It [...]]]> There may only be two universal rules of history. The first is that the entire wealth of the world will inevitably concentrate into fewer and fewer hands until a revolution takes place. The second is that hardly ever does a conventional army defeat a guerrilla force, so that revolution will indeed take place.

It is yet another example of the inherent cyclicality of nature (thank you, Freddie Nietzsche) – the concentration of power leads to the revolution that overthrows it, typically led by only a few ardent folk who then find power concentrating into their hands instead. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say.

At the moment, all the power in the book publishing industry is in the hands of the major publishing houses whose first intent is profit. However, as Bruce Springsteen and others argued when Sony took over their record label a decade ago, art is about a lot more than money.

Art is first and foremost about self-expression and communication and, if that is what you are after, there is no better time to be a writer – $10-15 and your book is in print globally.

The trouble is the next bit – how do you bring to people’s attention that your book is up for sale in a world crowded out by absolutely dead novelists, like Tom Clancy and John Grisham, and a whole mass of more-or-less brain-dead celebrity ones?

This is where organisations like Struggling Authors come in. With a name like that you just know that their intent is to advance the armed struggle on behalf of the little guy – to foment the revolution – and you would be right.

Struggling Authors was set up by Richard Grayling to provide authors with resources to help them write their books, get them published, and publicise themselves – a worthy cause indeed.

Struggling Authors found us over at Night Publishing when somebody whispered into Teresa Geering’s ear that we had set ourselves up to publish the unpublishable – great books the mass publishers wouldn’t touch because they would never fit into blister packs and ship in pallet loads from supermarkets. Thus we proudly declare that we are the guys who publish books too good to be published by anybody else.

Several months later it has proved a very fruitful partnership.

We have just published Teresa Geering’s own very wonderful ‘The Eye of Erasmus’, every review of which starts ‘I don’t normally read books in this genre, but I loved it ….’. Erasmus is a beguiling and mesmerising time travel romance which addresses the very circularity of time – in fact, it has even given me a decent grasp of that concept. I have also described it as a fantasy shaggy dog story because you get sucked in by the enchanting telling of the tale, wondering whether there will ever be punchline, and yes indeedy, there is, more or less at the end, well maybe more sort of in the middle, or even at the beginning. That’s circularity for you.

‘The Eye of Erasmus’ – Teresa Geering

The other book which was suggested to us by Richard over at Struggling Authors is Carolyn Allen’s ‘Knifing the Famous!’ which I have likened to a chat on the lawn of an English country garden with the author’s father, John Watson, one of the world’s pioneers in plastic surgery. Did you know that the whole plastic surgery industry sprung up from the need to reconstruct the skin of pilots burnt alive when they were shot down in flames during World War II? Well, you do now. Fortunately for us, John Watson was also an excellent raconteur with a hawk’s eye for precise and entertaining details. The first part of the book is where he recounts his wartime exploits as a medical officer in India, Burma and the Far East. The second part is where Carolyn Allen describes her relationship with her father and the issues in his life, including whether he operated on Lord Lucan just before Lucan vanished, whether he helped spirit out of Czechoslovakia a secret daughter of ‘Prague Spring’ leader Alexander Dubcek, and how he dealt with his own shame over having sired an autistic son. All in all, it is a sharply intimate account of a reserved and somewhat psychologically evasive man.

‘Knifing the Famous’ – Carolyn Allen

The third book suggested to us by Struggling Richard is an unreliable Californian ‘dude and bong’ autobiography from David Kupisiewicz called ‘Becoming Johnny Nova’ which we will publish in a month or so. It’s all about everybody calling each other ‘Dude’ once every sentence, taking drugs and chasing women, or should that be the other way around – chasing drugs and taking women. Actually, it is about a lot more than that, as you might guess. Unreliable? Yes, it’s that old quip that if you can remember the 1960s, you weren’t there.
And our other books of the moment?

Well, there are lots, but if you have ever worked in a moaning, groaning bureaucracy, you should enjoy George Fripley’s ‘You Can’t Polish A Turd’ (a civil servant’s manual) – I wish I had read it years ago; it would have saved me a lot of pointless corporate enthusiasm …….

‘You Can’t Polish A Turd’ – George Fripley

We also have a very powerful family drama where a seven year old girl who is dying of leukemia realises she will be very lonely in heaven because she doesn’t know anybody there. She therefore asks her father if he will come to heaven with her, and he says yes he will. This is getting rave reviews for being warm and tragic without ever becoming mawkish ……

‘Simon’s Choice’ – Charlotte Castle

And then we have Kathleen McKenna’s riotous comic-horror-murder mystery-social satire – ‘The Wedding Gift’ – which delivers several out-loud guffaws an hour; hell yeah, and several kilo-watts up the spine too. To be strictly honest, that is one scary ghost wielding …… shoot, I’d love to tell you more, but …..

‘The Wedding Gift’ – Kathleen McKenna

Come on over: http://www.strugglingauthors.co.uk, http://nightreading.ning.com and http://www.nightpublishing.com

Inside 3M we were far less convinced of 3M’s innovative capabilities than seemingly those who had read the publicity, but it was clear that 3M [...]]]> Once upon a time in a time and space far distant from our own, I used to work for 3M, a company famed far and wide for its innovation.

Inside 3M we were far less convinced of 3M’s innovative capabilities than seemingly those who had read the publicity, but it was clear that 3M in its first 75 years had been ground-breaking, commercialising one landmark innovation after the other in a relentless, if never smooth, sequence.

The insight that 3M had from around 1920 was that all landmark innovation is not a risk, but a gamble. The chances of success cannot be calculated. However, there is a formula which 3M used. Identify a whole bunch of crazies, fire them up, tell them to break every rule, and taunt them with the idea that their obsessively cherished baby of an invention will never, ever be born unless they go through hell and back again.

That really gets the manic juices going.

The truth is, though, that while a small-to-medium sized company can handle a bunch of out-and-out whackos, it is untenable for a massive mega-corporation to do the same with 70,000 employees, which is why those sorts of companies nearly always buy in landmark innovations from elsewhere.

So, the old 3M innovation model was:

1. Darwinian – send a thousand baby turtles scurrying for the sea – some will evade the swooping skewers and grow to become big, fat turtles

2. the future and the success of any one project are unknowable, but you have to take a position regardless

I believe that this is the only way for any company to become truly innovative – to be ‘the house’ in gambling terms, to encourage thousands of punters to place their bets and to be assured that overall you will win, without knowing which individual gamblers will win or lose against you.

At the moment, the whole of the publishing industry is a roulette wheel which can fudamentally pay out on odd or even numbers.

The ‘odd’ will be that it follows the ‘paper market paradigm’. Since the 1970s, everybody has been foretelling the collapse of the paper industry in that it should by all logic be virtually replaced by digitisation and yet, every year up to the last time I looked, the paper market grew in overall size. Far from depressing the demand for paper, digitisation has actually accelerated it.

According to the ‘odd’ scenario, therefore, paperbacks are here to stay and may become even more popular overall.

The ‘even’ paradigm is that of audio / video / photography whereby despite all the fond assurances of many experts that analogue musical tones were ‘warmer’ than cold digitital ones, that digital images were less nuanced than photographic ones, and that we all yearned to hold a photograph in our hands and onscreen viewing just wouldn’t wash, the original vinyl, VHS and photographic paper markets have tumbled in the face of CDs, DVDs and digital photography.

According to the ‘even’ scenario, in 3-5 years’ time e-tablets in combination with portable computing systems will rule the world (and may even merge), and bookshops will be but a nice place to drink coffee and to try to remember what paperbacks used to look like.

While the experts are hesitating between these two positions, declaring it is all too early to be sure which of the odd and even scenarios will play out, commercial operators have to place their bets.

And three little-known niche market players already have – Amazon, Google and Apple.

You may not have heard of these three, but you will one day.

All three have definitively decided that the paperback is fundamentally dead. Google has been digitising books for years, Apple now has the iPad which is a serious e-tablet platform, and Amazon is hailing every passerby to persuade him or her to invest in a Kindle.

My guess is that if these three digital giants are determined to make this revolution happen, the heads of the ancien regime will surely roll.

The big enticement here is not the digitisation of the erstwhile paperwork in the humble written word. That is merely the first step. The biggie is multi-media publishing.

Within a very short period, books will read, sing and dance – and it is tough to do all that in paperback.

Take bird books as I was discussing them with my twitcher brother-in-law Steve the other day. Currently you have a bird watcher’s book whereby you have beautifully rendered plates of a bird in a limited number of static positions with some sage words to describe how wonderful it is. Happily, the real bird doesn’t have such a limited repertoire and the vast majority of them have been known to fly, and to sing. Indeed, real ornithologists rely on a bird’s call more than on its visual appearance to identify its presence. So, the ideal book for a serious bird watcher is not in any paper form that exists today, but a digital book which blends static shots, words, the moving image, sound and links to further sources of information or even live webcams – watch the birds on XYZ wetland now! Given developments in intelligent CCTV technology, that could save pampered bird watchers from suffering some very cold days in the field and take the more enterprising ones around the world in seconds at the flick of a switch, or less. Oh, and by the way, a tip from Steve – expert bird watchers are only interested in brown birds. Don’t embarrass yourself by declaring loudly “Oh look at the astonishing plumage on that one” while the anorak at your side is thinking “Tart!”.

All this is but a mere preamble to where Bruce Essar and I are taking Night Reading / Publishing. Bruce is infallible even if I am not, but our gamblers’ bet is that the digitisation of books is the only likely future and that bookshops will become literary-chic cafés anytime soon. When that happens, the classic book marketing strategy of pouring money into the hands of bookshops to muscle in on their window displays and instore facings will be over. The only way forward will be to market books via social network media and book review bloggers.

So that is where we are headed and, in that vein, we are pleased to announce that all our future books will appear on the three key publishing platforms – paperback (initially via Amazon’s CreateSpace), e-tablets (Amazon’s Kindle / iPad / the Sony eReader) and e-books (Smashwords). Fortunately, all three platforms are relatively painless to access.

We have also nearly completed loading our backlog onto these platforms as well. To take a look, click on the magic words here:

‘Get Some’, by Daniel Birch – CreateSpace – Kindle – Smashwords
‘Missio’, by Tim Roux – CreateSpace – Kindle – Smashwords
‘Buenos Aires: a train ride over the rainbow’, by Paul Perry – CreateSpace – Kindle – Smashwords
‘…. at last!’, various – CreateSpace – Kindle – Smashwords

Stephen Sangirardi’s runaway ‘Monday Afternoon’ is next.

Enjoy!

Bruce Essar and I (both SWI contributors) took the concept of Night Reading from conception to execution in a few hours, and the first day [...]]]> With huge thanks to Bob Grant of SWI for publicising our new venture to help writers find their audiences, and vice-versa, here is our report on the first day.

Bruce Essar and I (both SWI contributors) took the concept of Night Reading from conception to execution in a few hours, and the first day has proven extremely promising – 31 members and 16 posts / first chapters.

This is an experiment and although we know what we want to achieve and how we want to achieve it, we don’t know whether the formula will allow us to get there or not. We are seeking a triumph of faith and optimism over cynicism and despair, and so far the signs are that we may even all win.

What we want is a kind of revolution in publishing and we are following D.H. Lawrence’s dictum that if we are going to have a revolution, we are going to have it for fun (a seriously fun guy, that D.H.).

Where we want to get to is that as many authors and poets as possible should be published by popular consent, or by hook or by crook. Once upon a time writers descended from heaven ordained with massive hosannas as literary gods whose words all mere mortals were to devote themselves to if they were justifiably to consider themselves as ‘educated’. To claim to be a novelist was to claim divinity itself. Nobody believes that any more.

The major publishing houses are businesses – they publish that which sells. Although they pretend to have an eye to merit (and what is merit?), where they look in terms of style is so random it cannot be true. The boutique houses publish according to enthusiasm, often by genre. Many authors self-publish (although some continue to regard self-publishing as a devil’s mark of vanity).

We want to publish ‘right’, or more accurately to market ‘right’. What is interesting in the market is that high literary attainment is increasingly considered an empty aspiration. What most readers want is writing on a human scale – the sort of book they can imagine themselves writing on a good day.

The two most popular first chapters at the end of Day 1 indicate this.

I am afraid that I know some of the Night Reading contributors very much better than others, but I know Danny Birch reasonably well and have read both his very successful self-published ‘Clipped’ and his new novel ‘Get Some’. Danny is a lovely guy and he comes with his own army of supporters, which is probably why he has the most popular chapter of the moment. He also has a way of writing which is absolutely directly from his heart to yours. He doesn’t think he is William Shakespeare; he thinks he is Danny Birch. He pays little heed to syntax, grammar and spelling in telling his entirely naturally appealing tales, and the interesting thing is that nobody (much) cares. Our bet is on his being one of the key voices of the Facebook and Twitter generation.

Second up after the first day is Genevieve Graham (Sawchin) with ‘Under The Same Sky’ (fabulous cover), the 18th century tale of a transcendental link between a pioneer in North America and a victim of the highland clearances in Scotland, with many horrors at both ends which push its Young Adult classification to the edges. SWI’s own Tantra thought it stood head and shoulders above the rest. What is interesting is why. She said “The writing style, sentence by sentence, doesn’t draw attention to itself in the way that it speaks–novel!–but instead carries me through from actual interest in what’s being said”. It’s that natural writing thing again.

The other book that got a ‘best first chapter’ citation on the first day was ‘Dropcloth Angels’ by Gerald D. Johnston, the last extract as it happens to appear on Day 1, because Jan Melara noted it as having a voice which is “fresh and new”.

When Night Reading succeeds, it will be because we have all developed a system of automatic marketing with a ton of readers – drawn from book clubs, the Internet at large and the writing community itself – coming to Night Reading to taste first chapters (as we do in the shops). We believe that every writer has an appropriate audience (some big, some small) and that every reader is looking for something a little bit special to them. Mass published authors are not in the main, nowadays, that special. The writers on Night Reading are. We are here to help writers find their audience and audiences to find their writers. By all co-operating in a common venture to match writers to readers, and vice-versa, we will all succeed.

The aim of the first day was to persuade a critical mass of writers to come and showcase their work. We are obviously still looking for more writers, but our main focus now is on collecting readers, especially readers from book clubs (‘cos they individually tend to read a lot of books). Maybe Night Reading can become a book club discussion feature.

We thank so many for joining the experiment in its first day. We regard it as being everybody’s experiment and are determined to prove worthy of the trust already bestowed in us.

Tim Roux (and Bruce Essar).

The trick with Authonomy (which is HarperCollins) is to load at least 10,000 words of your book onto [...]]]> I don’t know if you know Authonomy. If you are a writer you should. It is an excellent place for showcasing whole or part books in the same way that SWI is a superb place for blogging.

The trick with Authonomy (which is HarperCollins) is to load at least 10,000 words of your book onto their system. People then come and read it and ‘back the book’ and comment. The most valuable thing you can do to support a book is to leave a comment.

As an author, it is an incredible way of generating peer reviews which are quotable. I put up my ‘The Dance of the Pheasodile’ the other day, having learnt the trick from Stuart Aken on this site, and it is absolutely amazing.

Please support Bob. Go to his full electronic copy of ‘By These Things Men Live’ which is one of the great masterpieces of our time anyway and at least sign up and comment on it. It takes about a minute to sign up.

Be unrelentingly positive. There are several absolutely brilliant writers here, including Bob. Please support him. Whingeing about Dan Brown is OK, but supporting a great author is so much more important.

Click here.

Thanks!

You watched as she murdered me, my life was quickly doomed

You saw me as a child helplessly shaken by my father

You walked away, how could you? You were my mother

You watched as my father abused [...]]]> You saw me as a baby helpless in my mother’s womb

You watched as she murdered me, my life was quickly doomed

You saw me as a child helplessly shaken by my father

You walked away, how could you? You were my mother

You watched as my father abused me

You didn’t do anything, I was never set free

You turned your head, why did you? You are my mother

You saw me being beaten by my mother’s lover

You were afraid to speak up for me, therefore, I was murdered

You saw me as a boy wanting to live my life in a gang

You never told me how quickly my life would end

You saw me as a young girl working the streets at night

You should have stopped and told me about Christ

You saw me as a homeless person I had no food to eat

You had to have known that my body was weak

You saw me addicted to drugs; you were my only way out

You passed me by when you could have told me about Christ

You saw me as a beaten, battered and bruised wife

You stood silent and watched him take my life

You saw me as a man who was dying with aids

You never told me that my lifestyle was against God’s will

You saw me as a sinner lost in my sins

You never told me how to open my heart to let Christ in

You saw me as a youth struggling with my inter self

You looked me in my eyes and never offered me help

You saw me on the streets, cold and begging for food

You passed me by and your thoughts were cruel

You saw me as I was being taken away to jail

You never visited me nor did you send any mail

You were silent when prayer was taken out of the schools

You should’ve spoke up, now I have to abide by many ungodly rules

You never knew you were being tested by Jesus Christ

You have failed when you could have made the difference in my life

You need to know that God is not pleased with you

Because you never prayed and ask Him what to do

I just got an email from the New York Times; along with my weekly subscription, I get a “free” electronic edition. Even though I only get the Sunday paper (which [...]]]> —-(This is a re-post of my column today.  Thought you guys might like to see it.  the actual blog post is here)—-

I just got an email from the New York Times; along with my weekly subscription, I get a “free” electronic edition. Even though I only get the Sunday paper (which comes on Sunday and Saturday, for some reason), I have the electronic edition every day of the week, “a $174 value!” And you guys are giving it away for free?

The “free model?”

Sure, because the “free model” works. The free model is a business model where a company gives away the content, but sells advertising. As it turns out there is quite a bit of money in the free model, especially for Google who has mastered it. However, there doesn’t seem to be as much for others who try. That doesn’t stop them trying of course, hence, the NYT is letting me know I am getting a $174 freebie.

The only problem is that the electronic version of the New York times that they’re offering is a picture of today’s paper. Page for page, ad for ad, but without the wrinkles and grimy news print. You can’t crunch it up and stuff it in your clothes for insulation, but otherwise, it’s all there.
I see some difficulty with that. As an illustration, try holding up one double leafed page of the Times to the monitor of your computer. It’s a little bigger than the monitor, isn’t it? If it’s not, and you have a monitor that big, congratulations. I envy you.
The rest of us will have to scroll back and forth, up and down, page by page until we’re blind, too tired or somehow satisfied. This is a classic mistake for utilizing new technologies; trying to stuff an old format into the new one.

“With every new fangled papyrus page, you get a real clay tablet cover!”

However, I don’t want anyone to think that the Times is not at the forefront of trying it’s best to get a handle on the potential of the Internet, they are. Slowly but surely their website is getting better and better. I’ve been using it for years to get World War I articles for a project I’m doing. They have an archive that is tremendous.

Every trick of the Trade

The Times web site uses video, links and pretty much every trick of the new trade. Although not the fastest on their feet, the Times has made the intuitive jump from print journalism to media production house. Yet, they are still struggling.
They’re not the only ones, the entire publishing industry took a good hammering during the recession. I guess books and magazines are not considered crucial when money is tight. Although, you wouldn’t know it from my wife’s Kindle bills.
But that’s an indication of yet another force the publishing world has to contend with. More and more authors are moving away from big publishing houses. Many kindle books are “self-published” or put together by much smaller, and faster moving publishers, like Night publishing. They may not offer million dollar advances, but they can print or electronically publish books with astounding speed.

No money involved

In addition there are “all-online” groups like Speak Without Interruption, who give writers, from all over the world, both amateur and professional, direct access to thousands of avid Internet readers. There is no money involved, for the writers or the publishers, yet, it’s still happening. What a threat to the publishing establishment, these mad men aren’t even running ads! Isn’t that against the law or something?
These new publishers lack powerful armies of marketers, giant 5th avenue offices and a withering eye for anything that isn’t the next Dan Brown billion seller, but they are keeping publishing very much alive.
The Times has the same kind of competition. Thousands of smaller, quick as lightning, outfits that gather and disgorge news with mind-blurring speed. We’d all like to think that good writing and noble journalism will out, but then there’s Fox news. Somehow, I don’t think they’re going away any time soon.

Free for all

It’s a free-for-all in the publishing world right now, and may the best method win. While it’s all going on, we’ll get a chance at a few freebies and have the fun of watching the new and the old slugging it out. Get the popcorn!

If you have questions about this or any other “Domestic technology” please go to our blog and ask.

Prentiss Gray is a writer and stay at home Dad with 27 years in the information systems and technology business. His favorite saying is “If you have to read the manual to use it, I don’t want one.” He can be reached via his website www.prentissgray.com

For more on this and other Domesti-Tech coverage, visit our Website

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Carl Jung

Now here is another brain teaser for your therapist, or should I say mind teaser, the notion of curing someone with depression. Sadly, this is one of the most common causes of problems in marriages, and while we look for help from the professionals they take advantage of that vulnerability [...]]]>

Carl Jung

Now here is another brain teaser for your therapist, or should I say mind teaser, the notion of curing someone with depression. Sadly, this is one of the most common causes of problems in marriages, and while we look for help from the professionals they take advantage of that vulnerability with a platform that doesn’t get to the root causes of depression. All the while, we spend about $12 billion a year on therapy and $15 billion on pharmacology drugs to treat “mental illnesses”, particularly depression.

I even find it hilarious that there is an ad on TV promoting a drug called Abilify that begins by stating that 2/3rds of people suffering from depression still have depression symptoms after taking traditional “medicine”, in essence admitting the inability of the medical approach to curing people. After all, our “mental illnesses” are biologically based, hence the medical approach to a “cure”, and there is really nothing that can be done mentally.

But there was a psychologist who actually did cure people, the one-time heir apparent to Freud by the name of Carl Jung. I refer to Jung as the greatest psychologist who ever lived basically because of the fact that his objective was to cure his patients.

Let me relate to you one of his patients whom he did cure, a patient suffering from depression. Ironically, the professionals of his day actually diagnosed her with Schizophrenia. Boy I can imagine the response from the professionals if I would have titled this post “Curing Schizophrenia”, because as most people realize after 100 years of propagating the biology conclusion, Schizophrenia is incurable.

The discovery of a cure for schizophrenia

Jung describes in his autobiography the first case where he cured a patient in the story of a woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. “I still recollect very well a case which greatly interested me at the time. A young woman had been admitted to the hospital, suffering from ‘melancholia.’ The examination was conducted with the usual care: anamnesis (recollection of the past), tests, physical check-ups, and so on. The diagnosis was schizophrenia…The prognosis poor.”

“This woman happened to be in my section. At first I did not dare to question the diagnosis. I was still a young man then, a beginner, and would not have had the temerity to suggest another one. And yet the case struck me as strange. I had the feeling that it was not a matter of schizophrenia but of ordinary depression, and resolved to apply my own method. At the time I was much occupied with diagnostic association studies, and so I undertook an association experiment with the patient. In addition, I discussed her dreams with her. In this way I succeeded in uncovering her past, which anamnesis had not clarified. I obtained information directly from the unconscious, and this information revealed a dark and tragic story.

Before the woman married she had known a man, the son of a wealthy industrialist, in whom all the girls of the neighborhood were interested. Since she was very pretty, she thought her chances of catching him were fairly good. But apparently he did not care for her, and so she married another man.

Five years later an old friend visited her. They were talking over old times, and he said to her, ‘When you got married it was quite a shock to someone-your Mr. X’ (the wealthy industrialist’s son). That was the moment! Her depression dated from this period, and several weeks later led to a catastrophe. She was bathing her children, first her four-year-old girl and then her two-year-old son. She lived in a country where the water supply was not perfectly hygienic; there was pure spring water for drinking, and tainted water from the river for bathing and washing. While she was bathing the little girl, she saw the child sucking at the sponge, but did not stop her. She even gave her little son a glass of the impure water to drink. Naturally, she did this unconsciously, or only half consciously, for her mind was already under the shadow of the incipient depression.

A short time later, after the incubation period had passed, the girl came down with typhoid fever and died. The girl had been her favorite. The boy was not infected. At that moment the depression reached its acute stage, and the woman was sent to the institution.

From the association test I had seen that she was a murderess, and I had learned many of the details of her secret. It was at once apparent that this was a sufficient reason for her depression. Essentially it was a psychogenic disturbance and not a case of schizophrenia.

Now what could be done in the way of therapy? Up to then the woman had been given narcotics to combat her insomnia and had been under guard to prevent attempts at suicide. But otherwise nothing had been done. Physically, she was in good condition.

I was confronted with the problem: Should I speak openly with her or not? Should I undertake the major operation? I was faced with a conflict of duties altogether without precedent in my experience. I had a difficult question of conscience to answer, and had to settle the matter with myself alone. If I had asked my colleagues, they would probably have warned me, ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t tell the woman any such thing. That will only make her still crazier.’ To my mind, the effect might well be the reverse. In general it may be said that unequivocal rules scarcely exist in psychology. A question can be answered one way or another, depending on whether or not we take the unconscious factors into account. Of course I knew very well the personal risk I was running: if the patient got worse, I would be in the soup too!

Nevertheless, I decided to take a chance on a therapy whose outcome was uncertain. I told her everything I had discovered through the association test. I can easily be imagined how difficult it was for me to do this. To accuse a person point-blank of murder is no small matter. And it was tragic for the patient to have to listen to it and accept it. But the result was that in two weeks it proved possible to discharge her, and she was never again institutionalized.”

Wow!! He was able to cure schizophrenia. But he had to be careful about how he handled the fact that he had found a cure. “While I was still at the clinic, I had to be most circumspect about treating my schizophrenic patients, or I would have been accused of woolgathering. Schizophrenia was considered incurable. If one did achieve some improvement with a case of schizophrenia, the answer was that it had not been real schizophrenia.”

Now there are a couple of interesting elements to this story. First is Jung’s use of the word murder to describe the experience. Common sense would tell us today this was simply an accident, for it is obvious by the impact it had on the woman that she did not want to kill her little girl, her actions were driven by an unconscious drive. Our legal system today defines murder as a conscious act. In fact, the objective of psychology in the legal system is to determine whether the cause of the criminal act was a conscious or an unconscious one. That is why it is call “premeditated”.

But for Jung what was important was the impact the behavior had within the psyche of his patient. What is important is how the psyche views an act that it was responsible for, and unconsciously the woman did see the little girl drink the water, which she knew was not clean. Jung’s objective as he states is to “undertake the major operation” of removing the cancer of this experience from her psyche, getting her to the point of realizing that it wasn’t her fault, and if she forgives herself then she can eradicate the experience from her psychic life. And it worked!!! He was able to cure a woman who was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Which leads us to the other point, and that is the ethical problem that is faced with the notion that there is a root cause behind our psychic imbalances. Behind every negative experience there is the other side of the story. Something had to have gone wrong for the impact to be so large as to cause a mental problem. So you have to take into consideration there was a negative behavior that caused the mental problem in the first place. If your objective is to find fault then you cannot get to the truth.

If Jung had not realized he was not judging the woman but trying to help then he would not have pursued the path to the cure, the solution. With rape, for example, the point is to cure the patient not convict the rapist from the perspective of the person who got raped, because the point is eradicating the psychological impact on the person who got raped. Of course, society and morality dictates the rapist is responsible for his actions but the point here is the psychological impact on the person who was raped.

Hypnosis is another good therapy technique for remembering past negative experiences but is not widely used because of the potential for suggestion and because once something is revealed that is negative we feel we have to convict the negative behavior, not cure the patient. I saw a case once on T.V. where through hypnosis a therapist was able to determine that a father had raped his daughter. Now if this were true then the point should have been to cure the girl of the mental response to this experience. But what did the therapist decide to do? Go public with the diagnosis. Yes, they tried to convict the father until it was determined the therapist put the notion that the girl was raped into her head during hypnosis. Again, the question is faultfinding versus problem solving. Psychological health occurs when we confront our demons, but the point is not to find fault with the cause of our problems.

There is one more significant point to this story. Therapy today is passive, where the therapist guides the patients through their negative emotions. Again, the “how does that make you feel” question. While what is true about therapy is the patient is responsible for affecting his or her own cure, this path implies the notion that the therapist cannot present the thoughts behind the problem because then the patient doesn’t make the discovery on his or her own. Jung’s approach was the opposite, in that he introduced the thoughts behind the problem, not the feelings.

Hiding the discovery

And how did Jung respond to curing his patient. He had to keep it quiet for fear of the response of his peers. “There were other reasons that caused me to say nothing to my colleagues about this case. I was afraid of their discussing it and possibly raising legal questions. Nothing could be proved against the patient, of course, and yet such a discussion might have had disastrous consequences for her. Fate had punished her enough! It seemed to me more meaningful that she should return to life in order to atone in life for her crime. When she was discharged, she departed bearing her heavy burden. She had to bear this burden. The loss of the child had been frightful for her, and her expiation had already begun with the depression and her confinement to the institution.”

And the source of the trauma was lost love.

No one has ever died for slaying their dragons, but a lot have for not…it’s called suicide.

by Tim Kellis

http://HappyRelationships.com/

http://HappyMarriages.com/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://www.theauthorsshow.com/

Also set up a story telling event on Sept/22nd for third and forth graders.

I was wondering on just how people would read this? [...]]]> I’m just letting parent with children as young as five to listen to my radio interview on the Author Show. Will be posted for the time Monday Aug. 31st.

http://www.theauthorsshow.com/

Also set up a story telling event on Sept/22nd for third and forth graders.

I was wondering on just how people would read this? Have a great year too all.

Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage

We know from Darwin’s theory of evolution that the notion of development elicits controversy from many intellectual corners.  If we think about the notion of development through to its conclusion then many established organizations lose their grip on us as individuals.  This question [...]]]>

Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage

We know from Darwin’s theory of evolution that the notion of development elicits controversy from many intellectual corners.  If we think about the notion of development through to its conclusion then many established organizations lose their grip on us as individuals.  This question becomes extremely important in relationships.  

We need to look no further than our corporate environments to get a real sense for the answer to this question, for corporations live and die by the notion of development.  The following excerpt from “Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage” addresses just that question, and the perspective of two very influential organizations on our lives.  The question is whether we as individuals develop or not?

Do we develop or not, that is the question?

GE’s involvement as a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index tells us so much about this most important question.  Two men, Charles Dow and Edward Jones, who had started a newspaper company devoted entirely to covering business news, began publishing the newspaper The Wall Street Journal in 1884, developed the DJIA in 1896.  The DJIA index was invented as a gauge of the success of our economy. 

The index originally consisted of twelve components but now consists of the thirty largest industrial companies in America.  What is interesting about the index is that it is also an indicator of what industries are doing well.  For example, today Intel and Microsoft have been added to the index. 

The lesson with the index is the history of the components, the individual industrial corporations used to compute a complex number very few people understand how to compute.  The final number, though, is so familiar to the many people in our country interested in how well we are doing economically.  Every night news station across the country broadcast this number as the first indicator of the health of our economy. 

There is only one company on the original DJIA list of the twelve largest industrial companies in the country that is still a component today, and that is GE.  GE has been one of the largest industrial companies since the DJIA was first conceived.  

The lesson is there are eleven other companies from the original twelve that are no longer part of the index.  In addition, the twenty-nine slots of the current thirty have also been changing hands.  These companies have either gone out of business, been consolidated into another company or remain in business as a much smaller company than it used to be.  In fact, the other slots that make up the DJIA have been changing hands over the last hundred years as industries are born, grow up and die. 

The original twelve companies had names like American Cotton Oil, American Sugar, Distilling & Cattle Feeding, National Lead, U.S. Leather, U.S. Rubber, and General Electric.  The index used to focus on agricultural products and basic materials but now focuses on technology companies, financial service providers, manufacturers, and retailers.  What this means is there are many companies and industries that have sprung to life, served their purposes and have either grown old or gone out of business. 

We used to use candles for light, then kerosene, and now electricity.  We used to communicate using smoke signals, then with Morris Code, then through voice conversation and now through data communications.  We used to travel by horse and sea, then by railroad, then by car and now by airplanes. 

If the buggy companies that thrived at the end of the nineteenth century did not convert their manufacturing to automobile manufacturing then they died.  Movie production companies who did not convert from silent movies to talkies went out of business.  One of the first successful airlines, Pan American Airlines, decided early in its history that the future of the airline industry was with propeller airplanes that landed in the water until the industry began using jet engines.  When the railroad was first developed there were dozens of railroad companies that sprung up to capitalize, now we have very few.  When mass production was introduced into the automobile industry there were dozens of automobile manufacturers in this country, now we have three.  When the PC was introduced dozens of companies sprang up to compete, now we have much fewer.  Many saw all of the Internet companies that started up during the bubble.  Many have gone out of business. 

In other words, industries are very analogous to human life.  They are born, go through childhood, adolescence, mature into adulthood, reach old age and eventually die.  Only a few successful companies manage to stay alive for long periods of time.  Industries do develop because it is their objective to develop.  Capitalism thrives on survival of the fittest, just like humans. 

We can look at the behavior of most of the startup Internet companies and see children in business.  There are stories of companies going public, raising forty, fifty, eighty million dollars and spending most of it on the company’s advertising campaign.  Witness all of the Internet commercials during the Super Bowl as the Internet bubble grew.  What about developing the product, hiring a sales force, etc. that must be successfully completed before the advertising begins.  The number of stories that occurred during the Internet boom where immature business decisions like this were made is countless. 

We can also look at the maturing of the PC industry.  The leaders of the largest tech companies have certainly learned a lot over the last twenty years.  From IBM and Xerox’s mistakes to Gates actually getting a haircut and looking decent for the press.  The rivalries between Gates and many other competitors are much less cantankerous than they used to be. 

One of the funniest pictures I have seen demonstrating this maturity is Gates smiling, sitting next to a very distraught looking Eckhardt Pfieffer, CEO of Compaq, during the congressional hearings discussing the penalty phase of the trial.  Compaq had been battling with Microsoft and Intel over the direction of the PC industry for years.  It was probably unimaginable to think about these two industry leaders sitting on the same side of the table before the antitrust accusations became serious. 

Businesses do develop because they understand that you either grow or die.  If you don’t succeed against your competitors then they will succeed and you will fail.  Companies have developed and understand the notion of survival of the fittest because there are so many examples of companies failing.  Big companies today have grown so successful that one of the biggest causes of the stock market bust was the complacency within management of making unwise business decisions that were not in the best interest of the stockholders. We are still working through the mess caused by the complacency of many corporate executives. 

Companies, and industries, are born.  They do have beginnings.  They then develop.  Companies don’t just exist.  Can we learn when problems crop up that need to be resolved?  Have we moved from DOS to Windows?  The answer is obviously yes. 

This is incredibly important because if we develop then we can improve our psyche from the negative relationship to the positive relationship.  We do this by solving life’s problems as they occur.  Problems can occur anytime, anywhere.  We learn by solving problems.  We just need to know what the priorities that drive our logical decisions are.  Our objective is happiness.  To succeed requires innovation to solve problems, as they occur, not protection from problems before they occur. 

The Church and mainstream psychology still say no

Unfortunately, two organizations that have so much influence on our daily lives still do not believe in the concept of development, the very notion behind the function of disagreements.  If we can develop then we can solve our disagreements.  Our religious institutions and psychological teachings are still struggling with the notion that we either are who we are at birth, or we develop and mature throughout our lives. 

The Church is still battling over the notion of Darwinism.  The theory of survival of the fittest that Darwin discovered is still not taught in schools because it contradicts the Bible.  This theory contradicts the notion taught in the Bible that God made the earth in seven days. Darwin’s theory simply states that man, and all organisms on God’s great earth, have been developing since the beginning of earth’s existence.  The Church’s doctrine has not resolved this conflict because it implies that if God made all of earth’s inhabitants then there is no way that we could have evolved from apes, regardless of its logic. 

What the Church’s teaching also implies is that man, and woman, can’t learn, can’t develop, can’t resolve conflicts, can’t reverse the path of the negative relationship and put the couple on the path of the positive relationship.  God makes us when we are born and our future, our path in life is determined at the very beginning of our existence.  Heal but don’t develop.  Sorry.  The logic behind the teachings of the Church is the path to happiness is through suffering. 

In other words, the way to find love is through the suffering of everyday relationships.  If we have negative relationships we simply have to live with them.  Life involves both happiness and unhappiness, and you can do nothing about this fact.  Life is determined by God’s will, not ours.  We can’t think. 

Jesus is the very symbol of this message.  Jesus died on the cross to forgive all of our sins.  Jesus died on the cross so that we must experience pain before we can experience pleasure. Why then, today, with the success of our government and economy do we have to suffer in the first place?  Can we not figure out how to live with one of the most important person in our lives, our partner? 

Why not figure out how to live life without the suffering of negative relationships?  In religion you have to suffer before you can ask for forgiveness but our lives today are really a lot less complicated than they used to be because we have learned to think, to solve problems.  We have developed psychologically to the point where everyone is an individual.  Today everybody is important. 

Granted, when pain does occur our religious institutions provide the very foundation for how we are supposed to deal with this pain.  In fact, people who are poor and uneducated use religion as their very tool for dealing with much more difficult lives.  Most of us used to be that poor, or at least our ancestors did.  Religion has been used for the last two thousand years as people went to war with other people where many, many people perished. 

People used religion as a personal tool for dealing with the poverty, death, war, etc of their everyday lives.  Think of the psychological toll on the families of all of the millions of people who were killed between 1914-18 and 1939-45.  How are you supposed to deal with the fact that your country sent your boy off to fight a war because of some big picture that may have little to do with your everyday life? It is God’s will. 

Of course, we needed to go through the pain of all of these wars before our democratic government could be invented, improved upon and explained to the rest of the world.  Today, though, we don’t have any big scale war (not yet, at least, thanks to 9/11).  Today our problems are much simpler, yet we seem to be having a much more difficult time dealing with them.  Today life is about how much money you are making so that you can buy all of the great things that have been developed to make your life so much more pleasurable.  These things are important, but being happy is the real objective. 

The Church’s belief hinders the notion that man’s psyche can develop, improve, and that man can overcome his fears in life.  After all, the Church can’t do anything about wars; it is God’s will.  The Church can’t help resolve conflicts in negative relationships because it is God’s will.  In reality, it is us that have free will.  God’s gift to us is this freedom that has taken so long for us to understand.  The Church is the public institute that teaches us morality.  It is where individuals learn the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil. 

If the Church were to take its common sense understanding of the difference between happiness and unhappiness and apply it to helping forgive the fear that causes negative relationships grow even more negative as life moves on, then the Church could become a wonderful tool for helping heal negative relationships, if only it believed in development, that man and woman can improve. 

Of course, our psychological world is still burdened by the way this question was answered a hundred years ago.  Freud felt our biology drove our psychology.  This might make sense for someone who had not developed the thinking part of his or her psyche and lived with feelings alone. 

Psychology and psychiatry began by studying people who already had major mental problems in the days before education of the masses.  Traditionally, both institutions used patients with preexisting conditions of mental problems as subject matter for research. The teachings today are based on the foundation that curing negative relationships occur after the problems have critically hindered the happiness in the relationship.  The objective, though, is to set up the relationship beforehand so that it never reaches the point where so much pain exists. 

The question hindering the understanding of relationships today is the notion that we develop.  If we do not develop then the problems with our psyche have always existed and there is nothing we can do about it.  Unfortunately, this implies there is no beginning for problems, no expansion of problems, and most importantly, no solution of problems. 

If the answer to the notion that we develop, though, is yes then this implies that problems with our psyche do have beginnings, have developed and can be cured.  No wonder, then, that the psychological world is still struggling to understand how it can help the negative relationship.  By the time the negative relationship has developed to the point where a couple seeks therapy the problems have grown so large that its complexity becomes unmanageable.  By this time the therapist is just trying to keep the relationship alive.  He becomes a referee, trying to decide who is right and who is wrong, because the couple is unable to solve the problems. 

by Tim Kellis
http://HappyRelationships.com/
http://HappyMarriages.com/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage

Here is the most significant point made in the entire book, transference causes divorce.  This one single point can probably do more than any other to motivate couples to learn how to move their relationships in the right direction.  And for the [...]]]>  

Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage

Here is the most significant point made in the entire book, transference causes divorce.  This one single point can probably do more than any other to motivate couples to learn how to move their relationships in the right direction.  And for the first time ever on a public forum, you can read what I am talking about.  For the first time a psychological cause of divorce is explained.  

The following link was one of the stops on my blog tour on relationships, where I visited Blogging Authors to discuss this very important point.  To view the link please visit:

Transference Causes Divorce

Transference Causes Divorce 

Tim Kellis, Author of "Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

I want to pose to you one of the most significant questions needed to understand before we are going to solve our marriage problem.  Are we biological beasts or psychological beings?  Unfortunately the belief within the mainstream teachings [...]]]>  

Tim Kellis, Author of "Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

I want to pose to you one of the most significant questions needed to understand before we are going to solve our marriage problem.  Are we biological beasts or psychological beings?  Unfortunately the belief within the mainstream teachings of the psychology industry is that we are nothing more than biological beasts.  The industry still experiments on animals to try to extrapolate behavior in humans.  

Are we biological beasts or psychological beings?

It is impossible to completely explain the significance of going the biology route instead of the psychology route.  The hypothesis that our behavior is driven by our biological needs implies we are born with our problems and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.  The notion that our psyche is psychologically driven implies we can learn and we can think, or develop. 

In other words, the biological concept holds we are born with our brain pre-wired and that our psychological development occurs when our experiences activate the pre-wired neurons and synapses creating behavior.  Or put another way, the biological conclusion would lead psychologists to claim that our understanding of the use of the computer occurs because we are born with the knowledge of how to use the computer and we simply must use the computer and these pre-wired neurons and synapses become activated, giving us the understanding of the use of the computer, to behave by using the computer. 

This is simply impossible.  The computer was only invented in the seventies.  There is no way our parents, grandparents, etc. would have had previous knowledge of how to use the computer, but my mom even knows how to surf the Internet. 

The conclusion that we are biologically driven leads, unfortunately, to the fact that we are born with our problems and there is nothing that can be done to completely cure the patient, that there is no previous cause of our problems.  This leads to the conclusion that there is no initial negative experience, no middle when we live with the negative experience, and no end where the patient is finally cured, becomes happy. 

The psychological path, though, leads to the conclusion that there is a beginning, middle, and an end to our psychological problems, through thinking.  God’s most wonderful gift to mankind is its ability to think.  This conscious ability is what differentiates us from other animals who can feel, but can’t think.  Animals feel.  Just watch your dog wagging its tail when you come home from work, or attack another dog. 

Tim Kellis

HappyRelationships.com

HappyMarriages.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tim Kellis, author of "Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

Hello

The month of April is upon us and I would like to invite you for a Blog Tour I will be doing this month, and next. The focus on the tour will be relationships, and the discussion is [...]]]>

Tim Kellis, author of "Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

Hello

The month of April is upon us and I would like to invite you for a Blog Tour I will be doing this month, and next. The focus on the tour will be relationships, and the discussion is sure to be lively. 

I want to begin by thanking Dorothy Thompson at Pump Up Your Book Promotion (http://www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.com/) for her tireless work over the last 2 months putting this Blog Tour together. 

She already has the month of April filled up, and is sure to have a full lineup for May too. 

Our first stop is going to be Lessons from a Recovering Doormat. Please join us on April 1st at http://www.lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat.com/ to participate at our first stop. 

Here are the tour stops: 

April 1: Lessons from a Recovering Doormat  

(http://www.lessonsfromarecoveringdoormat.com/)

April 2: Divine Caroline (http://www.divinecaroline.com/)

April 3: Marital Talk (http://www.maritaltalk.com/) 

April 6: Long Relationships (http://www.longrelationships.com/)

April 7: Long Relationships (http://www.longrelationships.com/)

April 8: Long Relationships (http://www.longrelationships.com/)

April 9: Beyond Books (http://beyondthebooks.wordpress.com/)

April 10: Marital Talk (http://www.maritaltalk.com/)

April 13: Blogging Authors (http://www.bloggingauthors.com/)

April 14: Love is an Exploding Cigar (http://www.loveisanexplodingcigar.com/)

April 15: Paperback Writer (http://rebecca2007.wordpress.com/)

April 16: Between the Covers (http://bookexcerpts.wordpress.com/)

April 17: Marital Talk (http://www.maritaltalk.com/)

April 20: Introducing Writers! Radio Show (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/kims)

April 21: Blogcritics (http://blogcritics.org/)

April 22: The Writer’s Life (http://www.thewriterslife.blogspot.com/)

April 23: The Writer’s Life (http://www.thewriterslife.blogspot.com/)

April 24: Boomer Chick (http://www.overthehillchick.blogspot.com/)

April 27: One Writer’s Journey (http://pennylockwoodehrenkranz.blogspot.com/)

April 28: A Book Blogger’s Diary (http://www.abookbloggersdiary.blogspot.com/)

Please join us during the month on the stops that you can make. Remember the goal is to save our culture of marriage, and someone has to stop this rampant divorce. 

Sincerely
Tim Kellis
http://HappyRelationships.com/
http://HappyMarriages.com/

Click here to view the embedded video.

Today I want to welcome to Speak Without Interruption the indomitable JA Konrath, author of the bestselling Jackie Daniels series begun with Whiskey Sour and Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail and Fuzzy Navel. We discuss pen names here at this [...]]]> JA Konrath & Jack Kilborn Cornered By Rob Walker (an interview and a reunion)

Today I want to welcome to Speak Without Interruption the indomitable JA Konrath, author of the bestselling Jackie Daniels series begun with Whiskey Sour and Bloody Mary and Rusty Nail and Fuzzy Navel. We discuss pen names here at this our humble niche of the internet. Konrath is the author of six thrillers in the Jack Daniels series, all named after drinks. He also has now a new book coming out this month–AFRAID, a horror novel, under the pen name Jack Kilborn. It is called Afraid for good reason! Will anyone come out of this novel alive? Fast paced and a wild ride it rivals anything Stephen King (or anyone int he King family) has written. You can visit Joe/Jack at http://www.jakonrath.com/.

I stalked suspense-thriller writer JA Konrath amid the Chicago shadows on a moonless night in search of the vacant warehouse that fronted the winding Chicago River where it turned sharply as a knife’s edge. Using the light from my cell phone, I hastily checked the address scribbled on my palm. If things got ugly in my search for the creator of the Jackie Daniels series here, author of Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail and more, I might need the phone to call for help. Konrath, it was rumored, liked to do hands-on research, and my father didn’t raise an idiot, and having read Konrath’s ticklishly horribly scary yet hilarious novels, I truly did not wish to wind up in a Konrath novel myself. Especially not as a victim. Somber boat rigging beat out an anthem in the night. The shadows here befit a Bogart film, I was thinking when a George Raft voice came lilting out from behind a creaking door just cracked open. “Walker, inside now.”

I had come to this seedy section of Chicago to interview Konrath who some believed had an evil twin, one who actually wrote the books while the ‘other’ put forth the gargantuan, amazing marketing efforts on JA’s behalf. Of course, no one knew for certain how Konrath kept his cottage industry going at such a breakneck pace, but it had become legend among mystery, suspense, and thriller authors, not to mention the entire horror community. This since his arrival on the publishing scene a handful of years before. I was determined to learn the truth, but I hoped to come away unscathed as I’d promised my wife and children that I’d return safe and whole despite going to see a man termed by many as a true maniac. To ensure my safety I had a sealed affidavit of my last known whereabouts placed in a bank vault, and I was packing a snub-nosed .38.

Konrath remained in shadow, one eye on my wake as I entered the shabby place he’d selected for our meeting. No drinks, no music, no crowd—an empty warehouse, or so it appeared in the darkness. Then he threw a light switch, and I marveled at the sight before me. What appeared to be a million or more books! At first I assumed the poor fellow had had to purchase back every book he personally guaranteed to his readers as worthy of their purse. Then it dawned on me, and I realized why we were here—the place housed every book that the man had ever read in every genre. With head downtrodden he confessed: “The wife said I had to get them out of the house. Besides, the dogs were chewing up my first editions.”

Joe led me to a small table and chairs in one corner of his warehouse of titles where he lit a small kerosene lamp and shut down the costly overhead lights. Here too he had a cooler and from it, he snatched out two Sam Adams for us, and I began to relax. We sat and I tugged out my phone and pressed the key for tape record, and damn if my gun didn’t fall out at Konrath’s toe. Joe grabbed it up, twirled it around like a kid with a toy, and was about to fire it off when I said, “Hold on, it’s real and it’s loaded.”

“Why the gun, Walker?” he asked, a look of absolute puzzlement coming over him, the gun still in his hand.

“The neighborhood.” I shrugged. “Hey, I grew up in Chicago, too, you know. I followed the Blues Brothers.”

He accepted this and placed the gun between us. “So, you’ve got questions for me?”

I rolled out a scroll filled with questions. “Hope we have time for a few of these.”

He sipped his beer. “Best get to it. Twenty minutes I have to be on my way to O’Hare to hop a plane for Florida—speaking at the Writers Who Can’t Type Convention.”

I raised an eyebrow, surprised. “You can’t type?”

“No. Neither of my personalities can. JA Konrath, he’s the hunter. Jack Kilborn, he’s a real pecker.”

“I see. Well, we’d best begin.” I raised the volume on the recorder. “How has Chicago, this great city with its colorful history, informed your novels?”

“Informed my novels of what?” Konrath again looked puzzled but then he cracked up and slapped the table.

“Come on, you know what I mean? You’re a product of Chicago, right? How has it affected your stories, your style, man?”

“Born and raised in the Windy City, my friend. Perfect setting for thrillers. You got locations galore, plenty of room for action, intrigue, suspense, romance, laughs… and horror.”

I checked to make sure my phone was recording. “Tell me about horror.”

Konrath grinned at me, eyes glinting. “You know all about horror, Walker. Hell, I was reading you when I was a teenager. In fact, I read you under three different pen names before I knew they were all you. Maybe that’s why I decided on a pen name for Afraid.”

I glanced nervously at the gun, then checked my crib sheet. “That’s your first Jack Kilborn book, coming out at the end of March, right? Does it take place in Chicago?”

“Wisconsin. A tiny little town of nine hundred people. Something evil comes to town, and the population gets reduced. Drastically.”

“Any funny stuff in this one?”

Konrath/Kilborn shook his head. “This one is all scares, no laughs.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “I’m predicting that a lot of people who start it won’t be able to finish it. Too frightening.”

“Why the switch to horror?”

“I’ve always written horror. The Jack Daniels series has a lot of scary scenes. But Afraid gave me a chance to sustain the terror-level for a whole book, rather than just a few chapters.”

I checked my notes again. “Would you classify any of your books as your favorite? And if so, can you explain why?”

“I like Rusty Nail. It introduces Alex, who becomes Jack’s nemesis for two more books, Fuzzy Navel, and Cherry Bomb, coming out this July. It’s a pretty wicked book, in between the jokes.”

“As wicked as Afraid?”

“I’ve never read a book as wicked as Afraid.” He smiled. “Except for some of your stuff, Walker. Remember the first time we met, I called you a sick son of a bitch?”

“First words out of your mouth. Endeared me to you forever.” I switched gears. “ No author on the planet has done more guerilla-styled and classy promotion and marketing than has JA Konrath both on the web and in the real world, and if a prize were given for most endurance in an author on a tour and self-promotion effort, it must go to you, Joe. In fact, if I had a canned ham, I’d award it to you now.

“Thanks. I might even share it with you, if you threw in some bread and cheese.”

“You’re a generous man. My question is: Can you offer a quick word of advice to authors, new and old, who struggle with marketing or have flat out given up on it?”

Konrath took in a breath, blew it out slow. “Okay, in a nutshell. The one who gets their name on the most pieces of paper, wins. That paper could be a book, a short story in a magazine or anthology, or virtual paper, like a blog or web page. The more places people can find you, the better you’ll do as an author. So you need to help people find you.”

“How?”

“Having an Internet presence that’s all about offering information and entertainment. Making sure people can easily find you, while also making sure other people find you when they’re searching for something else. That means you have to give good content.”

“What else?”

“Meeting as many people as possible, in person and on the web. Some people have more power than others. Media folks. Reviewers. Booksellers. Librarians. Bloggers. Give them extra special attention.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Writing is a service industry, my friend. Give good service, and people will come back for more.”

We hear footsteps just outside and Konrath blows out the single kerosene lamp we have been laboring under. “Who is it, Joe? Who’s after you? For God’s sake man, perhaps I can help. If you are in some kind of trouble . . . you must tell me who is stalking you?”

“Same people who are after you!”

“Fans?”

“Creditors!”

After a moment, the sounds from outside become muffled and soon are gone altogether. Joe relights the lamp. My gun is back in my possession, but the phone is still recording. “Final question for the ACME blog, Joe is not a question. This space is completely and utterly yours to sound off. Your time to add anything you wish. Anything I’ve failed to cover.”

“You’ve been in this biz long enough to know the secret, Walker. It’s about survival. But you can’t survive on your own. We’re writers. There’s no competition between us. My fans are your fans, and vice versa. So we need to treat each other better. Support one another. Recommend each other’s books. Hell, we should buy and review each other’s books as well. Never ceases to amaze me that something so simple, so obvious, is done by so few.”

Konrath stands up, offers his hand. “Thanks for the interview, Walker, and for watching my back. You know I’m your biggest fan.”

I nod, and he walks off into the shadows before I can return the sentiment. But if you’re reading this, Joe, know I feel the same way…

If you’ve enjoyed our brief interlude with Joe Konrath, you can learn a great deal more about him at his website – http://www.jakonrath.com/

His blogspot – http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/

MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/jakonrath

For more tedious information about moi, it’s http://www.robertwalkerbooks.com/ along with a FREE ebook copy of Dead On for the price of a keystroke!

Thanks for coming by –
Rob Walker

If you would like to pick up a copy of the book you can [...]]]> Hello.  

“Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage” Book Review

If you would like to pick up a copy of the book you can get it for a 20% discount at the following link:

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"Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

Equality
The Quest for the Happy Marriage
Tim Kellis
Gilgamesh Publishing
ISBN: 978-0-9799848-0-8
440 pages

When I began reading Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage, by Tim Kellis, I expected to read a typical counseling book such as those that fill the shelves of bookstores. Most of these are written by experts in the field of counseling who have degrees in psychology, psychiatry, or pastoral ministries.  I was totally wrong in regard to the word “typical.”  This book delves deep into the mind, reminding readers of historical happenings, successful businesses, politics, education, religion, family backgrounds, and the scientific work of many individuals, all which, according to the author’s findings, can unlock some of the mysteries as to what is behind the 50 percent divorce rate among couples who promised to love one another “for better or worse.” 

Although written for couples, this is also a self-help book for individuals who may find answers as to why happiness has always seemed to elude them. The author stresses that individuals must be happy within themselves before they can be happy in a relationship.    It is not a book to be read in one setting since it is scholarly, philosophical and informative—a book that needs to be studied with an open, fervent mind.  Much of the book is autobiographical as Mr. Kellis describes his early home life, education, successful career, various dating experiences and finally what happened when he met Suzanne who captured his heart—someone he truly believed that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.  At first the relationship was wonderful…it was beautiful…it was exciting…it was passionate…it was everything they both wanted.  Tim and Suzanne got engaged, fought, went to therapy sessions, and eventually broke up.  How could such a perfect beginning end so badly?   There had to be answers, and he would find them! 

The words “common sense” and “logic” are the threads that connect the chapters of this book through the author’s insightful research and obvious intellect.  Let’s take a look at the word “equality” and its role in a couple’s relationship.  Though Mr. Kellis talks about past traditions, he emphasizes that the movement toward equality between men and women was, and continues to be, a progressive move that is morally and legally justified.  He states that in a relationship both individuals must share equally in the feeling and thinking side of the psyche of the relationship. Men do feel and women do think; also men do think and women do feel! The author also believes that common sense leads a couple to take on the world together, rather than arguing with one another.  Instead of becoming involved in faultfinding, both parties need to concentrate on problem solving by using logic and common sense to help resolve issues.   

Among the many resources for his research, the author uses and critiques relationship books written by various authors and also studies the findings of scientists and health professionals—those from the past as well as those considered to be experts in today’s society.  Mr. Kellis has concluded that most of today’s therapists do not actually understand the problems in a relationship, or if they do, they don’t go far enough to actually find answers.  He also believes that they don’t know how to stop disagreements from turning into arguments. As someone who has done considerable counseling, I, too, believe this is true and that something is amiss with the training these professionals have received. The author emphasizes that faultfinding and simply defining a negative relationship does not lead to happiness; problem solving, on the other hand, gets to the root of problems and can save marriages. Readers are given a lot of information as to how the mind works, including how we all too often fall in love with someone because of looks and money, not understanding that we stay in love because of character. A very important lesson to be learned is that we must choose to get over our past experiences—including anger toward parents—or we will transfer such negative emotions onto our spouses. Face and forgive are two key words to avoid such transference.  When an individual first falls in love, this is experienced in the conscious as happiness; however, if there are unresolved issues in the unconscious that have not been dealt with, the result will be fear and unhappiness. The author, through the help and advice of friends, was able to forgive his parents for negative childhood memories that he had carried around for years; only then did he find the key to experiencing real happiness.  Suzanne, on the other hand, had never confronted her past and subsequently found fault after fault with him, a man she had loved so much—in the beginning.   

Tim Kellis touches briefly on the works of Dr. Sigmund Freud whose hypothesis was that our behavior is determined by the brain we are born with.  This leads to the conclusion that we can do nothing about our troubles. The author does not accept this theory but does embrace the work of Dr. Carl Jung who theorized that we have minds that develop and that we can correct our insecurities through the impact of our unconscious on our conscious. Dr. Jung spent his entire life delving into the workings of the mind.  

This book encompasses a vast amount of information for the reader to digest; however, it is a book for those who have chosen to find the path to real happiness—perhaps to turn their backs on many established therapy practices and think for themselves. Think, feel, and behave! Equality: the Quest for the Happy Marriage will help make this possible. 

At his last therapy session, the author received permission from his therapist to record the conversation.  Readers are given a word-for-word transcript of the session and can reach their own conclusions as to what was accomplished. 

It is my opinion that this book is unique and could prove to be a very helpful resource for individuals, couples, and professionals involved in counseling.   

Bettie Corbin Tucker
For Independent Book Reviewers
www.bookreviewers.org 
March 12, 2009

Tim Kellis

HappyRelationships.com

HappyMarriages.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

                                                         Preflight

My father is a traveling salesman, that peculiar brand of Willy Loman that actually loves the natural flight of American selling. When I was a boy, I thought of him as a man who appeared on Fridays when we had a steak and ice cream for dessert. After dinner, my [...]]]>   

                                                         Preflight

My father is a traveling salesman, that peculiar brand of Willy Loman
that actually loves the natural flight of American selling. When I was
a boy, I thought of him as a man who appeared on Fridays when we
had a steak and ice cream for dessert. After dinner, my father would
watch whatever football game was on television and fall asleep with his
mouth open, tie loosened, hand over his brow as if he had just finished
one hell of a race. I usually waited until he woke to tell him of my latest
achievement and show him my banana bike and collection of baseball
cards. But I had a brother who demanded his small time with him also,
so when my time came, it was usually just before he ran for his car,
briefcase in hand, and waved away another week.
      But there was one time I remember where I had him all to myself.
For Christmas, my parents had given me an Estes Rocket Set. It was an
amazing toy with a launcher, rocket engines, and the giant Saturn Five
Rocket that had conquered the moon a decade before. I stayed up late
gluing the white fuselage together, packing the parachute, and inserting
the four D engines. The day after Christmas, my father and I walked to
a field to launch my rocket. We walked through the tall weeds painted
orange by the sun low on the horizon. He kept his hands in his pockets
while I carried the rocket and the launcher packed with batteries to fire
the rocket. We crunched through the frozen mud until we reached the
middle of the field. Twilight simmered beyond the big pines and thin blue
snow dusted the ground. I put the launcher down and stretched the wires
to the control pad. My Saturn Five rocket was a beast. It took four D
engines with two parachutes and four wadded sheets to keep the ejection
charge from burning the chute up.
  “Looks like we are launching Apollo 11,” my father murmured while
I threaded the Saturn Five onto the launch wire.
I connected the igniter wires to the four D engines. All four engines
had to ignite or my Saturn Five would go off at a crazy angle and heave
into the ground. I checked the igniters and made sure they were shoved
far up into the engines. My father stamped his feet and kept his hands
in his pockets.
 “ You think this thing will go, boy?”
I looked at the man smoking a Pall Mall, his long Brooks Brothers
coat waving.
“Think so.”
“So this is what you do all week while I’m gone, boy?”
“Yup.”
My father smoked without his hands.
“Well, hurry up, boy. It’s going to be dark soon.”
I turned and walked back to the launch control and inserted the key.
The light glowed ready.
“You might move back, Dad.”
He looked over and snuffed the cigarette out, crunching through the
frozen mud. He was already looking at the distant cars on the highway,
thinking about his next appointment, gassing up, pointing that company
car back to the highway. He turned back and nodded to me.
“Well, blast it off, boy.”
I stared at my Saturn Five, a colossus of white and black with USA
going up the side in red letters. I began to count down.
“Five, four, three, two, one …”
I pressed the button on my launcher as the ready light flickered out.
There was the slight hiss of the sulfur igniters, and for a moment the
rocket didn’t move. Then the four D engines caught fire, and whoosh!
The fire bent out and burned the weeds below the launcher, and suddenly
the Saturn Five was gone. A fiery tail burned high up in the cold sky as
11
the rocket leaned over slightly and left a white vapor trail across the early
stars.
“Jesus Christ!”
My father continued staring up while I stamped out the weed fire.
The ejection charge fired and the chutes blossomed, but I could see the
Saturn Five had gone too high for the wind and the time of day. It was
getting dark, and that rocket was sailing fast into the west, a white
satellite against a darkening blue palate.
“I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Boy, that
sonofabitch really flew.”
I put my hand up, and I saw the Saturn Five drifting away; a gold
colossus hanging by four parachutes.
“Aren’t you going after it, boy?”
I shook my head solemnly.
“No, it’s gone,” I murmured, watching the rocket drift past the field.
“There’s too much wind.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
My father kept his neck craned to the sky and put his hands on my
shoulders, and that’s what I remember. I think it was the only time we
were really together, watching that rocket disappear into the coal sky.

Rocket Man–
http://www.billhazelgrove.com

Tim Kellis, author of "Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

My biggest influence, and the reason I have taken on the challenge of saving marriages, were my parents, who again just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  And their influence wasn’t because of anything they ever said to me, [...]]]>  

Tim Kellis, author of "Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage"

My biggest influence, and the reason I have taken on the challenge of saving marriages, were my parents, who again just celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary.  And their influence wasn’t because of anything they ever said to me, but what they did, stayed married.  What makes this more important was they had the typical marriage of couples from their generation, full of fights, but they managed to stick it out.  They taught me that divorce was not an option, that quitting was not the path to take. 

My mom actually had my career mapped out when I was a kid to be a priest, something I took very seriously.  I was an altar boy (no, I do not have any stories) and studied the bible intently.  Although I haven’t read the bible since I was a kid I have used a lot of what I learned in my book.  And then I discovered girls. 

Although my career was extremely successful I never met a girl who lit up my passion, until at the height of the stock market (I worked as a Wall Street analyst) in 2000 I met a girl I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, and then we started arguing.  Towards the end we went to a therapist looking for help solving our relationship troubles.  When I realized he wasn’t really helping I decided to tackle the issue myself, although that relationship ended.  Writing this book was my cathartic reaction to that pain. 

When I met this girl I had worked for 5 years as a semiconductor analyst on Wall Street.  So I studied like a Wall Street analyst, reading over 100 books in a period of 10 months, which equates to 2 ½ books a week, straight for 10 months.  I believe this may be one of the most researched books ever written.  And at the end of this research my confidence in my ability to solve the relationship problem resulted in the book, after 9 months of writing. 

The bottom line is a professional psychologist could not have written such an expansive book as “Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage” because of the limitations of the industry.  My joke is the 100 books read included nearly 2 dozen relationship books and the only books read that were fiction were the relationship books.  In fact, the first title concept I came up with was “Men Are From Earth, Women Are From Earth” to demonstrate just that point. 

 by Tim Kellis

www.HappyRelationships.com

Click here to view the embedded video.