest neighborhood, an evil giantess dreams of seizing the secrets of immortality and other powers, which she believes are hidden within the walls of the forbidden garden. Realizing she can’t achieve her dream with her own resources, she joins forces with a fallen angel, nearly as old as time itself.

    Seemingly unaware of the dangers awaiting her, Susah faces the greatest of all challenges. With the fate of the human race depending on their performance, will the dragoneers succeed in defending the garden of Eden against the forces of evil? And even if they succeed, will Susah survive the pivotal battle of good verses evil?

    This adventure builds on the little we know about the antediluvian world and overlays it with a blend of technology, supernatural powers, fire-and-ice-breathing, flying dragons, giants, and martial arts to begin Susah’s adventure to discover herself. Climb aboard and hang on for the ride of your life.

    This 100,000 word, Genesis-based epic fantasy will attract those interested in speculative fiction, especially about the antediluvian world, and will also appeal to readers of contemporary fantasy as well as military fiction.

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