Category: Projects

No Blog Until Tonight

11/15/2019

Because I am formatting my manuscript this week, I will wait to post a new blog this evening when I review Ancient Aliens.

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Posting Update

11/1/2019

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Since I spent yesterday celebrating Halloween with my son, my next post will be later tonight when I review the new episode of Ancient Aliens.

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Today I Have to Illustrate My Pyramid Legends Book

10/30/2019

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I had planned to write something long today, but yesterday I had quite a surprise when I proudly informed my publisher that I had completed the rough draft of Legends of the Pyramids a month early and they replied that they expected me to have all of the artwork for the book (the book I was not supposed to have finished writing until December) submitted to them this Friday, along with the captions and the page numbers (again, for the book I was not supposed to have yet finished) on which they should appear. So, today I am illustrating an entire book in 48 hours and scrambling to meet an arbitrary deadline for a book I apparently was supposed to have written backward to match the pictures, since I can see no other way to start with the pictures and end with a manuscript.

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I Finally Finished Indexing

10/17/2019

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Truth be told, it’s been a bit of slow week in the world of pseudohistorical zaniness. At the end of the month To the Stars will launch the new volume in Tom DeLonge’s and Peter Levenda’s God, Man and War series, War, but I don’t imagine they’ll be sending me one. As I write this on Wednesday evening, I just finished proofreading and indexing my Mound Builder book—which took me longer than expected and was much more work than I had anticipated. The older I get and the more responsibilities I have, the harder it is to cram several extra hours of work into each day. When I got close to the end, I decided to just take the day and push through to get it done. I wrapped it up Wednesday morning and then spent the afternoon formatting the final document, which I sent in to the publisher just before close of business yesterday. To be frank, I’m tired and decided to take the day to decompress before I resume work trying to push out the last few pages of my pyramid legends book.

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Book Proofreading and Indexing Commences

9/25/2019

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The publisher of my Mound Builders book dumped 400 pages of proofreading and indexing on me yesterday afternoon with a very short deadline, and I am now swamped with work as two book deadlines loom. As a result, I will try to finish my review of Scott Wolter's new book for tomorrow, and then I will need to take time off to proofread and index.

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Another Weekend for Book Writing

9/21/2019

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Since Ancient Aliens is off again this week (though they are providing live coverage of the so-called "storming" of Area 51 on their Instagram account), I will be taking this weekend off to work on my book about pyramid legends. I am getting so close to the end, and I really want to be done. Crashing through writing and publishing two books in one calendar year is a little more than I can comfortably handle, and it is starting to wear me out.

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Good News: My Computer Is Back!

9/18/2019

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After nine days without a computer, my laptop showed up unexpectedly from its vacation on the west coast with a new hard drive and an overhaul. Now that the machine is up and running, things can start to get back to normal. However, getting everything loaded back on to the computer, syncing it with my various clouds, external storage devices, etc. and then updating everything took most of my day yesterday, so I had no time for writing. If I can get caught up, I hope to be able to resume my normal schedule tomorrow.

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Unveiling the Cover for My New Book

9/12/2019

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As I continue to have only limited computer time due to the failure of my laptop hard drive, I have to devote the time I have with a borrowed laptop to paying writing projects. Today, however, I would like to present the cover for my new book, The Mound Builder Myth, which will be released in the spring. Yes, it is really happening. I think the cover looks beautiful, and the publisher did a remarkable job creating something evocative, beautiful, and also in line with the conventions of its genre. I cannot wait to see it in print!

The cover images include, at top, a historic photograph of men posing atop the ruins during the destruction of a Native American mound and, at bottom, the infamous Grave Creek Stone, a fraudulent artifact created in the early 1800s to provide proof of Old World contact with the Americas before Columbus.

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My Computer Is Dead

9/11/2019

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I am sad to report that my computer is dead. The hard drive on the six-month-old machine gave out Sunday night, taking with it most of my multimedia files. Fortunately, my book files were backed up to the cloud, and older data are on my external hard drive, but I lost a lot anyway. Beyond this, the computer has to be returned to the manufacturer for repair under the terms of the warranty, so I am without a computer for the next week or more. This is going to make it very difficult to work, let alone to write, since I don’t do well trying to type on my tablet, and I can only borrow a computer for so long per day. As a result, my blog will likely be spotty and short until I have a working machine again.

Meanwhile, there was some good news for Ancient Aliens and its fans. After a month of near-record-low ratings, the series bounced back across the million-viewer line, though just barely, for its final summer broadcast. The show brought in 1.027 million viewers and even edged out The UnXplained, which had only 976,000 viewers, though the latter show outdrew the former in the all-important 18-54 demographic.

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Taking a Book-Writing Break; Plus: An Unexpected Clarification

9/4/2019

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I need to get serious about finishing my book on pyramid legends, so I am going to be taking some time off this week to try to get some writing done. It seems like a good time to do it. Code of the Wild will devote its remaining episodes to hunting modern treasures, so it is of no concern to me. Andrew Collins has a new book out, but the publisher didn’t share it with me or other reviewers, so it might as well not exist. (The publisher offered some crap called The Wonder of Unicorns for review instead.) I’m sure I’ll eventually acquire a copy, but I’m not going to waste money on it. Tom DeLonge tried teasing more claims about testing “metamaterials,” but the photos showed what looks like the same types of material previously tested and determined to be industrial waste. So, until Ancient Aliens airs on Friday, it seems that I am safe to take a couple of days off.

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