I was at Shea Stadium at 1987. It was a beautiful day for baseball, and it was policy that they let everyone attending the game, no matter where their seats were, to come down to field level and watch the Mets take batting practice. So there I was, standing at the railing, with dozens of fans of various ages all around me. My favorite player, Gary Carter–the guy who started off the rally that salvaged Game 6–was just finishing up batting practice.

Continue Reading “My best Gary Carter story” →

Back when I was live-blogging the Super Bowl, I opined that teenagers today had no idea who the people she named in “Vogue” were. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Bette Davis: all these and more had no meaning.

Well, I was at the supermarket yesterday, and the cashier seemed quite young. And at a supermarket checking out groceries is pretty much the only circumstance under which some random middle aged guy can idly chat with a teen girl (she turned out to be seventeen) and not have it come across as creepy. As she ran the items across the scanner, I said, “Hey…you know the Madonna song, ‘Vogue?'”

“No.”

Continue Reading “Had a chance to test my Madonna theory” →

UPDATED 4:41 PM–Okay. Because a lot of fans on various sites were disappointed having to wait another month, we’ve decided not to go with B&N exclusively and instead are releasing it on Amazon simultaneously. Here you go. Paperback should be available next week.

For years, people have been asking me, “Where’s Book 2 of ‘The Hidden Earth?”

I had no ready answer. I had turned in the contracted manuscript years earlier, and it simply languished, untouched, on someone’s desk.

They had eighteen months to publish it, and after all that time, we’d reached the promised pub date and it had not even entered the production system. And I said, “This is not how you treat authors. This is not how you do business.” (And believe me, I wasn’t the only author in that situation. I encountered quite a few bemoaning their manuscript being in limbo.)

So when Mike Friedman suggested that a group of us take our destinies in our own hands and form Crazy 8 Press, this was the book that prompted me to join up.

I basically torched my relationship with that publisher–and quite possibly crippled my career, because book publishers don’t like troublemakers–to get back this book and the one before it (which was out of print). So that people could read it.

Book 1, “Darkness of the Light,” is on both Amazon and B&N. Book 2 is out right now for the Nook and will be out on Amazon and in paperback next month.

You can order “Heights of the Depths” here.

Please help send a pro-author message to certain publishers by supporting this and other endeavors at Crazy 8 Press. Thank you for your attention.

PAD

PS–I’ve noticed that no matter what format we put something out with, people immediately say, “Oh, I don’t have that; can you put it out in (fill in the blank).” Yeah, not this time. Nook (and Kindle, for that matter) have made it so dámņëd easy to have their platform available that you’re out of E-xcuses. To get the Nook app for just about anything electronic you’ve got, go here.

We took Caroline to see “The Phantom Menace” in 3D yesterday. She’d seen the commercials for it a few weeks ago and said she wanted to see it; we then insisted she watch what we consider the real “first three movies,” namely episodes 4, 5 and 6. She did so with some reluctance and found them enjoyable in her own way, as I mentioned in an earlier posting.

So we were most interested to see how she would react to a “Star Wars” film that she had not first seen parodied on “Family Guy.” One that is generally reviled as being boring, turgid, poorly acted, badly written, badly directed, and the debut of a character so detested that he actually made people nostalgic for the Ewoks (no small feat, that.)

Personally, watching the film yesterday–the first time I’ve seen it in its entirety since it premiered years ago–I found it as dissatisfying as ever, with 3D effects that were lackluster at best. Even the pod race, which should have rocked in 3D, was unimpressive.

So what did Caroline think of it?

Continue Reading “Brace Yourselves, Star Wars fans” →

Through this business, we do everything we can to spread the good word of our faith. Not everyone who works here is actually OF my faith, but they’re good, solid clerical people, or janitorial staff, or accountants, so it’s not an issue.

But I have a serious problem with the thought of them undergoing any surgical procedures. See, I am adamantly against blood transfusions of any sort. And although my faith does allow for blood substitutes to be used, I’m concerned that that might not always be an option, or worse, they’ll be unconscious and unable to reject plasma in a trauma situation. Furthermore, although some of the other witnesses find it acceptable, I reject the concept of transplanting of organs. It is against scripture and God’s will.

Therefore, based upon my faith, I refuse to support any insurance coverage that would allow for surgery of any kind. And since other owners of faith-based businesses are being allowed to follow their conscience in terms of what medical coverage they offer, then I should be allowed to as well.

Thank you for your attention.

Skippy the Jehovah’s Witness

(Because if conservatives get to speculate that gay marriage will lead to men marrying German Shepherds, I get to speculate that faith-dictated laws and policies lead to a strangulation of individual choice based upon theology.)