Filming Synchronicity

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Trish and Rob

We’ve seen a few documentaries about synchronicity over the years and our overall impression is that it’s a difficult subject to put on film. Is it possible to capture a synchronicity on film as if takes place? Maybe. But it’s nothing a producer or director could plan. That’s because the very act of doing so would be cause and effect, not synchronicity.

Yet, no doubt synchronicities happen in the process of putting together a documentary on synchronicity – or any subject, for that matter. I have yet to see one happen on film, but I can imagine how it might go.

Someone is being interviewed in an outdoor setting, the camera is rolling–the digitals are digiting–when someone not involved stumbles into the scene – a passerby who pauses to see what’s going on. It turns out that the person being interviewed is an old friend who has been out of contact for months, maybe years. Not only that, but the interviewee is telling a story about a strange incident from years ago that involves you and synchronicity. And , WOW, this is synchronicity happening right now.

That scenario reminds me a bit of the famous plum pudding synchronicity described by French writer Emile Deschamps in a biographer published in 1805.

With all that in mind, here’s a link to a teaser for a documentary on synchronicity that is currently a work in progress. The producer contacted us recently, said she enjoyed our synchro books and the blog, and wants to interview us for this documentary. Take a look

 

Posted in synchronicity | 10 Comments

Weird or What…

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK-5L5horRk

Some of you may remember that last winter we journeyed to Toronto where Trish was interviewed on William Shatner’s Weird or What about Wolfgang Pauli, or more specifically, the ‘Pauli Effect’–an ability Pauli apparently had to damage or shut down electronic equipment in laboratories simply by showing up.

To our knowledge, the program has only been shown in Canada so far, but we found it on You Tube by Googling ‘Weird or What Mind Control’ after a Canadian reader alerted us that she had seen the show.

We were surprised when we played it because we had no idea that the first third of the episode would be about alien abductions and mind control. That was a synchronicity for us, since we are writing, Aliens in the Backyard – Encounters, Abductions & Synchronicities.

The second segment dealt with the mysterious case of Pearl Curran, a poorly educated housewife from St. Louis, Missouri, who in the early twentieth century wrote several books dictated by a spirit guide Patience Worth. Interestingly, that was another synchro, since Rob is currently under contract for a book called Ghosts & Spirit Guides that will come out in October of next year. In his outline for the book, he had overlooked Patience Worth, even though he was familiar with the story.

The third segment is the one where Trish appears. It’s about government mind control, specifically the case of Cheryl Welsh, who believes she was the subject of a long-term government experiment. Trish’s perspective in this case is actually as one of the skeptics – even though her solution–the Pauli Effect, or psychokinesis–is equally strange as government mind control.

That segment begins at 29:08 and Trish gets the last word on the show beginning at about 41:00.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 8 Comments

Miami Vice Synchro

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Trish and Rob

One of our books that we’re bringing back into digital format is The Making of Miami Vice, a behind the scenes look at how the original  TV show was made. In proofing the scanned file, we ran across an incredible synchronicity in a chapter entitled Gags.

Gags are stunts that stunt men perform in movies and TV. Car chases, boat chases, motorcycles chases, explosions, air ram stunts. In a typical episode of Vice, there were four or five gags per show and each episode had a gag budget of $10,000, and that’s in 1980s dollars. When you consider that the overall cost per episode was $1.4 million, that ten grand was just a drop in the bucket.

There was a stunt coordinator and stunt men, special effects experts, pyrotechnic experts, all the behind the scenes people who made every effect, every stunt, look real. A man named Paul Nuckles was the stunt coordinator when we were writing about the show. He directed the action for the gags and coordinated with the stunt men for Don Johnson (Crockett) and Philip Michael Thomas (Tubbs).  At the time, there were perhaps twenty black stunt men in the business and only a handful of them who were successful and able to obtain work regularly. One of them was Ernest Robinson who, with some other black stunt men, started the Black Stunt Man’s Association. Robinson served as the organization’s president for a decade and was Thomas’ stunt man.

When we interviewed Robinson for the book, he’d been around the movie and TV business for some years and had learned to pay attention to synchronicity. In a soft almost reverential tone, he told us that when he worked on Greased Lightning as a double for actor Richard Pryor, he experienced a stunning – and tragic – synchro.

“I did this stunt on a track that wasn’t supposed to hap­pen. I was just supposed to be driving. The car I was in had little tires, skinny tires, it was a period-type car. Any­way, so I was turning sideways to start skidding on two wheels and as I brought the car back down, another car went under mine. The front wheels of my car leaped off the track and the car fell fifty feet to the ground. It landed so that I could get out, and just after I did, it exploded.

“Half an hour later, this car pulls up to the track and this guy walks toward me and I knew he had bad news. He told me my father had died. I think he died at the same time I went over that fifty-foot drop. I shoulda been dead, see. I should’ve had at least a scratch. But I had nothin’, not even a bump on the head.”

++

In synchros like this, I invariably wonder if the father gave his life for his son, in some strange arrangement that  occurs within Indra’s net.

We decided to update the book with an additional chapter at the end about where some of the people who acted and worked on Vice are now, more than 25 years later. In researching that, we discovered that in November 1986, less than a year after we  had interviewed Robinson, he was badly injured on the Vice set when an explosion was detonated too soon. His legs were badly burned. The accident ended his stunt man career and he eventually moved on to  acting and worked as a cameraman.

The explosion sequence was included in an episode of Vice called Baby Blue. That photo at the top of the post is Robinson, caught in the fireball that ended his career as a stunt man.

Another oddity in this story, if not a synchro…three years after Robinson served as stuntman for Richard Pryor and escaped a deadly fire, Pryor himself was enveloped in flames while making the movie Bustin’ Loose. Pryor, however, wasn’t acting,; he was free-basing cocaine and drinking rum, an explosive combination in his case. No stuntman needed.

 

Posted in Miami Vice, synchronicity | 13 Comments

Bugging out

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes, skeptics and debunkers can go buggy in their attempts to dismiss UFO sightings. That was literally the case when seven cameras recorded the flight of  several UFOs at an air show in Chile as the craft darted around a formation of jets. The object was recorded from seven different angles and positions. So it was hard to dismiss.

Yet, dismissed it was by skeptics who boastfully said it was a bug – probably a beetle flying in front of the camera. The skeptics had looked at only one video when the pronouncement was made. The skeptics apparently had no expertise in examining digital images.

But others did. One Chilean analyst, Alberto Vergara, an expert in digital imaging, reported: “When we examine the whole scene frame by frame, we have been able to realize that [the object] has, apparently, moved at a speed far superior to any flying object of known manufacture. Therefore it is worthy of continuing to investigate its origin.”

Meanwhile Leslie Kean, author of  UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record decided to test the skeptics’ theory and send one of the videos, as well as still shots, to three prominent American entomologists, hopefully with a knowledge of Chilean bugs.

All three said it wasn’t a bug. “No idea what it is, but it does not seem to be an insect . . . altho very fast flying insects captured on slow shutter speeds do look like amorphous blurs or blobs. I am forwarding these to several colleagues and asking around,” wrote Brett C. Ratcliffe, professor and curator at the University of Nebraska State Museum and Department of Entomology.

A few days later, he wrote back. “I have queried several of my colleagues to see if anyone might have thought an insect could be responsible for the anomaly in the images. No one had any idea of what could have caused that.”

Kean went on to find an expert in Chilean insects and sent the same material. “When Beetles fly, their wings stand up, and the membranous wings that are under are flapping.  I have seen insects flying many times and their photo looks like a torpedo, is more oval, and that is why I can not see or imagine where the legs and wings could be.” She then said she would think about this further. Her description of typical beetle photos sounded a lot like the three images shown above. She ended her comment saying, “I would say they were not insects.”

So who was acting more scientific in this investigation – the skeptics or the believers? Take a look for yourself at the video…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsugEQIRkGQ

Could it be that the appearance of UFOs at an air show was intentional? A means of appearing before multiple cameras, and to keep us guessing?

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 6 Comments

E.A. Poe & Time Travel

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Synchronicity occurs under many conditions. But one environment that seems to attract meaningful coincidence is when you are focused on something to the extent that almost everything else disappears from your awareness. That was the case recently for David Wilson, publisher of Crossroad Press, when he was working on a fantasy novel called Nevermore.  In the novel, his main character takes two other characters on a vision ride to the past, where they see Edgar Allan Poe and Lenore.

Writes David: “Edgar travels with a crow named Grimm (after the brothers) and we learn his stories come in dreams and visions – he’s a mage, Grimm the familiar, but he has no magic to help his dying bride, Virginia.  Lenore is an artist.  She sees faces and people in trees, rocks, water, etc.  She draws what she sees, then painstakingly removes whatever traps the faces / people and frees them to move on to whatever is next.

“The point is that Poe theoretically MAY have written the first draft of The Raven at a roadhouse that used to sit on the border of NC and VA  – which is where they all meet. For some reason I look at GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES…and find they wrote a tale called “The Raven” – in which a young girl is imprisoned in the form of a raven by her foolish mother…and needs to be freed…”

Synchronicity. David told me the story because he knows about this blog and because I’ve laid a couple of strange synchros on him in e-mails – most recently about  how I had ‘coincidentally’ come in contact with the owners of two full-sized crystal skulls at the time when I was looking for royalty-free photos of crystal skulls for the book cover of my novel by the same name that David was publishing.

What David didn’t know, though, was that years ago I had written a novel called Romancing the Raven that involved the main character traveling back in time and meeting Poe.

 

Posted in synchronicity | 6 Comments

Along the ET Highway

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Nevada State Highway 375 extends for 98 miles, through some of the most desolate country in the U.S. It crosses three high desert valleys in south central Nevada – Tikaboo Valley, Sand Spring Valley, and Railroad Valley.  Other than a scattering of ranches, the town of Rachel, Nevada is the only settlement, but you won’t find much there. The only gas station closed some time ago, a few mobile homes are visible here and there. Yet, tourists flock  to Rachel. Why?

It’s less than 40 miles from Area 51. In fact, in 1996, the Nevada State Highway 375 was officially renamed The Extraterrestrial Highway.

The most famous spot in Rachel is out in the middle of nowhere – the Little A Le Inn,  It’s a restaurant and an inn, where a room costs between $45-55 a night and if you bring along your pet, an additional $35 deposit is required.  It also provides an RV hookup.

The area looks so desolate that I couldn’t imagine why anyone would decide to settle in Rachel, Nevada – except, of course, for its proximity to Area 51. However, 40 miles of open desert isn’t all that close, and if you’re crazy enough to hike in, you probably have to be a desert survivalist to do it.

But a visit could be interesting, all that open sky, no city lights to obscure the view at night. I wouldn’t mind a crazy trip like this, a journey through a mythic landscape that exists because of what supposedly happened at Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947.

The Little A Le Inn seems to be a kind of cultural icon, with everything a tribute to ETs. Here’s the menu:

53 miles from Rachel is the Alien Research Center in Hiko, Nevada. You sure couldn’t miss it!

And here’s a photo of the Black Mailbox, one of the landmarks, a spot from which to watch for UFOs.

And here’s a map showing the layout of Rachel and Groom Lake, where Area 51 is located.

Any takers for a trip like this?

 

 

Posted in aliens, area 51, synchronicity | 20 Comments

Mysterious object

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Trish and Rob

This object, photographed by an amateur astronomer, is truly strange.

Posted in synchronicity | 18 Comments

Writers Take Heed

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Trish and Rob

That image represents us, imprisoned by our perceptions. Our daughter, Megan, painted this beauty.

++

Tonight on the Huffington Post, I ran across an article on literary agents that sounded helpful.I was surprised to find it on HP. Both Rob and I have literary agents, so I read through it because I was curious about the advice an organization I’d never heard of was offering on agents.

It was about shady literary agents who are “looking for a quick buck.” These shady agents charge fees for reading editing, evaluations, or marketing. Okay, good advice so far. Although I’m sure there are shady agents, just as there are shady characters in every industry, I’ve met only two in my nearly thirty years as a published writer. Most agents are honest individuals who love books, love a good story, hope to sell them, and hope that one or more of them will exceed all expectations and hit the NY Times bestseller list.

The shady part in the industry is what’s cropping up now that ebooks are changing the face of publishing:

Third parties:  these guys are like the opportunistic uncle everyone shuns at the wedding. They are the parasites. The offer to scan your book, format it, create a cover and get it into all the outlets for a   steep upfront price. They also take 15% of the ebook price for their efforts and, usually, have a clause about exclusivity. Who are they?

The worst offender we’ve found so far is Argo Navis,  a “boutique” agency that is, unfortunately, signing up a number of literary agencies who have been around for decades and have bestselling authors with large back list titles – books that are out of print. By their calculation, it would cost me nearly seven grand to bring my back list titles into digital format. I can do this task myself for much, much less.

And oh, by the way, they only take agented writers – i.e., writers with extensive back lists who don’t have the time to figure this stuff out on their own and are happy to pay someone else to figure it out for them. Argo Navis will take you to the cleaners, as my dad used to say.

Writers Relief,  whose staff wrote the article for Huffington Post, is the second biggest offender in the third party category. Their site is friendly – we do this and that for you, the writer. We have this and that free service. We support the writer. Yada, yada. We help you get published. Really? How? Oh, they evaluate your manuscript, help you hone your characters, your plot, and send out query letters to editors, but of course they must be paid. They emphasize that they are not literary agents – who take no fees up front – and because they aren’t agents, they must be paid for their work.  Up front. Avoid this outfit. Like Argo-Navis, they’re a plague and are hoping to cash in for doing…what, exactly?

A third offender is the Curtis Agency, which some years ago,  started a branch to the company called e-reads. Rob signed up with his book, Crystal Skull, but first had to work off the $400 fee for formatting and cover design. He has yet to see a penny and it’s been about five years. Here’s the hideous cover they gave the book:

So Rob wrote e-reads to get the rights reversion to the novel. He received a note from Richard Curtis, the president of the agency,  telling him his contract (5 years) with e-reads had expired and if he would like to renew, they would give the book a new cover. BUT it would cost $195 up front and the renewal contract would be for 5 years. Rob told him no thanks, and sent him both an email and a letter in snail mail, requesting the rights reversion. Weeks later, they reverted the rights.

The fourth offender in this muddled picture is that publishers are loathe to revert rights, even when the book has been out of print for years. Kensington, my former publisher, has reverted rights to just 3 or the 12 books I did for them. Contractually, they are allowed to hold onto rights for SEVEN years after the book goes out of print. Hyperion, with whom I wrote three books, hasn’t even bothered responding to the request from Writers’ House (my agency) about rights’ reversions. I had to go through my present agent, who didn’t sell these books, in the hopes the request wouldn’t be ignored, as it was when I wrote them.

The bottom line is really fairly simple: as a writer, you now have many options that didn’t exist when Rob and I started out in the early 1980s.  If you’re a published writer with a back list to which you have the rights, your best bet is Crossroad Press.   Why?

Crossroad: First, there’s the split. Everything Crossroad earns on your books is split 80/20, with the 80% for the writer.  Even Amazon’s publishing program – 70/30 split – can’t beat that.  And with transmission fees for downloads, Amazon’s split actually comes out to about 67%. When you consider that the split for traditional publishers is 8-15% for the author, and the rest for the publisher, the Crossroad split is astounding.

Second: Crossroad doesn’t charge the author any upfront fees. Nothing. Nada. Zero.  They do it all – scanning, formatting for various markets, cover design. And they work with you. If the cover doesn’t suit you, then work with the designer until you’re satisfied.  They don’t create some totally despicable cover and never tell you about it. They do print on demand and audio books, where the split is 65/35.

Third: David Wilson has a vision for his company and it begins with the writers. As a writer himself, he understands the dynamics.

Smashwords: This organization is about writers. Got a book? Publish here. Yes, it’s difficult to wade through their 80 plus pages about formatting your book. And if you don’t want to slog through all that they maintain a list of people who will do it for you and design a cover, for a modest fee. That fee usually runs around $175 for back list titles that need to be scanned, and far less for books that simply need to be formatted and given a compelling cover. Smashwords takes 15% of the cover price you set for your ebooks, for books sold from their site. They also get your book into the various e-reader stores – Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple.

Amazon: Like its name, Amazon is the big guy in all of this. Their KDP Kindle publishing program is good. Yes, you can pay for the formatting and cover and all that, you can go through their createspace and put out some bucks to get your book in their store. But you can also do this for less money by hiring one of the smashwords people to format your book specifically for Amazon and their exclusive 90-day program.  We’re about to try out this exclusivity thing and will report back. One thing I love about Amazon: they have a free app that enables you to download a book for any kind of reading device. So even though I have an iPad, I don’t have to buy my books from Apple. I downloaded the kindle app for free and can read the books I buy from Amazon on that app.

Barnes and Noble: Their Pubit publishing program is good. But Barnes and Noble doesn’t sell anywhere near the number of books that Amazon does. Their accounting sheet is easier to read, but as far as I know there’s no app that allows you to buy a book from their store that can be read on any device.

What I Wish: That traditional publishing will survive. The benefits? They pay advances. The detractions? Just about everything else.  Why should any publisher get 90-92% of retail price on any book? Why is it that publishers occupy offices on Fifth Avenue, while most of their writers live in the suburbs and worry about meeting their mortgage payments? About getting their kids through college? What would happen to the industry if writers like King and Patterson,  Nora Roberts and Dan Brown suddenly decided to go it alone?

As my agent mentioned the other day, there are now at least 1,000 fewer bookstores today than there were last year. That number is staggering.

You get the idea here. Publishing as it exists now, publishing -like so many other businesses and industries-  is headed for Armageddon if it doesn’t change its current business model. Writers have a clearer sense of their own power: without them, publishers and bookstore and ebooks would not exist. It begins with the writers, it ends with the writers. If you screw your writers, you ultimately screw yourself.

 

Posted in publishing, synchronicity, writers | 8 Comments

Another Teapot synchro

Posted on November 8, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a synchro from Gabe Carlson (aka Max) of Minneapolis that adds to his earlier mind-boggling synchronicity that involved  a pair of identical teapots that mysteriously came together in his life. Apparently, the nature of reality is still steeping in Gabe’s unconscious mind.

***

Today four of us went to the thrift store for the first time in many months. On the way there, discussing the pros and cons of different store options,  I loudly declared that I was going to find another magic teapot. I guess I had no expectation that I really was going to find a teapot, but maybe was hoping that I’d find something serendipitous and synchronistic – thrift stores are often good for that, with their dense assortment of randomness.

I’d already forgotten my pronouncement by the time we arrived, but still headed to the kitchen section first, thinking that my girlfriend Kristin might want to browse for something useful for her canning/cooking/pickling.

Of course, that was the section were teapots are found, and where I’d bought one of the original two.

Before I could even start down the kitchen aisle, Kristin suggested that we head down further to look at the furniture. So we did. We ‘d been in the store for maybe three minutes when she pointed out the first item of interest – a series of square boards connected by strapping, to be used as some kind of hanging shelf unit.

When Kristin pulled it off the shelf to examine it, letting it hang down to the floor, I happened to notice the back of a pin on one of the straps. There was just one – somebody had once stuck a single decorative pin into the strapping. But the way it was hanging, I couldn’t see the front of it.

After asking her a few times what it was (she had no idea what I was referring to) I managed to get hold of the strap, and twist it around so we could both see … the silvery teapot shining there.

We both started laughing, mores o when we remembered that I’d actually announced that I was going to find a magic teapot today.

Needless to say, that alone made the entire trip more than worthwhile. I didn’t even look very hard for anything else, since I’d found what I’d been looking for, right off the bat – yet another wink, another nudge, another confirmation of all the weird and seemingly irrational things I’ve found myself increasingly daring to believe since my mystical experience 7 years ago.

I’m still not sure what it means … but it certainly makes things a lot more interesting. Gabe’s blog is called Teapots Happen.

A post-script: Gabe followed up a few days later with this comment.

Oh! and I forgot to mention something cool about the teapot pin.

My girlfriend Kristin was one of the friends I was with at the thrift store when I found the first of my two teapots in 2006. In fact, she was the main person I kept coming up to, trying to understand why I was so compelled to buy the rather utilitarian-looking but nonfunctional teapot.

Unique Thrift - teapot synchronicity HQ

She’d quite sensibly advised me not to buy it, but I did anyway. So, it was an extra awesome synchronicity to not only accidentally find a teapot after declaring my intention to do so – but to find it with her, stuck onto an object she’d chosen … and at a Unique Thrift Store, just like 2006.


Posted in synchronicity | 13 Comments

A WIN!

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Trish and Rob

Fantastic! The astrologers were wrong about the long term repercussions – Obama won tonight – not weeks from now.It was a dicier election, a tougher route to re-eleciton, but…

…the astrologers, I think, were right about the long lines, attempts at voter suppression, voter purging, and attempts by republican governors like Rick Scott of Florida to shorten early voting days. It’s an instance where the collective will of the people overcame everything else.

Onward….

 

 

 

Posted in synchronicity | 24 Comments