Go Cyber for Books

Going to a bricks-and-mortar bookstore is like hooking yourself up to one of these babies. It may seem like you're tuned in to the best and the brightest and that you're getting every conceivable option. But it's just a marketing trick.

When you finally unhook yourself from the run-of-the-mill feed that the traditional publishing houses have been beaming out at us for decades and you begin exploring the exciting and unpredictable depths of independent publishing, you will set yourself free.

And your world may never look the same.

100% Rag

A year ago I wrote a letter to The Centre Daily Times, which is the only newspaper serving my area. I wasn't asking them for a review of my science fiction novels because I know they don't review self-published books. I was just making them aware of my authorship and Internet presence. There aren't many authors of any kind in my neighborhood and probably not a whole lot of authors in this area have written six science fiction thrillers. But I never even heard from The Centre Daily Times regarding my letter.

If I had been a former housewife (and especially a happily divorced woman writing her first POD book) or a member of Penn State's GLBT "community" or a physically-challenged and perhaps transgendered first-time author, I would have recieved a full-page splash in the CDT local section, regardless of what I wrote about or how it got published.

And this is not intended to disparage these minorities because I support everyone's own lifestyle choices as their personal right to their own lives, whether or not their choices coincide with mine. This is what freedom is all about. What I'm suggesting is that, because I was a 54-year-old divorced white man from Snow Shoe, I was immediately on their "we couldn't care less list".

No wonder The Centre Daily Times didn't cover the Grand Reunion 2000 of Snow Shoe High School, a huge and monumental event in the history of the entire Mountaintop Region of Centre County. A once-in-a-lifetime event that they were notified about by the Grand Reunion 2000 Committee. Maybe it's Snow Shoe the CDT doesn't like, who can say? If it's just plain snobbery, then it's catching, because WTAJ-TV Channel 10 from Altoona didn't want to cover it either. Neither did WJAC-TV Channel 6 from Johnstown. I should know. I was on the Grand Reunion 2000 Committee and I called those television stations myself.

Oh, well, I digress. This posting is really about The Centre Daily Times. As it were, the editor I wrote to didn't even have the common decency to respond. No wonder I don't subscribe to The Centre Daily Times. It should be called The Happy Valley Times or else The Penn State Times.

But that's all water under the bridge now. I just wanted to post a little history here for that day when the great and powerful Centre Daily Times asks me for an interview and I flatly decline.

2012 FAQ

How could the Mayans predict that the world would end in the year 2012?

They couldn’t. But the extraterrestrial hordes that roamed Earth during the Mayan period probably could. Somehow.

Will 2012 be a disastrous year?

It will probably be about as disastrous as Y2K was.

Will the word really end in the year 2012?

Probably not. But the world “as we know it” may very well come to a grinding halt.

How will the world end in 2012?

It probably won’t go out with much of a bang. More like “ker-flooey” than “ka-boom”.

What should I do as 2012 approaches?

As unpopular and corny as it may seem, you might try behaving yourself. If that fails, you might try running. But you can't hide.

Earth God

If you're a writer and this is your god then you do tons of market research before you write anything and then you write only what the market will bear, not what you really want to write.

That's fine for freelancers who consider themselves to be writers rather than authors. I consider myself to be an author and, specifically, a novelist who does not worship this pagan god. I write what I want to write and then I try to shape a market for it. It's a market that really exists anyway. It's just been kept under wraps by The Great and Powerful Publishing Wizards in Big Apple City.

The Wizards, incidentally, worship this pagan god more than anybody.

Rattling My Chain

One day last week I came home from grocery shopping and when I pulled into the driveway I was greeted by a brilliant white flash that left me completely dumbfounded. Outside, in broad daylight. But the brilliant white flash was confined to the inside of my house and garage. The daylight outside did not change at all. My mother and I just sat in the car, unable to comprehend what had just happened here.

I thought it was a power surge or something in the garage or the house but that would have damaged a lot of electronic gizmos that don't have surge protection. And none of the electric or electronic small appliances were damaged. The light bulbs in the house couldn't have momentarily changed in their intensity or brightness because only two fluorescent lights were on in the entire house (the kitchen counter top) and a power surge powerful enough to be a white flash would have knocked out all the light bulbs, for sure. Especially a white flash so bright that it was a blinding white light seen from outside in the middle of a sunny day. After my mother and I exchanged several What the hell? responses and wide-eyed looks, I got out of the car to unlock the house and check the damage.

Everything looked perfectly normal downstairs and in the basement. Our house has circuit breakers and none of them were tripped. And no clocks lost their time display, as with a power interruption. So, it wasn't a power surge or some weird power interruption and restoration of service. I was stumped but I let it pass. I went back outside to help my mother into the house.

Later that day I strolled into the den and, once again, a blinding white flash filled the room. It was so brilliant that it disoriented me for a moment. When I asked my mother if she saw it in the living room, she said she saw a bright white flash coming from the den only. She said it was so bright that it even lit up the living room. But none of the light bulbs flared, no clocks lost their time, no breakers were tripped, just like with the earlier flash. It was as if the air inside the house had suddenly become charged with an otherworldly power, just for a second.

Well, I'm not the least bit impressed by this "Amityville Horor" display. Years ago I would have been fascinated by this kind of crap. But now I'm just annoyed. Who needs this nonsense in their lives? I know there are a lot of people who don't believe this. Like my mother and I would even bother to make any of this stuff up. Anyway, people can scoff all they want. I don't give a shit.