Bermuda Triangle Redux

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Trish and Rob

A torpedo retriever boat

Since Mercury is retrograde until Aug. 8, it’s a good time to review matters from the past, which is preferable to starting something new or signing contracts. So, with that in mind, I decided to work on another chapter of Aliens in the Backyard, our impending UFO abduction tome. But instead of writing something completely new, I turned my focus to a chapter that deals with the Bermuda Triangle and, in part, involves material related to my book, The Fog, which I co-authored with pilot Bruce Gernon.

Part of the chapter deals with AUTEC, the secret navy base on Andros Island, which was the starting point for Gernon’s mysterious time-bending flight through the B.T. We’ve written here about our adventure on the island with the History Channel crew that was filming an episode for UFO Hunters. In fact, we were with Bill Birnes, the lead UFO hunter, and the film crew when they approached the AUTEC gate. Birnes explained to the audience that repeated requests for interviews and a tour had been met with a wall of silence. The powers-that-be at AUTEC didn’t say no; they said nothing.

So, as we approached the gate, the reaction was quite startling. A helicopter lifted from the base and hovered over the gate. Was it an attempt to intimidate the crew, and possibly block out any audio with the noise from the chopper? We kept approaching and then a cop car pulled up to the gate and stopped. It didn’t go inside. It just blocked the gate. At that point, Birnes decided it was time to back off. Whether intentional or not, all the activity seemed to be  clear signs that we were not welcome.

Ironically, and synchronistically, four month later while visiting our daughter in Sarasota, we shared a high-top table in a crowded bar with a couple we didn’t know. But they weren’t strangers for long. The man turned out to be the recently retired commander of AUTEC. A bit tipsy from his raspberry martinis, he talked quite openly about the secret base, but denied there were any UFOs hidden there. We should’ve asked about USOs–unidentified submerged objects. But we were a bit tipsy ourselves and even lost his e-mail address, which Trish had requested.

The same day we were turned away from the gate, Bruce and I were interviewed by the three UFO hunters, though my hour-long interview ended up on the cutting room floor. The reason was that, as a writer, I was playing a secondary role, whereas my co-author was the one who had the first-hand experience. Also, the producers had found a couple of former AUTEC employees who were willing to talk and had flown them to Andros. So their interviews took precedence.

One of the ex-AUTEC engineers, Dave Malcolm, later e-mailed me and told me about a synchronicity that happened to him while he was in his hotel room on Andros waiting to be interviewed. He turned on the television and was surprised that to see a UFO documentary airing. The moderator was describing an area in Scotland called The Falkirk Triangle, and the witness who was interviewed was named Craig Malcolm. “Needless to say I nearly jumped out of my skin,” Dave Malcolm recalled.

I remembered that Dave told an interesting story to the UFO hunters that dated back to the winter of ’72-’73, and I wanted to include it in the chapter.  But I realized I needed more details. I found the episode of ‘The Underwater Area 51’ on You Tube and started watching. The video clip ended less than nine minutes into the program,   right at the point where Dave had just started to describe his sighting.  An annoying little trickster synchronicity. So I decided to get in contact with him again.

We’d been out of touch for a couple of years, but when I e-mailed Dave he was happy to help me out. Apparently, he rarely gets an opportunity to talk about what he saw, and when he does mention it, people usually give him a strange look that tells him it’s not worth continuing the story. (I’m always puzzled about why some people just close down when confronted with a mystery of the unknown. Maybe they don’t want to hear anything that might disrupt their view of what is real.)

At the time of his sighting, Dave was working on a torpedo retriever boat. The one pictured above is TRB-82, which Dave thinks might be the boat he was on that day. At the time of the incident, the boat was stopped and the crew was recovering a torpedo. Dave was standing on the ramp, a platform that extends from the boat and sinks into the water. His feet and lower legs were probably covered in water, he wrote.

That’s when he saw a huge object come up almost directly under the back of the boat. Visibility in that water was good, but the day was a little gray and the water a bit rough. “But I clearly saw what at first appeared to me to be a pipeline and remember thinking: What’s a pipeline doing in the middle of the water? I quickly realized it was not a pipeline as it rose closer to the surface.”

The object never broke the surface and he couldn’t tell how far down it extended or how wide it was. It was much thicker than a torpedo and much more narrow than a submarine, two objects he was quite familiar with seeing in the water. It seemed to hover for a few moments and then slowly retreated, sinking until it was out of sight.

No one else was on the ramp so he was the only one who saw the object. He intentionally avoided mentioning it. “This was during a time when a top secret clearance was taken very seriously and it was hammered into us that we would never discuss what we did or saw. I still have the security manual that describes the term in federal prison for violating the need to know.”

Dave had never seen anything like it and had no idea what it was. He thought at the time that it might be a secret experimental craft, but over the years his doubts have grown. Secret crafts, he noted, usually become public knowledge after a time and after all these years he has not seen or heard about anything similar to what he witnessed that day.

Considering its cylindrical shape, extending perpendicular across the stern of the boat, I can imagine that Dave was looking at the outer edge of a UFO or rather USO, a saucer-shaped vessel that was rising vertically. In other words, most of the craft was below the surface, out of sight.  He only saw the rim. It detected the boat and retreated into the depths.

There’s one more curious little event this story. When I told Dave about how his interview was cut off at the end of the video clip, he sent me a longer version. Then, one day later, he e-mailed me with this: “Rob, the autec show is on the history channel right now.”

Interesting synchro, especially considering the episode was three years old and UFO Hunters has been off the air for two years.

And here’s one more synchro. A couple days after I wrote the above, I was working on the Bermuda Triangle chapter, describing Bruce Gernon’s mysterious flight from Andros, when I got a call from him. I haven’t seen or talked to Bruce for several weeks. He told me that a French film crew was at his house interviewing him for a new Bermuda Triangle  documentary and they thought I was going to be there for an interview. It was news to me, and I told him that I would pass and let him tell the story.

Finally, just last night when I stopped work for the day on the chapter, it was 11:11 PM and then I looked at the word count: 4,444 words.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in AUTEC, bermuda triangle, synchronicity | 18 Comments

Beauty Is Everywhere

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Our friend Carol Bowman sent us these photos, reminders that we are surrounded by beauty, something we often forget in the daily hustle of life.

Posted in synchronicity | 15 Comments

Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Fast food magnate Dan Cathy

I usually end up stopping at Home Depot about once a week to pick up something for the house or yard. But for whatever reason, today was the first time this summer that I stopped there for some grass plugs for the lawn. (Male dog urine kills grass; female dog urine makes the grass turn dark green and sprout like a weed. We have a male dog.)

Anyhow, as I arrived at Home Depot, I noticed my usual entrance was closed. So I went around and found that half of the parking lot was now a Chick-fil-A under construction. The brick walls were up and the roof was on and a crew was busy working on the interior. I’ve never eaten at one of the fast food chicken joints, and even when I saw the new one rising I had no interest in dining there. We do get take chicken pot pies from time to time from C.R. Chicks, but that place seems somehow different from the Chick-fil-A.

I found this addition (or rather subtraction of parking spots) somewhat annoying since it’s usually hard to find parking spots outside our Home Depot and now it will be impossible on weekends. So I did not appreciate Chick-fil-A’s intrusion.

A couple of hours later, I took a break from the tedious grass-plug work and settled behind my computer. One of the first things that popped up was an e-mail sharp-eyed writer friend Ed Gorman had sent about Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.  Huh? I usually keep up on the news, but it turns out that I had completely missed the Chick-fil-A controversy and the far right’s embrace of the fast food emporium for its blatant anti-gay stance. Here’s the article:

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Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and Fox News host, has had enough of what he called the “vicious hate speech and intolgerant bigotry” aimed at Chick-fil-A.

On his Facebook page, Huckabee announced that Aug. 1 will be “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” a day on which he is encouraging people to patronize the fast food chain.

The former presidential candidate is upset that the fast food chicken chain has been the target of criticism in the wake of Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy’s saying last week that his company supports “the biblical definition of the family unit.”

The National Organization for Marriage, a group organized to oppose same-sex marriage, called him a “corporatae hero for marriage,” while others were quick to condemn his comments.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino even went so far as to tell the Boston Herald that “Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston.”

“You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion.”

And on Friday, the Jim Henson Company, the group behind “The Muppets” and “Fraggle Rock,” released a statment saying it has “notified Chick-fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors.” Jim Henson’s “Creature Shop” toys are currently available in the company’s kid’s meals.

Huckabee further explained the purpose of his pro-Chick-fil-A campaign on his Facebook page:

The goal is simple: Let’s affirm a business that operates on Christian principles and whose executives are willing to take a stand for the Godly values we espouse by simply showing up and eating at Chick Fil-A on Wednesday, August 1. Too often, those on the left make corporate statements to show support for same sex marriage, abortion, or profanity, but if Christians affirm traditional values, we’re considered homophobic, fundamentalists, hate-mongers, and intolerant.

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Notice how the ones boasting about their intolerance feel as if they are the ones being purged for their so-called ‘Christian beliefs.’ Now I know my initial instinct about Chick-fil A intrusion in the H.D. parking lot was on the mark.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 15 Comments

Number Synchros and Movies

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Sharlie West is one of the planetary empaths who drops us an email from time to time about a dream she has had, a synchronicity she has experienced, some gut feeling about something that is about to occur. We have posted some of her stories in the past.

This evening, we received an unusual sequence of synchros from her. I don’t recall ever having heard of anything quite like this before.

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An unusual synchronicity today. While my husband Jim was in the hospital I was watching old movies to distract my mind.

In the first movie, Animal House, I noticed a clock on the wall in the movie said 11:00 am and it was exactly 11:00 am on my clock.

In the second movie, Blessing, the clock in the movie said 1:28 pm and it was 1:28 pm on my clock.

In the third movie, Metamorphosis, a clock in the movie said three minutes to six, a character in the movie said it out loud, and it was three minutes to six (5:57) on my clock.

I’ve never had this happen. I don’t remember synchronicities about time but maybe I can find it in your book. A bit spooky…

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I wrote Sharlie back and asked if we could post this and asked what sort of problem Jim is having.

“They are doing tests on Jim, who is having a heart problem. I’ll know more soon, I hope. Tests are so vague and open to interpretation.”

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My sense is that the movies – and their titles – may be as important as the time synchros. Anyone have any ideas/interpretations?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

50 Shades of Grey

Posted on July 23, 2012 by Trish and Rob

 

50 Shades of Grey.  Do you know what these four words mean? Well, yes, okay, we know about 50. We know about shades. We know that OF is a preposition. We know that grey is a color.

But 50 Shades of Grey is also something else, a phenomenon, en erotic trilogy written by E.L. James, which details the relationship between a billionaire control freak  and a college student. It was originally self-published, had over a million downloads before a traditional publisher took notice and bought the trilogy for 7 figures. The books then sold to Hollywood. As of July 2012, 50 Shades of Grey has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.

I love these kinds of success stories. They illustrate how technology benefits us, the people, by enabling us to choose what we want to read, and by enabling us to reach for our dreams.  I first heard about the book maybe six or eight months ago, when someone asked if I’d read it. I hadn’t. I thought the title was interesting and asked my friend what the book was about.

“Kinda hard to say,” she replied.

Then I read an article somewhere about how erotic fiction had been banned from some site and 50 Shades was mentioned. A censored book somewhere, some way. I checked it out and  thought about how diarist Anais Nin was censored in her day, particularly when it came to her erotic writing, like Henry and June, which eventually became a movie.  It’s about Henry Miller, his wife June and their sexual relationship with Nin.

“Okay, who has read 50 Shades of Grey?” I asked one afternoon at the dog park. The ladies, who range in age from, oh 25 to 75, suddenly looked collectively guilty. And I knew all of them had read the book and were totally shocked that I, the writer of the group, hadn’t read it yet. So that night I downloaded the novel to my iPad.

50 Shades of Grey is written in a single voice, the I voice, in present tense. It’s not the easiest point of view or tense to write, but in this novel, it works. The protagonist, Anastasia, is a self-effacing college girl with a bossy roommate, a journalist major. The roommate can’t make a particular appointment with Mr. Grey, a young billionaire who is the whiz kid of Wall Street or its equivalent somewhere, so Anastasia goes in the roommate’s place. When Anastatia meets Grey, the physical chemistry is powerful. Their physical attraction to each other is written masterfully.

At the dog park, Colleen asks, “Did you get to the playroom yet?”

“Nope. But she blushes a lot, Colleen. It bugs me.”

Colleen rolls her eyes. “Keep reading. The first book is great. I just sat down and read it. By the third book, I had to stop to take two cold showers.” She rolls her eyes again and laughs. “The instant I saw that playroom, I knew I’d be gone. I don’t do submissive.” And by the end of the trilogy, the protagonist doesn’t do submissive, either, Colleen tells me.

But in the first book, Anastasia – a virgin – is the Submissive and Grey is the Dominant. That’s how it is spelled out in their contract.  The first sex scene happens after her reactions to and their discussion of the contract.

The contract. It was probably conjured when Mercury, which rules contracts, communication, and the conscious mind, was moving retrograde. These scenes are definitely retro in that they hurl women’s rights back to the dark ages, when men and women were locked in social-sanctioned power struggles: the man told the woman to jump and she jumped. Just look at mythology: the top god is Zeus.

So at the dog park, Karin says, “Hey, did you see that article today in the Palm Beach Post about 50 Shades of Green?”

Nope, didn’t see it. Well, the focus of the article was that 50 Shades of Grey has sold 20 million  books since March. The article didn’t say whether these had been actual book sales or downloads, but either way, it doesn’t matter to the author. She is already a millionaire. Add or subtract a few dollars in either direction and her bottom line isn’t an issue.

As of mid-July, Amazon lists nearly 8,500 reviews that bring the book to three stars overall, and some of them are comical. One guy notes that the writing is awful, the plot too simple, and that Anastasia blushes way too much. But women, for the most part, seem to love the book.Why? Do we entertain fantasies of this kind, of billionaire guy, a control freak with major issues? Really? Our psyches are stuck there? Or is this book about female pleasure, dark and light?

The other day I had my cut my hair cut and every woman who works in the salon has read at least the first book and most of the have finished the trilogy. “So what’s the appeal?” I ask Angie.

She laughs. “For real? We all have 50 shades of grey hidden somewhere in our psyches.”

James has tapped into something important with her books. She has provided insights into the female psyche – the old paradigm psyche and the new – and given it a name. Like Nin before her,  James doesn’t hold back. She is far less poetic than Nin, but what she has to say appeals to women  across the board.

When James did her first book signing at Books and Books in Miami, several  hundred women were lined up to have their books signed. Twenty to eighty years of age, the paper said. An  unprecedented number for a book like this. I point this out to our daughter. “I’ve been hearing a lot about this book. I’m going to download it.”

“Me, too.”

And she did. Her take? “Wow, this is a racy book, Mom. But I love the protagonist.”

Yes. So do I. Anastasia feels what you felt in your twenties. She is  the archetype of angst personified, but greatly exaggerated. And Grey, also greatly exaggerated, is the archetypal bad boy. Bring them together, with the author’s ebook background, the 7-figure contract for James, and you’ve got a mega bestseller.

Tipping point. Now there are 50 Shades of Grey vacation packages, flights, cruises. Maybe there will eventually be a 50 shades of grey shamanic retreat.

Colleen assures me that by the end of the third book in the trilogy, we understand why Grey is the way he is,  that Anastasia never signs the contract, and that  she is not the submissive Grey hoped she would be. But you know what? Regardless of what these books are or are not, James hit a big time nerve, a tipping point sort of nerve, a this is your juncture sort of nerve, babe. And from my point of view as a writer, that’s saying something.

 

 

Posted in #23, synchronicity | 35 Comments

Library Angels: Synchro in Cassadaga

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Recently, we took a couple of days off to visit our daughter, Megan, and stopped one night, of course, in Cassadaga. We stayed at Cabin on the Lake, the B&B that allows dogs and is located in a tranquil setting, on a lake, a couple of miles from Cassadaga. Honestly, since Megan moved to Orlando in January, we have spent more time in Cassadaga than at any  point in the last 30 years. Such a hardship, right?

I guess this Spiritualist village is the MacGregor equivalent of Disney World, which lies only half an hour or so to the south. Instead of rides and an endless carnival atmosphere that is both crass and carefully constructed, we walk along streets that date back to the late 19th century, where the homes – some of them reminiscent of places on Cape Cod – are usually inhabited by mediums. These folks are the heart and soul of Cassadaga, the ones who communicate with the dead.

In this kind of atmosphere, synchronicities often flourish for us and occur at the strangest moments, unexpected, often out of the blue. That’s what happened during this trip.

I was in the lobby of the Cassadaga Hotel, waiting outside the restroom. Megan and Rob and the dogs were outside on the porch, waiting for our dinners.The hotel is a weird place that we’ve written about before, and  even when you step inside the building, you feel the difference. But since I was just waiting outside the ladies room, I figured it couldn’t get too weird.

Wrong.

I noticed a nearby mantle with a couple of books on it. I glanced at the titles and was delighted to see one of my favorite astrology books of all time, Heaven Knows What, by Grant Lewi. This book is one that every astrologer should read, with descriptions of natal sun/moon combinations that are just stunning in their accuracy. Lewi called himself an astrologer, but this guy read patterns like an I Ching master, like any psychic worth their price.

I realized the book was the same edition that I own, old and weathered, a first edition, and took it down to flip through it. I opened it randomly, scanned the page on my right, and started to shut the book when  I glanced at the page on my left– and it hit me. I had turned to my own sun/moon combo, sun in Gemini and moon in Capricorn. Recognizing the synchro, I read through the description quickly, nodding at the parts that resonated, wondering about the parts that didn’t.  The synchro is this: we’re waiting to hear about whether our Sydney Omarr contract with NAL (New American Library) will be renewed. This contract has been ongoing since 2003.

Personally, I like the odds on this one. Why Lewi’s book, at this time?

When I told Bernard Beitman about the synchro, his response was brief:  Library Angel.

 

 

 

 

Posted in books, Cassadaga, synchronicity | 8 Comments

The Trickster, the Colorado Massacre, and Planetary Empaths

Posted on July 21, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This morning (July 20) when I checked my usual news sites, the headlines in Huffington Post were shocking: Movie Theater Massacre.  During the midnight premier of the new Batman movie, Dark Knight Rises, a 24-year-old man, James Holmes, entered a theater in Aurora, Colorado, wearing a gas mask and armed with an assault rifle, a Remington shotgun, and two Glock handguns,  and opened fire.   A dozen people were killed,  58 were wounded, and 11 are still in critical condition.

Holmes entered about 20 minutes into the movie, threw a tear gas canister and then started shooting. The survivors initially thought it was a stunt for the movie. In one harrowing account  a survivor in the line of fire describes the scene in the theater as “pure mass chaos.”

According to Huffington Post, this massacre was the worst mass shooting in the U.S. since the November 5, 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas, when an Army psychiatrist killed 13 soldiers and civilians and wounded more than two dozen others. “In Colorado, it was the deadliest since the Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999, when two students opened fire in the Denver suburb of Littleton, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 others before killing themselves. Columbine High is about 12 miles from the theater.”

This tragedy has dark trickster written all over it. The character of the Joker has often been referred to as the trickster. Holmes, in fact, was dressed entirely in black, wore tactical gear, a gas mask,  and had dyed his hair red, just like the Joker. He is supposedly a doctoral student in neuroscience at the University of Colorado, but was in the process of dropping out, according to recent reports. He was  arrested behind the theater.

There’s another dark trickster twist to this story. In early June, Jessica Ghawi, an aspiring sportscaster, narrowly escaped a mall shooting in Toronto, and tweeted  about what she had seen and experienced during that event. She was in the theater in Aurora and while she waited,  tweeted a friend that the movie wasn’t starting for another 20 minutes. She was one of the victims.

When I initially read the story, I wondered if any of the planetary empaths had picked up on this before it happened.We wrote our first post on these individuals on March 11, 2010, and have posted other stories about them in the years since. These individuals often exhibit physical symptoms hours or days before a natural or man-made disasters.  I was about to email Math  when one from her appeared in our inbox.

Just for reference, the police in Aurora began receiving 911 calls at 12:39 AM mountain daylight time (July 20) so on the east coast of the U.S., it was 2:39 AM.

Re: Dark Knight theater Colorado killings

I experienced severe symptoms not long before this manifested. At 7:20 pm EDT on July 20, I  was sitting quietly downstairs in my chair watching TV. Suddenly, I had a “seizure-type” episode of some kind, and I don’t have seizure disorder. I felt “knocked out of my chair” but wasn’t.

Everything went black around me but I didn’t lose consciousness; I “heard” very loud “pops” in the air over my head; held onto arms of my chair to keep myself from falling; was afraid to open my eyes; I had several moments of feeling on the edge of hysteria but there was no reason for that; I felt intense terror but didn’t know from what. Pain in my cheek.

This episode lasted about fifteen minutes. Immediately afterwards I came to bed and went into a deep unmedicated sleep. Woke up this morning and saw the massacre on my computer news page. I had thought it was a natural disaster until I read about the shootings, etc. Knew that was what the symptoms were about.

In a later email, Math explained how she is gradually learning to decipher her symptoms:

I seem to pick up on man-made catastrophes in a different way than natural disasters. What I experienced prior to this event was very similar to what I experienced 72 hours prior to the 9-11 attack, but last night was on a much smaller scale and ended much more quickly.

I finally have been able to distinguish, most of the time, what will be a natural disaster and what will be a man-made one. Also, I apparently somehow remotely “connect” with a person who is injured or killed during the manifestation, and experience what that person is going to be experiencing. In this case, it must have been the child who was shot in the cheek. When I read that this morning, it instantly resonated with what I’d felt. Before 9-11, I experienced a woman burning to death, and her final thoughts, and I had similar symptoms to those I had last night. With the 9-11 event I spent the prior 72 hours in bed, feeling “dead”, until the impact of the first plane was shown, then it was as if nothing had happened in my own body. Last night, the symptoms put me to bed and into a deep sleep.

Did anyone else experience physical symptoms before this tragedy occurred?

It’s certainly time to revisit the second amendment, the right to bear arms. This topic came up after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford, but nothing was ever done, not even a ban on assault weapons. The assault weapon that Holmes carried can shoot 50  rounds a second. Combined with his other weapons, he packed 6,000 rounds, much of which he purchased over the Internet. The weapons were purchased locally, legally; Colorado has liberal gun laws. The ammunition and tear gas canisters were also purchased legally.  Such is the nature of the second amendment in this country, you know, that amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms.

The NRA is a powerful lobby in the U.S.  and seems to have only gotten stronger since Michael Moore’s damning indictment in Bowling for Columbine, a documentary that won him an Oscar.

As one woman in the dark park lamented this afternoon, “We’ve become a country governed by the National Rifle Association and corporations.”

Is that the best we can do? Really?

Posted in planetary emapths, synchronicity, trickster | 49 Comments

Hot Dogs and the Rest of the Story

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Trish and Rob

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfy57h_clips-from-hot-dogs-for-gauguin-1972_shortfilms

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My first job out of graduate school (many moons ago)  was as a children’s librarian at a public library in Jacksonville, Florida. My boss was a fundamentalist Christian who used to invite me and the other children’s librarian into her office every afternoon for a mini sermon on Christianity. This sermon usually consisted of boss reading something from the Bible. In retrospect, I realize she could have gotten fired for this, but in those days of long gas lines and big unemployment, no one rocked the ship. At least, not anyone I knew.

My refuge was the film department across the hall, where employees could rent projectors and movies for free. Yes, that’s right. This was in the days before personal computers, Google, the Internet, Netflix, and all the other techie wonders we take for granted. So one weekend, the film librarian and I rented a short movie called Hot Dogs for Gauguin and were in stitches. This short was one of the funniest and most poignant movies, short or long, that I’d ever seen. The filmmaker, Martin Brest, was an NYU film student at the time, in his mid-twenties. I wrote him a fan letter, a real letter – no email, remember?

We corresponded for months, with Martin talking about stuff that was in the works for him, that he was headed to the American Film Institute under the auspices of some BIG director. Was it Oliver Stone? Scorcese? I  can’t remember. Someone major, at  any rate.

During our correspondence, I changed jobs and went from social work to teaching Spanish to hormonal 7th graders.  Brest went from NYU to the American Film Institute, and ended up at some point in South Florida. So we got together during his weekend here.

I lived a block from the beach and suggested we go UFO hunting one night. Martin resisted. It turned out that he didn’t believe in much of anything – not UFOs or psychic phenomenon,  life after death or reincarnation. In other words, to him, my belief system was a joke. You can tell this friendship  was off to a great start, right? Yet, this is the guy who years later, directed Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins in Meet Joe Black (1998),  a remake of Death Takes a Holiday, which describes the plot exactly: death takes a vacation.

In 1984, Brest directed Beverly Hills Cop and in 1992, he directed one of my favorites, Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino, and then there was Meet Joe Black in 1998, and in 2003, a movie called Gigli. This last film was supposedly a monumental flop, but  I didn’t see it, so I don’t know.   Since then, nothing.

Where is Martin Brest? He’s now 61 years old, not old for a director. Look at  Ridley Scott now 74,  or Clint Eastwood, now 82,  and you have a sense of cinematic vision.

So,  I loved Meet Joe Black and its original version, Death Takes a Holiday.  At the time I saw the movie, I was shocked he had directed it, he who didn’t believe in much of anything. But all of us change and evolve through our explorations in life.  So, Martin, here’s the deal.   I’ve got this novel Esperanza, with a script in progress,  and its sequel, Ghost Key, that have after life themes.  Let’s do lunch. In the meantime, please call my agent.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 11 Comments

Synchro Macabre

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Trish and Rob

The summer has been quite gloomy in Wales, not much sunlight, not many warm pleasant days. So maybe the weather has affected the synchros coming out of the Welsh realm. This one from Jane Clifford might make you swallow and touch your throat.

On one recent day, she and her ex-husband, the father of her two children, got together  and during their conversation, Mr. X mentioned that he’d been upset for a few days after watching a gruesome documentary of the hanging of a Nazi after WWII. The first two attempts failed and they had to hang him a third time before he died.

Jane mentioned episodes of Shakespeare on TV that had been filmed there in Pembrokeshire, then for no particular reason asked which royal personage had been beheaded badly. Her ex responded:  Mary Queen of Scots. Her head  was still attached after three blows and was finally cut off with a knife.

The conversation turned even more macabre when they discussed what they’d heard about how long heads retained consciousness after a beheading. Supposedly, 20-30 seconds, determined by blinking eyes and moving lips.

A while after Jane’s ex left, she heard a noise at the door, opened it, saw nothing, but then as she closed it, the door got jammed and wouldn’t close all the way. She opened it again to discover that she had beheaded a toad in the inner corner of the door. Yuck!

We weren’t going to write up this one – a bit too weird–but then hours later, Jane wrote back.  Here’s what she said:

“Was just chatting online with a chap about precognition and he shared a precognitive dream he had when young. He was dating a girl and dreamed that she was in a white coffin in a white dress and he knew it was precognitive. His family moved away, but not long after he heard that the girl had died in a car crash and was beheaded.”

“Might be related to the toad,” she added, “but UGH. These things come in threes.”

That was plenty enough for us. After all, let’s not lose our heads over a synchro!

Gulp.

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 20 Comments

Crossroad Press: One Big Synchronicity Machine

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Trish and Rob

                                                 legendary editor Max Perkins

We’ve talked frequently on this blog about paradigm shifts and one of the biggest shifts is occurring in the publishing industry. The days of Max Perkins are definitely gone. As technology opens up all sorts of exciting new venues, authors whose works may never have seen the light of day now have options that weren’t available just a few years ago. Already, there are success stories.

Recently, our writer friend Ed Gorman told us to check out Crossroad Press.  Ed isn’t an easy guy to impress, but he was so excited by what Crossroad was doing with his backlist titles that we decided to check out the company. As you’ll see, this outfit is markedly different from the competition. They don’t charge authors anything, and that in itself is astonishing.  As founder David Wilson says, the company is “one big synchronicity machine.”

How did Crossroad Press come into being? What synchronicities were involved?

I have always said that Crossroad Press is a pleasant accident.  I set out a few years ago to try and get my own backlist onto the Kindle.  That was how it started.  I learned (very slowly and painfully at first) how to format an eBook, how to convert it to various formats, what worked, and what did not.  My day job is as an IT Manager, and I’ve been a web designer for many years, so the initial skills necessary for the task were already in place.

As things came together, and I started to look like I knew what I was doing, a couple of friends asked me if I could help with their books.  Very quickly I realized that to do so for free was a bad idea, because eventually all I’d have been doing was helping people with eBooks and never writing, or working on my own material.

That is the point where I started to develop my business model – very heavily weighted in favor of authors.  Not greedy, in other words, and not impatient for overnight riches.

Every stage of growth has come about because of chance encounters, spur-of-the-moment decisions that turned out to be accidentally brilliant, and the simple, honest approach.  We started out approaching authors with big back lists of books, and soon found that authors were referring friends, others were searching us out, and before long the numbers swelled dramatically.  At this point it’s a constant flow of material in, and out of the system, and very nearly every day we add something… either a new book to be worked, a new author to get to know and work with, or a new book to publish and promote.

The simple fact is that the entire company is like one great synchronicity engine.  I even have the face-up penny on a chain around my neck that I found one day when a particularly large number of good things happened all at once, and with no effort on my part.

What is Crossroad’s philosophy?

Authors first.  That’s the basic philosophy, and it’s worked well for us.  We are quick and honest in responses.  We fight to keep our overhead as low as possible so we can maintain the 80 percent to the author model that we started with.  We don’t believe authors should work in the suburbs, while agents and publishers maintain offices in expensive NYC complexes.  No words left behind would fit in as well…anything an author has written should be available to readers. Old, new, off-the beaten path, whatever.  The boundaries on “shelf-life” simply don’t exist any longer, and words moldering away on a hard drive make me sad.

How is your company different from some of the other e-book publishers and distributors, like Smashwords, Argo-Navis, or Lulu?

It’s important to remember that we ARE a publisher.  None of those that you mention are publishers.  Lulu is a POD print service.  Smashwords is a distributor (and we still work with them to reach a number of retail outlets).  We are a publisher in a “newer” sense of the word.

While we specialize in bringing back the back-list books and stories, we also have developed several original series – as well as publishing new novels by the established authors we work with.  We have moved into print, and audio, and we recently got our first Publisher’s Weekly review on one of those original titles. It’s a slowly growing machine.

It is a common misconception that Crossroad Press is in any way similar to a publishing “service.”  There are a lot of those out there, willing to convert, scan, edit, and even publish and distribute books – but almost always for a price.  Even Smashwords, which pays pretty well for the books they distribute, leaves the conversion, formatting, cover art, etc. to the author.  There are a number of agents and “publishers” out there now asking authors to pay a set-up fee, or buy their cover art – things an actual publisher would never do.  We are an actual publisher.

We never charge an author for anything – that’s not how it works.  If I’m your publisher, I pay you.  I get cover art for the book.  I get the manuscripts formatted and edited.  If they need to be scanned, we scan them, reformat them, and get them back into shape.  That’s our job.  One of the biggest mistakes a lot of authors make, I believe, is in trying to do all of those things themselves for all of their books. If you aren’t very good at it, it takes a lot of time, and the more time you spend doing frustrating work or trying to find and pay someone to do it – the less time you are writing.

So…while we are not a traditional publisher, we are starting our own NEW tradition.  I believe it’s catching on.

What genres do you publish? Do you publish non-fiction?

We publish a little of everything.  Since my own background is in Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Horror, my contacts tend to be stronger in those areas, and so it has taken longer to build our lists in other genres.  Now we have thrillers, mainstream, new age, mystery, young adult, children’s books – and hope to move into other genres soon

How is the landscape of publishing changing?  Where do you see the industry five or ten years from now?

Pretty obviously, the New York City publishing machine is shrinking. There are still a number of big-name authors, and big houses that continue to churn out the books and sell in the millions, and they aren’t going anywhere immediately. But I see little evidence that those houses are working in the way they used to to build the next generation of talent.  There are simply too many options for a talented new author for them to wait two, maybe three years to hear from an agent who will send their book to a dozen places that will take from six months to another year or two to respond.  The world is moving more rapidly – it’s possible to compete from a more independent platform – things are crumbling and shifting all over.

Places like Amazon, who have moved into more traditional publishing, are vying for slots and status that previously only the big few in NYC could muster.  Some independent authors are rivaling or besting traditionally published best-sellers.  While I don’t buy into the “anyone can do it now” philosophy that seems to have spread across the Internet, I do believe that companies such as Crossroad Press, where we embrace new technology, pay attention to what is going on, and treat people with honesty and respect (both authors and customers alike) will set a new standard for what publishing actually means.  Some people are comfortable doing everything themselves, others like structure – we fall somewhere in the middle

What’s your long-term vision for Crossroad?

I can say that I actually have one now, which was not always the case.  I think we are poised right on the brink of becoming a force to be reckoned with in the digital publishing world.  The more we grow, the bigger the names we’ve been able to associate ourselves with, and all of our books gain from those new associations and contacts.  I’d like to see Crossroad Press become my retirement in a few years…the thing I’ll do until I’m too old and crotchety to manage it.  The love of my life, Patricia Lee Macomber, has been invaluable in building this – being an award-winning writer and editor in her own right.  Dave Dodd, my business partner has made the business side of things workable and helped me build this into something real.  Everywhere I’ve turned I’ve found talented people ready and willing to help build something new and special.  That, then, is the long term goal. To remain something fresh, new, and special.

How are e-books changing the market not only for what the populace reads, but for authors?

I’ve been going on a long time here, so I’ll make this answer short and to the point.

For authors, doors have opened. All my career I have run into two blocks.  Agents and publishers want you to write what you’ve always written, or they want you to write what they perceive as the “hot” market.  If you are a successful mystery writer and have a mainstream novel you want to sell, the odds are that traditional agent/publisher team will discourage you, and, failing that, will simply tell you they don’t know how to market it – or make you use a different pen name.  That barrier is gone now.  In fact, at Crossroad Press I ENCOURAGE people to bring out those books, ideas, etc. that have not been published for the above-stated reasons.  How ridiculous is it to force an author to write something other than what they really WANT to write?  How much better will the books get when that freedom is returned?

For readers, I don’t know that it will change things so much, except that the lower pricing might bring back more spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment book buying, and the variety is greater.  That, of course, is a two-edged sword.  There is still the question of quality – and that is why I believe that a new-model publisher like Crossroad Press has a solid place in the changes to come  The books we publish come from established authors in most cases, and in those where they do not – come from referrals, or carefully vetted new books.

Are you open to publishing new writers or do you want only published authors?

I mentioned earlier the wait time for traditional publishers.  Crossroad Press has a very small staff, and we are constantly busy.  To maintain a slush pile and try to seek out and work with new authors takes a lot of time, and a lot of manpower, that we just don’t currently have.  What we do is work with established authors on their backlists.  Often those same authors have unpublished works, sitting around for one reason or another, and we try to gather those in as well – and then new book, but –again – usually from our “stable” of authors.  It would be unfair to new authors for us to attempt to run a slush pile at this point in time because we would then become part of the problem, holding things too long, responding too slowly.  There may come a day when we can move into that world – but before it happens, we’ll have to find a business model that works better than the old one.

Are the ebooks you publish compatible with all reading devices?

Currently, we publish in ePub (Nook, Kobo, Apple, etc.) Mobi (Kindle) PRC (an older Kindle format) and PDF (readable on most devices and PC’s with free software.  If another reading platform comes along that requires a new format, we’ll be quick to figure it out and make it available, because accessibility is one of our priorities.  It’s also important to note that our eBooks are DRM free.  What that means is that a savvy book buyer could buy our Kindle Books, use a program like “Calibre” to convert them, and read them on his Nook.  There are a lot of arguments on both sides of the DRM issue, but we have chosen the one that makes books available to the most people with the least trouble

How does your audio books program work?

We do all of our audiobooks through Audible.com’s ACX program.  It’s a fairly new program, about a year old, I think.  What we’ve been able to do is to get a lot of books that never had a shot at audio when first published available, and to work with a lot of talented narrators along the way.

My entire program would not exist, or be possible, if it was not for Jeffrey Kafer – a very talented narrator and engineer – who has mentored me in the world of audio, and worked with me as engineer on literally all of my projects.

The ACX system is fairly simple – in theory – and any author with a book on Amazon.com can participate. Again, though, there are solid reasons to go through a publisher like Crossroad Press.  For one thing, Jeffrey Kafer.  We do our own mastering of final files.  We know a number of very talented narrators, and have working relationships with them.  We are one of the heaviest users of ACX and work as closely as possible with all of the people behind the scenes there to get as much out of the system as possible, including some world-class narrators like Dick Hill, Nick Sullivan, John Lee and Bob Walter, and some promotions that would be much more difficult to attain individually.   We pay 65 percent of all money made on audiobooks back to our authors, and they have to do (pretty much literally) nothing.  Since these are books that would likely never have made it to audio otherwise, it’s like found money.

++

We were so impressed by the company’s philosophy, that we submitted five or our backlist titles: Rob’s Edgar award-winning Prophecy Rock and Edgar nominated Hawk Moon,  and three books Trish wrote as Alison Drake: Tango Key, Fevered, and High Strangeness. Tango Key is available here in different formats. Other backlist titles are in the pipeline.

Paradigms, shifting.

 

Posted in crossroad press, synchronicity, writers, writing | 6 Comments