New Title and New Edition

NEW BOOK: INTO THE OUT

I'm excited to announce I have a new book about to be published--a science fiction adventure entitled Into the Out. Told through the eyes of a teenage girl, it concerns eleven high school students on a field trip in the desert who come across a long-buried starshi;p. The ship takes off with them aboard and whisks them away into interstellar space. They don't know where they're going or why, but they have to pool their resources to survive their mysterious journey into deep space.

The book is being considered by Kindle Scout, and this is where you come in. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Kindle Scout is a reader-driven program by Amazon. It's somewhat along the lines of Kickstarter, where the readers themselves choose what they'd like to see published. In this case, though, you don't have to put up any money, not a cent. You just visit the campaign site and read the opening section of the book, about 5,000 words. Then, if you like what you see and want to read more, you vote for it. If the book gets enough votes, Amazon will publish it as an ebook under their own imprint.

Oh, and as a thank-you gift for supporting it, you'll get a free copy of the final ebook

What can you do to help? Just a few simple things:

1. During thee campaign period (May 15 through June 14, 2016), visit this Web page.
2. Read the opening section of Into the Out.
3. If you enjoy the book and want it to get published, nominate it. You can have up to 3 active nominations going at any one time.

That's all it takes. You'll be notified when the campaign period is over. If enough other people agree with you that the book should be published, you'll get an early ebook copy with my compliments.



And tell your space opera-loving friends. The more, the merrier.

I hope you'll enjoy the sample, and thank you for your support.

How I became an atheist

I was born into a not-very-religious Jewish family. I went to Hebrew School and had a Bar Mitzvah, the whole schtick. But I never really thought about it much or paid any attention. God was just something people said, sort of like the adults' Santa Claus. He was something that was there, like air, and you didn't really need to think about it in daily life. Maybe specialists in "air" thought about it, like the Air Quality Management District, but it didn't really affect me.

I can pinpoint the date my deconversion began: Jan. 14, 1962. I was a devout admirer of comedian Ernie Kovacs, one of the great geniuses of the entertainment media. (For anyone who doesn't know about him, check out his lengthy Wikipedia entry.) Although he'd been working in New Jersey radio for some time, one of his first television gigs was a morning show in Philadelphia, where I grew up. I thought he was hysterically funny--and obviously so did many other people, for he quickly moved on to bigger things. But as a little kid I had the wonderful pleasure of my mom taking me downtown to the studio where his show was broadcast and watching him from the audience. (She told me later that she lost an earring there and went back to the studio to look for it after bringing me home; Kovacs's wife, actress Edie Adams, helped her look. My mom never told me whether the search was successful.) Kovacs went on to appear in some movies--arguably the biggest was Bell, Book, and Candle--and did a series of half-hour TV specials for ABC. They were way ahead of their time in both form and content.

In the wee morning hours of Jan 13, 1962, Kovacs was driving home from a party in Los Angeles when his car hit a power pole and he was killed almost instantly. When I heard about it later that day, I was devastated. This man with the brilliantly inventive mind, who could do things with a television camera that no one else ever dreamed of, and was funny to boot, was gone from my life. I was depressed all day, and when I was going to sleep that night I cried and prayed for god to take me instead and bring Kovacs back, or at least transfer his genius into me so that I could somehow continue his work. Neither of those things happened; although I did become a writer, no one, especially me, has ever claimed I approached his level of talent.

I started deciding that if god couldn't perform that one little favor, for which I prayed with such heartfelt conviction, what good was he?

Over the years my atheism became more formal and intellectually based, but that was where it started. The petulant, spiteful actions of a child? Maybe, but it opened my eyes. Santa Claus existed merely to keep little kids in line, but he was useless when you really needed something from him that your parents couldn't deliver. I started paying attention to the man behind the curtain, and realized it was all just doubletalk and hogwash. I decided to believe in people instead. People may sometimes deceive you, people may also let you down on their big promises--but at least you know they're not perfect and can't expect miracles from them.

And Ernie Kovacs's Nairobi Trio still makes me laugh when I see it and cry at the same time for the lost work he might have accomplished.