Lewis Perdue's Blog, page 8

My Brush With Old Nazis, Looted Art And Daughter of God

Today’s headlines about the trove of priceless artworks looted by the Nazi’s in WWII brought back a lot of memories (Lost Nazi art: Unknown Chagall among paintings in Munich flat.)

Back in the early 1980s, I stood outside that apartment building in Munich while on my research quest for the facts and history I ultimately used to write my thriller Daughter of God on the divine feminine roots of Christianity.

That book has been a mixed blessing ever since. The blessing is that it remains one of the best books I have ever written.

But I needed to go to Zurich for the next step of my investigation and that’s where a bunch of old Nazis threatened to kill me.

Then, in 2003 The Da Vinci Code ripped off much of Daughter of God (and my predecessor hook, The Linz Testament.)

 

In Search Of Looted Art

At any rate, this is the story of sources told me in 1984 about the loot found in that Munich apartment, why I had to go to Zurich … and how Zurich ultimately led authorities to the looted art in Munich. Most of the following was written in 1999 for the publication of Daughter of God by McMillan/Forge.

Desperation has frequently been my muse. As an investigative reporter in Washington D.C. following the Koreagate bribery corruption scandal in the late 1970s, I obtained documents shredded by the scandal’s key perpetrator, Tongsun Park and then invented a way to put them back together.

Despite the technical challenges, threats from the Korean CIA, and attempts by the House Ethics committee to take the shreds away, I managed to piece them into a series of articles that helped send a number of people to prison including a Congressman.

I have always preferred to build my novels on a solid foundation of fact, and so my preparation for Daughter of God included a massive amount of historical investigation that included hands-on research at the U.S. National Archives into the Art Looting Investigative Unit of the OSS (the World War II precursor of the CIA). I set as my goal the task of locating at least one painting that had disappeared into Nazi hands.

So, about six years after the Koreagate experience – which taught me that desperation was my friend – I found myself at an investigative dead-end on a gray, snowy day in Munich where the trail of the art stolen by the Nazis had grown colder than even the December weather.

All roads led to Munich. And they all disappeared there as well. I remembered being very depressed at coming all this way and finding all avenues closed.

How Did I Find The Old Nazi?

Whenever I find myself discouraged, I walk, walk and think. I walked for hours that day. Suddenly, without any sort of premeditation at all, I found myself standing in front of the offices of the Abend Zeitung – the Afternoon Daily Times. Perhaps there was a reporter, a journalist like me, who might be able to point me in the right direction. I was a fairly agnostic semi-religious person then, having been completely turned off by the hypocritical racism and twisted logic of having been raised a fundamentalist Protestant in Mississippi.

So it’s only now, more than fifteen years later, that I have begun to believe that my steps had been guided that day. I met Werner Meyer, a post WWII German who had received his journalism degree in the United States and who just happened to have a hobby of trying to track some original musical scores of the composer Wagner, scores which had disappeared through Nazi hands as well.

The Schwabing Bomb Shelter

Meyer introduced me to Heinrich Heim, an old Nazi who lived alone in an unheated WWII bomb shelter. Heim was Hitler’s main adjutant for the art thefts and by the end of this extraordinary meeting, I walked out with a photo and document that had once been part of Hitler’s most treasured files. Snow, sleet, and freezing rain poured down on us that evening as we parked Werner’s car in a dark unpaved lot and made our way down a cluttered alley littered with paper and illuminated by a naked streetlight bulb.

Werner knocked at the metal blast shield that served as Heim’s front door.

Werner told me that Heim lived in constant terror of retribution from the Israelis because-even though he did serve some time in an Allied prison – there are many who believe he was involved in activities far more heinous than merely being Hitler’s main adjutant for coordinating art thefts. After several minutes, Heim came to the door and after some difficulty pushed back the protective barrier and welcomed us.

The phrase “stooped but unbowed” characterized the old Nazi precisely. At first glance, he looked like a street derelict, dressed as he was in two overcoats and a layered succession of sweaters and shirts. But Heim’s eyes still shone with a bright pale icy blue that could have served as a model for Hitler’s virile Aryan superman.

Hitler’s former aide showed us into the room in which he conducted his research, and once we were seated amid the prodigious clutter of papers, solicitously placed threadbare blankets over our knees lest we get cold. The bomb shelter was not heated. Meyer began to talk with Heim as I, with a novice’s grasp of the German language, listened. They talked only a few minutes before Heim began to speak fondly of Frederick Stahl, the painter favored by Hitler and other Nazis mentioned in this book. Heim quickly grew misty-eyed as he remembered Stahl and, I suppose, the old days. He spoke of the beauty of Stahl’s work and of how Hitler treated the artist as if he were a brother, or perhaps a surrogate father.

After a time, the old Nazi produced a sheaf of papers and an envelope of small photographs. They were all small black and whites, about two inches on a side and each depicting a painting. All the paintings were Stahl’s and all were inventoried on a sheet of paper Heim handed to me. The paintings, he said, had disappeared having last been seen in Zurich just before the fall of the Third Reich. He wouldn’t say exactly when they had been seen or by whom. He gave me one of the photographs and the inventory after I promised to look for the paintings and let him know through Werner if I had made any progress. This is the painting at the center of Daughter of God.

To Zurich!

From Munich, I went to Zurich to learn if there were any remaining traces of the Stahl paintings. I made inquiries and obtained the names of several art galleries that had been in existence during the period of the paintings’ disappearance. I went to the oldest of the galleries and spoke with the owner. I showed him the picture Heim had given me and said that I represented a wealthy collector who was interested in acquiring the Stahl painting. The man threw me out of his gallery and threatened to call the police if I did not leave the neighborhood quickly. He said he had nothing to do with the paintings and furthermore did not want anything to do with them or with the people who might be interested in them. I had a difficult time determining whether he was frightened or angry. Probably both. I was certainly frightened. In the course of my investigative reporting, I had had my life threatened before and had managed to press on, undeterred until I had gotten my story. But that was in the past and I was now committed to staying healthy and hearty. Ending up missing in Zurich was not my idea of how to spend the holiday season.

What Happened After The Death Threat?

I took the first train back to Munich the next morning. I made several other visits to scenes of the old art crimes — to Salzburg, Vienna, Amsterdam and finally to an old salt mine on the banks of the Altaussersee, a deep narrow lake in the Austrian Alps. Along this route, I interviewed other art experts, historians, museum and gallery owners. To this day I remain ignorant of where the Stahl paintings are, and what’s more, I don’t think it would be healthy to know.

That meeting, the session with the old Nazi and subsequent events changed my book from one about stolen art, to one about faith and religion in which the stolen art played a key role. It began for me a personal journey into my own faith and relationship with my Creator. That journey still continues for me, but back then it was just a great track for an investigative journalist to follow.

What Other Kinds of Research Did I Do for This Book?

Research for Daughter of God took me back to the foundations of Western religion, looking at how the concept of God changed from female to male. I interviewed more than 40 experts: ordained clergy and university scholars in Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In the process, I studied more than 100 books on the subject including the Koran, the Old and New Testaments in the Christian Bible, the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Torah, the Readings and the Prophets, translations of portions of the Gnostic Gospels and other books

How much of the story is true?

Daughter of God is fiction based on fact, much of which is easily verified. For example, the true stories of the art theft and how escaping SS troops used looted art to buy their freedom. You can rest firm in the knowledge that many of the art works lost during the war are hanging on the walls of chateaux in the Alps. Many more rest beneath the streets of Zurich. As I learned first hand, many of these are fantastically valuable, far, far more valuable than the estimation of a human life for someone asking the wrong questions.

What Relevance Does This Have for Today and the New Millennium?

The last years of the Twentieth Century have been filled with long-overdue attempts to locate looted art and return it to its rightful owners. The sections of this book dealing with the Nicean Conference and the events and religious controversies leading up to it are true and far better documented than any of the scriptures in the Hebrew or Christian Bible or the Muslim Quran. It is also a matter of public record that Pope Pius XII turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the atrocities of the Third Reich. The recent book, “Hitler’s Pope” by John Cornwell make for an even more compelling case.

Students of history, theology, geography, and political science will find many, many more things in this book that are true. Did an historical Sophia exist?

Sophia means “wisdom” in Greek.

If you read Proverbs Chapter 8, you will find a first person soliloquy by her – one of the few places in the Jewish/Christian scriptures where the male-dominated editing failed to remove a mention of the feminine divine. To the ancient Greeks and to the modern-day Eastern Orthodox churches, Sophia is a very real, historical woman – or a concept made into flesh. Indeed, the earliest versions of scripture indicate that the Holy Spirit in the Christian Trinity is none other than Sophia. It requires no stretch of the imagination to believe that Sophia is the modern-day name for the Great Goddess of antiquity that stretches far beyond written history back to the time when people conceived of God as a woman.

On the other hand, I’m fairly sure that the parts about Sophia as a Fourth Century flesh-and-blood woman are my imagination, created as they were from fragments of intriguing research about the early Christian church and the seminal roles that women played in it, roles which the male-dominated spiritual revisionists have tried to excise. They have been largely successful, but significant references remain. As I said before, just read Proverbs or the Song of Solomon where Wisdom is given her due.

To this day, the Catholic Church and other faiths – especially the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches — are still ambivalent about a mythical Sophia. Some, particularly those who follow Gnosticism, say she is the prime creator of the universe. Others believe in her as the feminine part of an androgynous God and still others identify her as the embodiment of Wisdom or even the Logos of the Christian Trinity before it was thoroughly masculinized. Sophia has a place in history, but where in history is still to be determined.

What is Daughter of God About?

When fine art expert Zoe Ridgeway is summoned to Zurich to examine an illicitly obtained collection of paintings, sculpture and religious artifacts of fabulous value, she has no idea that she will be snared in a centuries-long quest for a priceless reliquary that has altered history for the worse each time it has emerged from obscurity.

The reliquary is irrefutable proof of a Messiah, a woman named Sophia. Kidnapped from her hotel room, Zoe is drawn into a web of conspiracy, murder and intrigue that begins and ends with the mystery of Sophia – and all the powerful forces who seek to protect their patriarchies from a divinely feminine truth.

As Zoe struggles to free herself, she is the object of an intense search by her husband, former police detective Seth Ridgeway. But a shadowy organization connected to both U.S. intelligence and the Vatican are also hunting her. And an ambitious Cardinal who wants to use Sophia to blackmail his way to the papacy also wants to capture Zoe.

Zoe and Seth embark on an adventure of faith and worldly purpose to keep the holy object from continuing to be used for evil, guided by an old priest who last saw Sophia’s reliquary more than half a century ago.

For More Information:

Da Vinci Code Plagiarism
Books on the religious aspects.
Links on the religious aspects.
Books on the art theft aspects.
Links on the art theft aspects.

Praying For The Long, Long, Long Autumn Of Life

When I climb new mountains, it’s an enjoyable contest with rocks, gravity, altitude, path finding and the elements. New sights, new challenges, some fears … new things to think through, be careful of, revel in, be awed by. Total absorption in each moment.

But when I get home to Sonoma, I turn to the Mayacamas or Sonoma Mountain, to wooded trails that I have hiked for 23 years now.

Without the challenge of a new Sierra peak to distract me, the familiar, wooded trails offer time to reflect.

I first hiked these trails alone.

Then with my children.

Alone again now that they have gone off to college or other activities that leave no time hiking. The trails  are marked for me with their faded footprints and the spent seconds and minutes years of the past. With every step, the cobwebs of memories in my face, the felt but unseen webs of now-grown children only children then.

Life has turned into autumn.

For sure, I can do most everything now that I could in the prime of summer. But now, the clear recognition that this will not always be the case.

So,

I pray for the long, long, long autumn with my loved ones. And the short, short, short winter.

Parts of this post written to All At Once by The Airborne Toxic Event

Deadly MacBook Chargers Left Out Of Apple Buyback

Apple has offered a buy-back for third-party iPhone, iPad and iPod chargers after, according to the LA Times, “a young woman in China died after using her iPhone while it was plugged in and charging through a third-party USB adapter.”

But, the even-more-lethal counterfeit MacBook chargers are not part of the program.

(Scroll down to see how you can determine if your MacBook Pro is a fake)

DEADLY DEVICES FIRST REVEALED IN APRIL

I first wrote about these potentially deadly counterfeit devices back on April 16: Fake MacBook Power Supply Self-Destructs.

Here is an updated edition of that post:

My MacBook Pro computer is my writing tool. I take it everywhere, so I needed a second power brick to travel. The charger at the Apple store was $80. So, late last month, I turned to Amazon and bought a 60 watt supply for $38.87 (below) from one of their Marketplace vendors.

The purchase was no bargain at all.

The first time I unplugged the power supply, the plug fell apart (below)

POTENTIALLY FATAL MALFUNCTION

In what could have become a fatal problem, the plug prongs remained in the AC socket, exposing the interior contacts which were still hot with 110-volt AC.

Fortunately, this had been plugged into a power strip that I could turn off easily.

It would have been a different story if the charger had been plugged into the wall.

CONFIRMED COUNTERFEIT

The charger turned out to be a counterfeit. I had an Apple employee confirm the counterfeit status.

Amazon refunded my money immediately. Kudos.

HOW TO TELL IF YOUR MACBOOK CHARGER IS A FAKE

The counterfeits are very realistic, the differences mostly subtle. Some less so.

The image below shows the counterfeit at the top genuine at the bottom. Note the difference in the typeface. The genuine Apple typeface is lighter, more subtle.

Note the difference in the stress reliever fitting where the cord attaches to the brick. The counterfeit (obviously on left with broken AC plug) is shorter, thicker, and has a little hole in it.

In addition, the Apple logo on the counterfeit one is slick and shiny like the rest of the brick while the genuine Apple has a matte finish. Does not show up well in photos.

The photo below shows the genuine Apple on the left. Counterfeit on right. The Apple cord is supple and has a matte texture on the insulation. It coils well and resists kinking.

The counterfeit (right) has a stiff cord with a slick shiny surface. It’s stiff and easily kinks.

The counterfeit (below), is lighter – 197 grams.

The real Apple power supply, below, is heavier, 234 grams.

There are other differences, especially if you open up the case. But I don’t want to crack open the genuine article.

Apple Replaces Fake Killer USB Chargers. Why Not Deadly Fakes For MacBooks?

Apple is offering $10 replacements for third-party chargers for iPhones, iPads and iPods after reports that, according to the LA Times, “a young woman in China died after using her iPhone while it was plugged in and charging through a third-party USB adapter.”

The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant will accept third-party USB adapters and in return sell customers official Apple USB adapters for $10, about half off the typical price. USB adapters are used to connect iPhone, iPad and iPod USB cables into wall outlets.

NO PROGRAM FOR POTENTIALLY DEADLIER FAKE MACBOOK ADAPTERS

A lot of writers — me included — use MacBooks, but the program does not include their adapters where fake chargers could be even more deadly because they tend to fall apart in such a way as to expose people to 110-volt AC wall current. See this previous post for personal experience with that (Fake MacBook Power Supply Self-Destructs).

Without mentioning the reported death in China, Apple said in this support post on their web site that:

Recent reports have suggested that some counterfeit and third party adapters may not be designed properly and could result in safety issues. While not all third party adapters have an issue, we are announcing a USB Power Adapter Takeback Program to enable customers to acquire properly designed adapters.

Customer safety is a top priority at Apple. That’s why all of our products — including USB power adapters for iPhone, iPad, and iPod — undergo rigorous testing for safety and reliability and are designed to meet government safety standards around the world.

Starting August 16, 2013, if you have concerns about any of your USB power adapters, you can drop them off at an Apple Retail Store or at an Apple Authorized Service Provider. We will ensure that these adapters are disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

If you need a replacement adapter to charge your iPhone, iPad, or iPod, we recommend getting an Apple USB power adapter. For a limited time, you can purchase one Apple USB power adapter at a special price — $10 USD or approximate equivalent in local currency. To qualify, you must turn in at least one USB power adapter and bring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to an Apple Retail Store or participating Apple Authorized Service Provider for serial number validation. The special pricing on Apple USB power adapters is limited to one adapter for each iPhone, iPad, and iPod you own and is valid until October 18, 2013.

Die By Wire’s AirBus GPS Hacking: It’s Real, Bro’

I’ve taken more than a few licks from skeptical readers who dispute the possibility of aircraft GPS hacking that plays a key role in my thriller, Die By Wire.

It doesn’t particularly matter to those folks that I research the living hell out of what I put into my thrillers. Whether it’s the science, the history or the weapons, you can count on them being accurate and the consequences somewhere between probably or certain.

Yes, the fly-by-wire systems on a modern aircraft are a meatspace version of Flight Simulator and the computers have verifiably malfunctioned and can be hacked.And one of the most vulnerable components is the Global Positioning System – GPS.

In fact, GPS vulnerabilities have been known widely since this 2001 U.S. Department of Transportation study: Volpe GPS Vulnerability. In the past 12 years, many of the hacks and spoofs that were feared in 2001 have come true.

FLY-BY-WIRE  AVIATION: GLORIFIED, JOY-STICK-CONTROLLED VIDEO GAMES

Some GPS and aviation exploits have been reported to authorities, others have been covered up for fear that nobody would want to fly on an aircraft that’s a glorified video game controlled by a computer joy stick

Note: Spoofing and hacking are often used interchangeably. Spoofing is the preferred term for unauthorized intrusions into the radio signals that communicate with satellites, drones, GPS and other distant systems.

GPS TREMENDOUSLY VULNERABLE

Civilian GPS — from an Airbus or oil tanker all the way doewn to your Garmin or smartphone — relies on UNencrypted signals. Unencrypted = easy spoof.

The military uses encrypted GPS which is more resistant to spoofing, but not invulnerable. Indeed, every global military is developing alternatives to GPS whose signals are very weak and easy to spoof and disrupt.

For more on that see: US Army Explores GPS Replacement and New GPS Rival Is Hack-Proof).

Oh … and that last headline is badly worded.

Nothing is hack-proof. There are two kinds of computer and electronic systems: those that have been hacked and those that will be hacked. Count on it.

30% OF WORLDS’S GPS: DOWN IN 45 SEC WITH A LAPTOP

Semi-spoiler alert: It wasn’t just coincidence that I chose laptops as the means for the GPS hack/spoof in Die By Wire.

Research shows that “Up to 30 percent of the world’s Global Positioning System infrastructure could be taken offline by a 45-second message sent from equipment that costs only $2,500.”

Click here for the scientific paper with all the details of the link above: GPS Software Hacking

RECENT GPS SPOOF/HACK JUST MORE PROOF

According to a recent PBS segment (Researchers Show Potential Power of GPS Spoofing):

“In June, a 213-foot luxury yacht sailed off the southern coast of Italy, when, suddenly, it veered off course. But this was no sinister act worthy of a spy flick. Instead, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin had deliberately coerced the $80 million vessel from its track, without physically taking the helm.”

Another telling of that tale from a scientific web site offer more details: UT Austin researchers successfully spoof an $80 million yacht at sea

GO AHEAD, SKEPTICS, LAUGH

But, maybe you should avoid reading Die By Wire on your next trip.

More about Die By Wire and my other thrillers at LewisPerdue.com

Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling & … Lewis Perdue?

Just call it “The Da Vinci Cup Of Gold Legacy.”

Weird thing, ordinary thriller writer like me getting all wrapped up with two of the biggest grossing authors of all time.

CYBER-DETECTING THE “AUTHORIAL FINGERPRINT”

But there it was, all plain to see in the media and all over the internet: As reported by the Author’s Guild, a nifty software system had outed J.K. Rowling:

“A lesson on how predictable our prose can be from Patrick Juola, a professor of computer science at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, who explained to Time how he identified similarities between The Cuckoo’s Calling  and Rowling’s previous books.

“Juola uses a program — Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program, which is a free download available for anyone to play around with — to pull out the hundred most frequent words across an author’s vocabulary. This step eliminates rare words, character names and plot points, leaving him with words like of and but, ranked by usage. Those words might seem inconsequential, but they leave an authorial fingerprint on any word’.”

ET TU DAN BROWN?

Interesting thing, is that the same system of examining text that Juola described is what produced the initial indictment of The Da Vinci Code’s plagiarism of my books, Daughter of God and The Da Vinci Legacy.

John Olsson, the internationally renowned forensic linguist who called Brown’s plagiarism the worst he had ever seen, said that his software and examination went far beyond Juola’s methods to conclusively establish Brown’s plagiarism.

The most complete telling of the plagiarism issue was covered in the July 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. The article was written by then-Newsweek reporter and VF contributor Seth Mnookin.

A text of that is here: The Da Vinci Clone?
A pdf of The Da Vinci Clone? — complete with photos — is here. But it’s a long download.

Mnookin is now a science book author and a faculty member at MIT.

DIFFERENT VENUES, DIFFERENT OUTCOMES

Of course, there is nothing wrong with an author using a pseudonym or plagiarizing themselves. Rowling’s trial in the court of public opinion was a very enjoyable one for all concerned.

The Dan Brown/DaVinci Code thing began exactly ten years ago when I was on the receiving end of scores of emails from all over the country from readers of my books calling my attention to the plagiarism.

RANDOM GOES ALL DG SORORITY GIRL

When I contacted Random House inquiring about this (but not accusing) , they went all DG Sorority Girl on me and cranked up a legal and PR machine to protect their multi-million-dollar property.

In the end, Random House sued me to shut me up.

$300,000 TO HIDE THE TRUTH

They spent $300,000+ on high-priced lawyers to get a friendly court and a judge that prohibited a jury trial and prohibited the many expert witnesses and their testimony that proved the plagiarism. And avoided having Dan Brown under oath on the stand before a jury.

Random House never responded to questions about why they were so terrified of the evidence that they spent heavily to keep it out of court. Yes, the truth can hurt.

The judge — who had no professional qualifications related to literary plagiarism — ruled in favor of Random House who promptly asked the court to make me pay the $300,oo0 in their legal fees.

FEDERAL MAGISTRATE SIDES WITH PERDUE

A federal magistrate, charged with determining if I should pay, wrote an astounding opinion that basically contradicted the trial judge’s conclusions and ruled that Random House should eat their own legal fees.

Former science book author and Newsweek reporter Seth Mnookin — now on the faculty at MIT — offered a postscript to this in a 2006 piece: The ongoing saga of The Da Vinci Code

I paid no legal fees or expert witness fees. I was represented pro bono because all those who supported me felt that the case was clearly plagiarism.

And it all started ten years ago this month.

QUO VADIS?

There’s no escaping the fact that hassling with the plagiarism set my life on a different trajectory. Looking back over the last ten years, it’s clear that Random House’s DG Sorority Girl smear promoted by big, high-priced PR flacks has intimidated the timid and uninformed in the publishing industry.

Few know of Random’s expensive cover-up of the evidence. Because of that, my defense of my hard work makes me seem like a toxic troublemaker. But with my children looking on, I could either run from the bully or stand up. And I did not want to teach my kids to appease bullies.

So yeah, I took some knocks. But the past 10 years have been fantastic doing things I would probably not have.

TECH STARTUP: I sold Pocketpass, a web payments company that I had founded (and created the first patent filings on mobile payments).

WINE START-UP: I started a wine trade industry publication (Wine Industry Insight) and it has the largest subscribership in North America. Ditto for its expensive behind-the-paywall pub, Wine Executive News.

FACEBOOK WINE APP: My Facebook wine rating app, SavvyTaste has been a fun development sandbox that’s led me to create a new recommendation engine that will be better than the ones used by Amazon, Netflix … and anyone in the wine industry. Working with a top Silicon Valley patent attorney on that right now.

TEACHING: My wine involvement has led to a teaching position in the MBA program at Sonoma State University. It’s a different gig than my faculty posts at Cornell and UCLA, but it has significant strengths, is a real asset to the area and populated by students every bit as bright as I’ve taught before.

SCIENCE BOOK: Then there’s a non-fiction science book in the works, New Silent Spring, in collaboration with a top East Coast biologist. NSS is in stealth mode right now, so can’t say more.

TACTICAL TREKKER: There’s my mountaineering and backpacking site — Tactical Trekker — that’s in the monetizing stages and has led me into designing and licensing some new gear. Trademarks are in the works thanks to Napa law firm Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty.

ANOTHER THRILLER: I’ve written another thriller — Die By Wire — and acquired the rights back to most of my backlist. I’m gradually returning them to publication. All that’s here at lewisperdue.com

Would I be doing all this had the Da Vinci Code plagiarism dust-up happened?

Okay, the thriller for sure. And probably a few more.

But the rest: Most probably not.

So, I can be grateful for the totally unexpected trajectories my life has taken.

Random House got the legal bills and Dan Brown got the money.

I got the writing credit (which was all I wanted) and I get to spend it with the most wonderful family on the planet: William, 20; Katherine, 15 and wife Megan (age classified) … married 32 years last month.

Been one helluva ride (so far) and I wouldn’t change a thing.

FURTHER GORY DETAILS

If you haven’t had enough of all this, click on over to:

The Da Vinci Crock, and/or
The Da Vinci Legacy

Book Bastards: Loveable Books, Loathable Writers

“Tolstoy I’m sure was an incredible jackass, but I still love him. I still love Stevens, I still love Pound. If we didn’t read people who were bastards, we’d never read anything. Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

We bastards love people who love our books, regardless.

Read the rest of this excellent NYTimes article.

 

Writers: Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up … EVER!

Debut novel rejected 47 times makes Booker Prize longlist

“AN author whose book was rejected 47 times before it was finally published is among three Irish writers to make the longlist of the world’s most important literary prize, the Man Booker Prize.

“Donal Ryan’s debut novel, ‘The Spinning Heart’, completed more than two years ago, was plucked out of the slush pile by an intern working at Lilliput Press in Dublin who raved about it to the publisher, Anthony Farrell.

“It has catapulted Mr Ryan alongside fellow Irishmen Colum McCann and Colm Toibin on to the longlist of 13, the famous Booker baker’s dozen, for the award.”

Read the rest of this story and prepare to be inspired if you have a stack of rejection slips.

 

 

Amazonians Won’t Let Amazon Own The Amazon

Amazon can’t have a monopoly on the Amazon like they almost do with books.

According to The Register: “Web supermarket Amazon’s bid to create new top-level domain name .amazon has hit a dead end…Committee members of internet overlord ICANN – which oversees the world’s DNS and other such technical stuff – rejected the e-tailer’s application to control and administer .amazon.”

“Opposition to Amazon’s .gTLD application was spearheaded by representatives of Brazil and Peru, through which the Amazon River flows…

“Sticking point is the fact that the word Amazon means more than cheap online deals to the people of South America; thus, Brazil and Peru claimed legal and cultural hold on the name.”

Book Machines Might Save Book Stores

Books A Million is the first chain to install on-demand physical book machines. These will be Espresso Book Machines from On Demand Books

BAM customers have access to seven million titles, many from major publishers including  Random House, W.W. Norton, and Simon & Schuster. Customers can also print self-published works or any user-generated content pick it up in the store.

This could offer the same instant gratification as an ebook. The trick will be to satisfy the eye-catching cover attraction and browsing behavior of books already in the story.

And why couldn’t this machine offer an ebook download via WiFi?