A Political landscape riddled with blood and body parts....

So, the election is done, the campaigning is over, yes, life will move forward, although a lot of people don't think so. For some reason, I just get sucked up into the whirling vortex that is the political season, and thank God, it only comes every four years.

• Authors of the world seem incredibly political, here we have Jane Smiley's rant


• And who some illustrious novelists of the U.S. are voting for


• Galley-cat's take on whether the election will change literary culture

As you can see by the above, we are all doomed to Armageddon, or the world falling off a cliff, whichever comes first, perhaps a tsunami flooding the fly-over regions.

My first fiction prediction for 2006. From the 99.997% fictional left: A multitude of tomes focusing on presidential assassinations, a testosterone-driven president having to deal with his inner-pink, or a terrorist enclave from Cuba coming in surreptitiously and nuking the U.S. with bombs smuggled while the U.S. was occupied elsewhere. From the .003% fictional right: a Monty Python fist coming down on the blue states and wiping them off the planet.