Burger Belles-Lettres

McDonald's Restaurants is one of the few real-life businesses I mention in my novels and I give them lip service only to add realism to my stories, not as an endorsement.

Back in 1983 or 1984 — I can't remember the exact year — I wrote a letter to McDonald's Corporation defending their business practices against a public onslaught that, in my opinion, was spearheaded by a handful of opportunistic, avaricious people with lawyers on retainer and competitors trying to hone their own competitive edge by slinging mud. As if that ever works.

Anyway, I felt that the very heart of the American entrepreneurial spirit was under attack. In the subsequent letter I wrote to McDonald's Corporate Office I told them that "McDonald's was as much an American Institution as Sears & Roebuck" and I meant every word of it.

Well, later that year, McDonald's ran a TV commercial featuring veteran actor John Houseman telling the public that McDonald's may very well be "an American Institution". I was flattered but also a little put off by the fact that McDonald's never gave me credit for saying that first. What they did give me were two fifty-cent coupons toward their sandwiches.

I still eat at McDonald's every now and then but I don't write letters of support or praise to any American businesses anymore. If I like what they sell, I just buy their products like everyone else.

Pearl Harbor Day Milestone

Today, December 7th 2005, I finished my fifth novel, Deeds of Destiny, a story about the myth of free will and the reality of cosmically-orchestrated life events. This book is dedicated to my father, John Ed Casher, who died in 1995.

Ghost of a Chance

I used to wonder what would have happened if I had not turned down the job offer from Time Magazine in 1978. It wasn't much off an offer, just being a stringer. A stringer is a writer who does on-call reporting without his or her name appearing on the story. It's the proverbial "foot in the door" and who knows what might have happened to me afterward?

At the time, I was living in a studio apartment on the tenth floor of The Howell House on Peachtree Street NW in Atlanta, Georgia, a half a block from the famous Fox Theater. Time Magazine's Atlanta Bureau Chief, Rudolph Rauch III, had called my answering service a few days after I'd met with him without an appointment at his office at the Time Magazine Atlanta Bureau Headquarters in one of the Gaslight Towers.

I called him back and he offered me the job. I accepted his gracious offer and made a quick trip to Pennsylvania where I'd flown to tell my family the news and to see my four-year-old son who had been living with his mother since our divorce. He didn't even know who I was and I'd only been gone a couple of months. That did it for me.

I flew back to Atlanta where I called Rudolph Rauch III and told him I wouldn't be able to take the stringer job after all. Then I packed my bags for Pennsylvania for the last time. Mr. Rauch probably thought I was crazy or something after the way I'd so brazenly pitched myself and my writing ability to him. But, I had my priorities, and making my writing career the biggest reason for my being alive wasn't my top priority.

When I look back on my missed opportunity to write for Time Magazine, I see myself trapped in a roving wormhole that opened briefly to spit me back out before it haphazardly attached itself again to another point in the space-time continuum. Trying to remember it as anything else would be a fruitless search for a past that never existed.

Reader Beware

The U. S. Government, The U. S. Air Force, the U. S. Navy, the Illuminati, the organized religions of the world and the extraterrestrial powers that use Earth for their lab experiments do not want you to read The Evermore Trilogy or anything else by Michael Casher.

You have been fairly warned.

The Book Publishing Food Chain

After four years of receiving typical, cookie-cutter correspondence from traditional publishers and agents, I finally came to the conclusion that those who can't write become editors. And those who can't do either become literary agents. And those who can't do any of those jobs become literary critics, the easiest job of all.

When I think of a literary critic, I'm reminded of the little boy who dreamed of becoming a fireman and who grew up to be a firebug, instead. But, then, a bad review is still better than no review at all.

FBI Hijinks

"Click on me for another FBI story".

Whenever I create fictional FBI agents as characters in my novels I always give the Federal Bureau of Investigation better "lip service" than I would ever give it in real life, and certainly a better deal than they're getting from Hollywood. I don't know why I do this. My own brief encounter with the FBI in 1995 was enough to make me want to write an entire book about their bumbling ways. But I didn't.

Anyway, ten years ago, two agents from the FBI office in Harrisburg, PA knocked on my Dauphin County door and wanted to ask me questions about a bank robbery in State College, PA. I thought it was either a prank or a very big mistake. Well, it turned out to be both.

It took me about a half hour to pull the truth out of the two agents and they confessed that they had gotten their "tip" from a TV show that was "something like America's Most Wanted", they said. Imagine being so hard up to solve a case that you mezz-out in front of the tube for your leads. Hollywood is right. The FBI is full of shitheads who don't know their asses from a hole in the ground. What a waste of our tax dollars.

Apparently, some hateful, hideous, malicious, coward at the bank I used to work for in State College (Mellon Bank) hated me enough to pull a stunt like that. Imagine pulling an unconscionable prank like that just for the hell of it. I've been in in a lot of places in my life, from Maine to Georgia and from New York City to Chicago, but the most hateful people I've ever encountered have been in State College and Snow Shoe, PA. And there are more men-hating women in Happy Valley" than anywhere I've ever been. You sick witches. How diabolical. I never disliked anybody enough in my entire life to commit a shameful, criminal act like that and I never will. If I knew who this person was, a civil or even criminal lawsuit would certainly be in the works. At the very least, I'd sue your malicious, lying ass to Kingdom Goddamn Come. If this world of ours was a just world — instead of a dog-eat-dog world that always rewards ruthlessness — your worthless, criminal ass would be mine.

I'm not very happy with the TV show people either (let's not beat around the bush, you FBI assholes, it was America's Most Wanted and you damn well know it). In a just world, I'd have your stupid show cancelled and your limelight-loving asses run out of town on a rail. But, this is the real world, a world where justice never triumphs for long — if at all — an evil planet where I have to be content to let their own karma hunt them down and deal with them accordingly before they die. But, if I ever see any of you in the afterlife, you'd better run and hide.

This was just after my father had died and I had moved in with my mother, who doesn't drive, to help her out and ready their house for the real estate market. I was in no mood for FBI hijinks or any other tomfoolery. I even had to prove to the FBI where I was the day of the alleged bank robbery and that meant having my employer verify that I was at work in Harrisburg that day. Where else?

Now that went over real well at the office. Eventually, I convinced Heckle and Jeckle that I was not the bank robber and those FBI morons finally left me alone, with my anger and my memories. I'll never forget your bumbling incompetence, you worthless shits. Only on Earth, I tell myself, only on planet Earth. No wonder the real powers-that-be kicked us off the moon in 1972.

The Trilogy Revelations

For anyone who might think that the three works of The Evermore Trilogy are nothing more than a seriocomical lightweight adventure and, therefore, an unimportant work of fiction, I offer the following thematic clues about them.

First of all, the three books comprising The Evermore Trilogy fit the definition of a trilogy because they contain some of the same characters and share these basic themes:

1) alien intrusion into human lives

2) the power and importance of "making a choice"

3) fate vs. destiny concepts

4) the folly of unbridled ambition.

But the most salient feature in each work is the single major revelation contained within. Evermore contains a revelation about "the source of life, itself", Time and Time Again offers a revelation about "the true nature of time and space" and Providence presents a unique insight into "the reality of life after death".

Someone once said, "Never judge a book by its cover." Truer words have never been spoken.

Hollywood or Bust

As I wrote the three novels comprising The Evermore Trilogy and then my fourth novel, The Dreamer Never Sleeps, my mental back burner secretly courted Hollywood as it served up action sequences, character interaction, settings, plots and story lines that would be readily adaptable to the big screen.

I queried several script agents in 2003 and 2004 who seemed to take great pleasure in reminding me that they only handled scripts already adapted from traditionally published novels. I knew that meant that they weren't willing to look at the script after I wrote it and that was fine. I possessed novel manuscripts, not screenplays.

But their answers also meant that my novels didn't have enough unnecessary violence and that they lacked the proliferation of foul language and gratuitous sex required for attracting a wide audience. Because that's all Hollywood ever turns out anymore. I'd have had to turn my novels upside down and inside out in order to hammer out a formulaic screenplay with a run-of-the-mill story offering wide-audience appeal, the copycat cinematic fare that American audiences have been offered ever since the box-office success of Star Wars.

Hollywood only wants movies based on market research aimed at giving American moviegoers what they think they want, which is what the toy, clothing, video, and gaming industries also want and all that other Madison Avenue "bleed the consumer dry" hype. Well, I'm no prude, I told myself. I offer that kind of reality in appropriate measure but I minimized it because the real story is what's left. Besides, that stuff is just too darn easy to write. Well, there you go. No wonder I don't go to the movies anymore.

The Author's First Message

PR Web did my press release on August 3, 2005, announcing public availability of my first novel, Evermore, which I wrote in early 2002.

Traffic to michaelcasher.com and to Michael Casher's Store at Lulu.com has not yet increased significantly. However, time will tell.

But I have been contacted by a self-publishing ezine to be spotlighted in an upcoming issue and that's a start. I sent them the requested information and time will also tell if they are still interested.

(Author's note, August 18, 2006: I was featured in the October 2005 issue of SelfPublisher News and then the ezine went out of business shortly thereafter. Too bad, because it was a pretty good article and it had a picture of yours truly and everything. (that old, stock book cover is no longer available, however). Anyway, I want to thank the publisher, Milton Stern, for taking the time to feature an unknown Appalachian author like me in his great-looking ezine while it lasted. A link to this SelfPublisher News article about me can be found on the Home page of Science Fiction for Thinkers, my official website.