This is not satire. The publishing shakeout and what happens to self publishing is going to be one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. It simply cannot continue as it is. I received something the other day from one of the major romance websites which was appaling. They stated that they are receiving SEVERAL HUNDRED ebooks every month. Their authors would like reviews.

How on earth can anything work when everyone with a computer is now sending out a "book"? I hear in the industry that there are more and more submissions of lower and lower quality. I have to assume that the variation in the quality of the ebooks must be huge. And even if some of them are really good there is the reality of marketing. A good review is only the beginning.

I have to confess that I am stumped. How can you possibly screen these many submissions? How do you work to get worthwhile material out there? How do you prevent it simply becoming a matter of how much money the author has to throw at the project?

And then I see that Ed Koch has a children's book out there. Of, pleeese. This morning Gloria Estefan was on CNN with her new children's book. Like they actually wrote these things. I doubt it.

All of this in the face of a declining readership, video games, manga and all the rest.

This looks more and more like a train wreck out of which something will come. But what will it be?

Print on demand! It is almost time for us to do print on demand for the second book, A Circle of Dreams. But I can't help having an association between print on demand and sci fi type Pods. You know the kind. They take over human bodies and propogate aliens.

Is it possible that there is some meaning to this association given the marked changes in the publishing industry. Is it possible that the PODs will take over? Perhaps morphing into some as yet unrecognized form of publishing? Perhaps develop a life of their own which might stamp out publishing as we know it? Then, just when we thought we were sending out our writings for review we might find the material was changed into something we had not intended. Something alien. Our covers would change and we might have terrible visions appearing on them. Maybe even pictures of people like George Bush or Howard Dean.

Is this so far fetched? We are hearing daily about the threat of bird flu. A pandemic which may be perched nearby and ready to fly in among us and decimate our world. Global disaster is just around the corner. I know it's true because I heard it on Fox and CNN. Stay tuned.

Have we opened Pandora's box and loosed terrible plagues on ourselves? Bird flu decimating the world. PODs running rampant in the publishing industry. Are we to have a podemic?

I received additional confirmation yesterday that something terrible was wrong when our website designer told me that she had found something which was "populating in the form manager." She assures me that she can get it under control but I remain alarmed.

I hope I haven't alarmed you unnecessarily but in these dangerous times you can't be too vigilant. One must be especially vigilant when it comes to publishing where change is occurring too fast. Change is dangerous. Where will it all end?

Flash! Breaking news! A further indication of disorder in the world. There has been an explosion in a Purdue chicken processing plant in Salisbury, Maryland. Rumor has it that a chicken was seen entering the plant wearing a suicide vest.

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Column 12 - Family Life is a Saga
We are now close to the publish date of the second edition of A Dream Across Time. The launch of our publishing venture is largely complete and now I plan to return to writing the columns I promised.

The more we are writing, the more I am thinking about what we write and why. Are these merely stories and pastimes for our amusement? Is the reader to take something away other than a few pleasant hours spent on an interesting story? And, is the writer to take something away other than the satisfaction of a completed project?

My wife and I wonder how we got here? We built a home in the Caribbean and it took over our lives. The home quickly expanded from a starter cottage to a villa. Its care and feeding spawned a business selling short term villa rentals. The experiences in the islands gave birth to the formation of stories about people who might just as well be real.

And then we started writing as a joint project we would enjoy. Our lives got crowded pretty fast. Characters walked in the door. Even a whole book walked in the door. I came home one day from running errands and laid out the story for the second book which had just materialized. It’s called A Circle of Dreams.

Where was this coming from so late in our lives?

We puzzled over it. We thought about the very beginning of our relationship. Glorious and extremely difficult times. Our marriages were deteriorating. No, they were failing. We had found each other as our lives were sinking. In such desperate moments you fly away together.

Most of our friends in that time could be best described as hippies. Others were in the forefront of the reform movement of the time. Mala started making jewelry and we spent more time with craftspeople. An intensely interesting and creative period.

Then another part of reality visited itself on us. We remarried and had four children to tend. They were going through divorces also and had to reconstruct their lives. There was now no time for self indulgence. Much of who we were got put away in the interest of family. When you have children, your primary job is raising children.

Decades passed and one day we went to a place far far away in the Caribbean. We stepped out of our culture and a whole new cultural landscape stretched out before us. Many of the constraints we had felt for so long were shed. It was time for our fundamental natures to be reasserted. Looking back it was clear that we were living our own saga and our venture into the Caribbean was the latest part of our saga.

Don’t we all have our own sagas? We simply can’t see our life as a saga because we are within it. We move through the stages of our lives. Such things as falling in love, having a career and seeing your children arrive are parts of the saga. As we go through our childhood we go through all the stages of personality development only to find that our development continues in our adult lives. Getting "there" isn’t half the fun. It is the whole of life. We know where the end leaves us and that is not what we are seeking. It is the living of life. We just need to step back once in awhile and view our own saga.

We were criticized for writing a romance about a woman who was married and had a marriage in trouble. Did we perhaps recapitulate part of our own trip? Of course we did. And we are writing about life. Finding your mate and living happily ever after is lovely but it is not the end. The saga continues.

Our heroine, Jamie, comes out in triumph having been tested. She is stronger and has her beloved partner. As writers we have chosen not to move on to another similar story but to continue her story. The story of her family. The story of this family reflects the story of all of us. And, as you will see, we are bringing in a paranormal element to enrich the stories. In that fashion we can highlight the richest, mythological elements of human existence. Through mythology we can convey the reality of existence in a way that goes beyond the so-called facts.

When it is all said and done, fiction writing is a way to affirm the experience of our individual sagas. We see in the story of others our own triumphs or perhaps the healing of our own failings. But, above all, we experience our humanity.

In the next columns I’m going to begin to lay the groundwork for the second book in the saga, A Circle of Dreams, by talking about the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings of the book as well as the characters.
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