Kirk signs!It is a ritual in the publishing industry that in May booksellers and publishers gather in a great hall such as the Javits Center in New York, the L.A. Staples Center, or the Washington D.C. Convention Center to meet, celebrate, and order books for the coming year. The Book Expo is mostly serious dealmaking, bargaining over numbers and discounts and terms of shipping, meeting and greeting the authors of the coming season's hoped-for bestsellers, and enjoying circus of promotion that plays out on the exhibitor floor.

There are all kinds of book promoters in various costumes handing out caps and t-shirts, posters and book bags, and lots and lots of sample copies. For independent booksellers from small towns around the country, it's a chance to meet the publishers and authors face to face.

For the buyers at the huge chains, and there are fewer and fewer of them, it's one-stop shopping for an entire catalog of titles for a year. For agents and studio scouts, it's a bargain basement of literary and theatrical rights.

And for authors who manage to get in, it's a carnival. I was there this year on behalf of my publisher Tor/Forge, part of Macmillan, to sign copies of Worker in the Light with George Noory and to promote our new book coming out next year, Journey to the Light.

As serendipity would have it, right across the aisle from me a long line began to form at the St. Martin's Press table. St. Martin’s is one of the sister publishing units inside Macmillan. "Who's going to be there?"

Click to read more ...

One of the most provocative and interesting videos I have seen over the past five years was an interview with Professor Robert Eisenmann, a Dead Sea Scrolls scholar, on the subject of the real-life Jesus and James, brother of Jesus. It was Eisenmann's research that partly inspired Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, and later Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code.

In his interview Eisenmann talked about the sect that Jesus belonged to, the Zadokites, an extreme fundamentalist group who sought to unite the kingdom of Israel under its leadership even by committing violence against their fellow Jews. In explaining the motivation of this sect, and indeed, motivations of extreme fundamentalist sects in general, Eisenmann said that this group believed that it carried with them the holy spirit.

And in carrying with them the holy spirit, they believed that they had to be completely pure and to purify those with whom they came in contact. These were the zealots. And in the ensuing centuries zealotry flourished among all types of religious groups and continues to this very day right before our eyes.

But zealotry is not confined to religion. It crops up in politics and in all types of belief systems, even in the great nonscience of ufology. Here is a perfect example of the foolishness of zealotry because in ufology not only is there no real science, there are actually no real UFOs because those who have them are certainly not going to hand them out to those who don't. So the zealots run around screaming at anyone who doesn't adhere to their nonbelief systems.

Click to read more ...

Enlarge, if you dare!Well, here we are in beautiful New Jersey, and it's so beautiful I can't believe it. Deep green canopy, poignant cut grass, people in shirtsleeves instead of hoodies. Yes, I feel guilty enjoying the spring here without paying the price all winter, but no one has stopped me on the street and asked for my ticket, so I guess I'll just enjoy the moment. Still, to those of you who have endured the cold winter, I salute you.

Now I have to deal with the paper problem. For over twenty-five years we have had a publishing company and we have accumulated hard copies. I've been a writer long before there were computers, and I have lovingly created bound journals. So did Virginia Woolf. I noted long ago that every time she had a bout of despair, she also seemed to have just endured a physical move or relocation. Coincidence? I wonder.

I have packed and unpacked pencils, Sharpies, Post-its, every kind of envelope, my collection of New Yorker covers that I used to use to line envelopes -- it was so nice when I used to write letters to have a pretty envelope as a special treat and the covers were just too pretty to look at and throw away -- and perhaps you can begin to appreciate the extent of the problem here. LP records in their paper sleeves; every drawing my children and now my grandchildren ever made -- find me the parent who can throw them away! That person doesn't exist.

Click to read more ...

Such a cool photo from a cool weblog: Mystical Forest. It makes me happy that we're not printing on glossy paper, which always casts harsh reflections when you're trying to read. It just makes me happy in general. Two of my favorite things: red-and-yellow food and our magazine. The Stephenville story.

I have been packing for our semi-annual trek East and I am exhausted. Thousands and thousands of magazines in boxes and bundles, and I moved most of them today. I didn't move them far, but you try lifting the fiftieth box of a hundred issues when you're not fifty any more, and you will know how I feel right now.

I'd write more, but it actually hurts to type!

Just what is the truth about UFOs? Put two ufologists in a room and you'll get a hundred different opinions. And then which one would be right?

What if each opinion was backed up by totally different standards of evidence? Whose standards would be correct? Would the scientist prevail over the psychologist, the historian over the documentarian? And who gets to make the ultimate decision?

Would it be the person with the best internet website? The best book? The best magazine? The best radio show? The best documentary? The best podcast? Where are the standards of judgment and who gets to set those standards?

In a field where the very existence of the thing that's supposed to be studied has been denied by the government, by scientists and engineers paid by the government, and by the government's own military and politicians, how can there be any standards at all?

Click to read more ...