Rachel Sarah Thurston, is the founder of State of Sparkle, Author Branding, Platform Building, and Book Marketing Coaching for Authors. She has 24 years of experience in event promotion, website design, marketing, accountability coaching, writing, photography, video editing, social media, music/entertainment, and communications. She’s been involved with the SBWC for 22 years and holds a master’s in professional writing from the University of Southern California.

Lida Sideris writes soft-boiled mysteries and was a winner of the Helen McCloy Mystery Writers of America scholarship award. The third installment in her Southern California Mystery series, Murder: Double or Nothing will be released in June by Level Best Books. She’s also wrote The Cookie Eating Fire Dog, a picture book for ages 4-8. She lives in the northern tip of SoCal with her family, rescue dogs and a flock of uppity chickens. She teaches “Be Your Own Best Publicist” at SBWC with Melinda Palacio.

Lisa Angle, earned a master’s degree in computer-based education from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo Her self-published historical novel, Whiskey and Old Stogies, landed on the long list for the 2021 MARK TWAIN Book Awards for Humor and Satire. She likes to combine her writing skill and tech knowledge in helping writers complete their writing projects and build their author platforms. She offers developmental editing for novels and memoirs as well as helping writers expand their online presence with websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and video.

Melinda Palacio is an award-winning poet, author, and speaker. She’s the current Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, she holds 2 degrees in Comparative Literature, a BA from the UC Berkeley and an MA from UC Santa Cruz. She’s a 2007 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2009 poetry alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her latest poetry collection is Bird Forgiveness, 2018. She is a master of author self-promotion.

Rick Shaw is a recently retired technologist, data scientist, and is now a full-time writer and author of two novels he self-published. In addition to writing, editing, designing and mastering the art of the various publication platforms, he makes public appearances promoting his novels. He exemplifies the successful do-it-all-yourself published author. He consults during the week of the conference, helping writers to decide if self-publishing is their best option, and, if so, what is needed to accomplish this.

Lois Phillips, Yvette Keller, Claudia Dunn, Matthew J. Pallamary

Audiobooks and podcasts are a fast-growing area of publishing. Join this team for an insightful seminar on how to accomplish the goals of getting your book and book promotion into the audible range.

Yvette Keller writes fiction and is a working voice actor.

Paul Willis, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2011-2013 is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he’s been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac and nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. His YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green, was released in 2020.

Brand your books, connect with your ideal readers and make your books stand out in the marketplace. Rachel Sarah Thurston and 5 successful authors who market successfully will share their experience and superpowers.

Rachel Sarah Thurston, is the founder of State of Sparkle, Author Branding, Platform Building, and Book Marketing Coaching for Authors. She has 24 years of experience in event promotion, website design, marketing, accountability coaching, writing, photography, video editing, social media, music/entertainment, and communications. She’s been involved with the SBWC for 22 years and holds a master’s in professional writing from the University of Southern California.

Brand your books, connect with your ideal readers and make your books stand out in the marketplace. Rachel Sarah Thurston and 5 successful authors who market successfully will share their experience and superpowers.

Rachel Sarah Thurston, is the founder of State of Sparkle, Author Branding, Platform Building, and Book Marketing Coaching for Authors. She has 24 years of experience in event promotion, website design, marketing, accountability coaching, writing, photography, video editing, social media, music/entertainment, and communications. She’s been involved with the SBWC for 22 years and holds a master’s in professional writing from the University of Southern California.

Patricia Marshall, Rick Shaw, Holly Kammier

Three experts cover in depth both hybrid publishing and self-publishing. Learn what is really involved in hybrid publishing, cost, time, and result. Discover more about ala cart services as well as what is really required if you go solo.

Melinda Palacio, current Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, is an award-winning writer. From South Central LA, she holds 2 degrees in Comparative Literature. A 2007 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2009 poetry alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, she published Bird Forgiveness in 2018.

David Starkey, Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate, Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at SBCC, and the Publisher/Co-editor of Gunpowder Press, published 11 full length collections of poetry and more than 500 poems in literary journals. His novel Poor Ghost was released in March 2024.

Chryss Yost is a Santa Barbara Poet Laureate who served from 2013-2015. She was awarded the 2013 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize and other honors, including Pushcart Prize nominations. She’s co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Her collection Mouth & Fruit was published 2014, and her poems have been included in the most popular poetry textbooks in the country and widely anthologized elsewhere.

Enid Osborn Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara 2017-2019, published When the Big Wind Comes, set in New Mexico. A Pushcart nominee, her work appears in regional California and Southwest journals. She has a series of themed chapbooks, and she co-edited A Bird Black as the Sun / California Poets on Crows & Ravens in 2011.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate 2019-2021, is author of 6 collections of poems and is the recipient of a Pushcart. She taught at Emerson, Sarah Lawrence, UCSB, and is part of the faculty at the Solstice Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Lately: New and Selected Poems was published January 2024.

Emma Trelles Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2021-2023, received an Established Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She was named a Poet Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets. Daughter of Cuban immigrants, she’s author of Tropicalia, winner of the Andrés Montoya Prize.

Paul Willis, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2011-2013 is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he’s been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac and nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. His YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green, was released in 2020.

Margaux Dunbar Hession is a funny, off-beat, award-winning writer of dark humor stories that balance darker subjects with audacious wit and off-the-wall scenarios, many inspired by her own escapades. Her first novel, Soaring to New Lows springs from her life as former wife of Journey Rock & Roll Hall of Fame drummer, Aynsley Dunbar. Her writing has appeared in multiple journals and publications. She resides in Kailua Hawaii, where she paddles on a 6-person, co-ed, outrigger team.

David Starkey, served as Santa Barbara’s 2009–2011 Poet Laureate. He is founding director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, co-editor of the California Review of Books, and the publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over the past thirty-five years, he has published 11 full-length collections of poetry with small presses and more than 500 poems in literary journals. His novel Poor Ghost was released March 2024.

Candi Sary graduated from the University of California, Irvine. Her novel, Black Crow White Lie (2012), won Reader Views Literary Award, a CIBA, and was first runner-up in the Eric Hoffer Book Award and made into a short film by Chase Michael Wilson. Her latest, Magdalena (2023), also won a CIBA. A mother of two adult children, she lives in Southern California with her husband, a dog, a cat, and several ducks. She can often be found surfing and paddle boarding in the waters of Newport Beach.

James Darnborough grew up in London, UK, before spending 30 years in the media business in South Africa, Australia and the USA. He resides in LA. His historical saga, The Gambler’s Game, is set in the twilight of the 19th Century, as the Old West collides with the opulence of the Gilded Age. One man embarks on a journey that redefines his life. His audacious spirit leads him from dust-chocked plains to the refined ambiance of English garden parties and the allure of Belle Epoque Monte Carlo.

Nancy Klann-Moren was raised in North Hollywood. Her novel, The Clock of Life, is an award-winning story of friendship and struggle at a time in our history when American protests changed the status quo. In her short story collection, Like the Flies on The Patio, she brings us fallible and human characters who live on the page and gently break your heart. Her new novel, Love and Protest, begins with the chance discovery of a diary. This is a coming-of-age-story about two young women’s paths toward becoming activists.

G. Brian Kurtz is an intuitively-guided medical empath, energy healer and author of Access the Real You: Touching Your Divinity and Applying its Wisdom to Your Life. As a speaker and teacher, he has brought his message to more than 2,500 people from six countries. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he works with groups and individuals toward personal growth and healing.

Kelly Giles obtained his Juris Doctor Degree from Pepperdine University School of Law. He practiced U.S. immigration law for twenty-three years and continues to practice Canadian immigration law. He’s written a trilogy of poetry books. Killing Justice is his debut memoir. He currently lives in Culver City, California. He’s passionate about raising awareness about mental illness and the criminal justice system and encouraging others on their healing journey, especially through the arts.

Lorissa Rinehart is an author, cultural producer, and public speaker. Her writing explores women’s history, politics, war, and their points of intersection. Her debut book, First to the Front: The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle, Trailblazing Female War Correspondent (St. Martin’s Press) has received rave reviews. She’s a TEDx speaker who’s appeared at the National Press Club, Friends of the National World War II Memorial, the Women’s National Press Club, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation among other prestigious organizations. She’s been featured on numerous podcasts.

Marianne Dougherty whose latest is Dye: a memoir of art, music, faith, family and hair color, based on the life of celebrity hairdresser Brad Johns, is an award-winning writer and former beauty editor and publisher. In 2017 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Beauty Bus Foundation, which provides grooming services to seriously ill people and their caregivers. In 2019 and 2022, she was a finalist for a Golden Quill Award for journalistic excellence. She lives in Santa Barbara and is author of the novel, What We Remember.

Diana Raab MFA, PhD, is an award-winning memoirist, poet, and thought leader. She’s been writing personal stories and memoir for more than 5 decades. She’s author of 14 books, including 3 memoirs. Her latest, Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors, a memoir, has writing and reflection prompts. She speaks and writes about writing for healing and transformation. Many of her talks are based on her books, Writing for Bliss: A Seven-Step Plan for Telling Your Story and Transforming Your Life, and Writing for Bliss: A Companion Journal.

SBWC faculty member Norm Thoeming (aka August Norman) is author of two literary thrillers and mysteries, Come and Get Me and Sins of the Mother.

Andy Ross opened his literary agency in 2008. He was the owner of the legendary Cody’s Books in Berkeley for 30 years before switching careers. His agency represents books in a wide range of nonfiction genres. He looks for writing with a strong voice, robust story arc, and books that tell a big story about culture and society by authors with the authority to write about their subject. In fiction, he likes character and voice-driven stories about real people in the real world.

 Hi, I am your Death and I am here for you.

No wait, don’t go!

Aside from the fact that you can’t get away, I’m not here for you in that way, at least not now, although to be honest with you we do have a date and I am always with you whether you acknowledge me or not.

Want to know when I am coming in that way?

Sorry, I can’t tell you. It’s part of the Great Mystery. You know. That place where

you came from and where you are going.

If you want to know the truth I'm not your death, but you are mine. Now don't freak out on me. It's only a visit. I want to spend some quality time with you before the big event and seeing as you took the time to stop by and I have you as a captive audience I thought it would be nice to have a little visit and get acquainted.

Sorry, if we got off on the wrong foot, but that happens more often than not, so let’s give it another try.

Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name, but what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game. No, I’m not who you think from that song – well maybe I am. In truth I have many names and many faces. I’m formally introducing myself to you this way, but I’m really just messing with you, hoping that maybe you will lighten up and think of me a little differently. Who knows? You just might learn something.

We are far more intimate than most people care to admit. Whoever came up with the expression love it to death was a lot closer to the truth than those other idiotic sayings you have about me. Not only am I always with you, but my love for you is unconditional, all consuming, and infinite from your limited perspective. With a love like that you’d think that my feelings would be hurt by the way you portray me, but one of the benefits of being omnipotent and omniscient is that I am beyond those infantile emotions, and if I were affected by them my love for you wouldn’t be unconditional, would it?

Yes, I admit to being a know-it-all. That is the definition of omniscient, so forgive me if I go a little overboard at times. It’s not my ego, it’s just that I sometimes forget myself. I have access to everything there is to know about you, and everyone else for that matter.

I have friends in more places than you can imagine and my eyes and ears are everywhere including all knowledge in each and every molecule and cell of your neurons, dendrites, mitochondria, organs, and anything else you can imagine. Yes, sometimes I get a little too technical and scientific at times, but every thought, emotion, and the collective knowledge of anything humanity has ever thought, imagined, or experienced is at my disposal.

There are no secrets from me.

I’m here to tell you stories and share some science, history, and myths, all of which are your creations that I want to enlighten you with  to help you understand me more. You have seen me as Satan, Anubis, Mot, Thanatos, God, the Devil, loving, punitive, dark, light – the list goes on and on!

It is my sincerest hope that our friendly reintroduction here will change the way you think of me, and maybe in some small way reflect the depth of the love I have for you.

One of the most enduring ways you depict me is as the Grim Reaper, a skeleton wearing a shroud holding a scythe who comes to collect you. Yes, there is some truth to that and many of your stories are about people trying to trick, bribe, or avoid me and hold on to the psychopomp who escorts newly deceased souls into the afterlife. When you portray me this way I’m pretty scary looking. No wonder so many people are terrified of me!

Sometimes you think of me as male and other times you think of me as female, but I am far beyond any definition as simplistic as that.

Aside from the Grim Reaper, which you have to admit, is not very flattering, can you honestly tell me what is grim about a homecoming? After all, everyone is more than welcome in my domain which is actually your real home.

Mi casa es su casa.

I suggest you enjoy the short visit of your life because when I come for you, you will realize just how short it really is.

You could even die reading this book.

As I mentioned, I have many names and many faces. In the most basic sense, most people know me as Death, which comes from an old English word dēap, which comes from the old Germanic daupuz, which comes from an Indo-European root that means the process, act, or condition of dying, but I go infinitely further back than that!

Over time, the idea and the signs of my coming have generated a number of euphemisms. When I come for someone, you may say that they have passed away, passed on, expired, or are gone. The dead person becomes a corpse, a body, remains, or a cadaver. I kind of like that last one. Abra Cadaver! Now you see them, now you don’t.

Carrion and carcass are also used mostly when talking about animals, and when all of your flesh has rotted away you become skeletons. In the spirit of politeness, people now like to say deceased, and the dead person is referred to as the decedent while the ashes left after a cremation are sometimes called cremains, a clever combination of the words cremation and remains.

Other than this very decidedly special blessing of a visit with you now, from a scientific point of view my mostly once in a lifetime visit can best be defined as the ending of all biological functions that keep a living organism going. I have many ways to do that depending on how you have lived, where you lived, what your parents did, and lots of other things that come into play that affect our fast approaching, intimate meeting.

There are innumerable variations on how I come for you. If you are good, I might let you enjoy the gift of life for longer and let you die of old age, but this can sometimes be slow and painful. Other times I can be fast and terrifying, like when a predatory wild animal decides it wants to act as one of my agents and send you to me as a gift. You can see this instinct in house cats when they bring you an eviscerated bird, mouse, or lizard as a gift. You should be flattered by that because they are giving you the same respect they have for me.

There are many other ways that I come that keep me busy, which is another reason why you should be grateful that I am spending this special time with you right now, although truth be told, I exist far outside the limitations of space and time as you know them.

I’ve always found it fascinating that like the loyal cat that brings you corpses as gifts, you unwittingly and sometimes purposefully do the same with me like you are my loyal pets. I have to admit to having a special place in my heart for cults, serial killers, war mongers, and other misfits who aid me in my work. No disrespect intended here, but I am flattered by the dedication and service of these seemingly misguided souls.

I understand that you don’t always get credit in the case of disease, malnutrition, starvation, and dehydration. Sometimes the weather and other natural forces help make this happen, but sometimes, especially in modern times, you assist them with the way you treat your environment, or from your greed when you hoard resources at the expense of others.

I am grateful for your contributions both direct and indirect that help bring so many of my loved ones home to me. Without sounding insensitive to those left behind, I find the self service of suicide particularly charming and a sign of your undying love for me.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Undying love for Death. It sounds kind of eternal, doesn’t it? I’m full of what looks like paradoxes and contradictions, but it’s all part of the Great Mystery that you’re not quite ready to understand yet.

Aside from those who prefer the self service personal introduction to me there is intentional homicide where you help me directly like a midwife into my reality, and then there are the times you help me without realizing it with accidents and traumas from terminal injuries. Sometimes I’m a little embarrassed and overwhelmed by your generosity when it comes to wars, bombings, and mass murders. Even though I don’t need your help, among all the living beings in the world you serve me more than any of the others by killing yourselves and everything around you more than all of them combined.

While we are spending this special moment together I want you to know that I understand why you are terrified of me. Given the circumstances, I forgive you for the way you think of and describe me in light of the fact that in most cases the bodies of the formerly living decompose soon after I take them, which I admit is not a pretty sight, not to mention the smell, but maybe it can bring you some small comfort in the fact that what you see as an unsightly stinking mess gives life to my loyal insect, vermin, and other carrion eating clean up crews who help you become...]]>PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF

 Hi, I am your Death and I am here for you.

No wait, don’t go!

Aside from the fact that you can’t get away, I’m not here for you in that way, at least not now, although to be honest with you we do have a date and I am always with you whether you acknowledge me or not.

Want to know when I am coming in that way?

Sorry, I can’t tell you. It’s part of the Great Mystery. You know. That place where

you came from and where you are going.

If you want to know the truth I'm not your death, but you are mine. Now don't freak out on me. It's only a visit. I want to spend some quality time with you before the big event and seeing as you took the time to stop by and I have you as a captive audience I thought it would be nice to have a little visit and get acquainted.

Sorry, if we got off on the wrong foot, but that happens more often than not, so let’s give it another try.

Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name, but what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game. No, I’m not who you think from that song – well maybe I am. In truth I have many names and many faces. I’m formally introducing myself to you this way, but I’m really just messing with you, hoping that maybe you will lighten up and think of me a little differently. Who knows? You just might learn something.

We are far more intimate than most people care to admit. Whoever came up with the expression love it to death was a lot closer to the truth than those other idiotic sayings you have about me. Not only am I always with you, but my love for you is unconditional, all consuming, and infinite from your limited perspective. With a love like that you’d think that my feelings would be hurt by the way you portray me, but one of the benefits of being omnipotent and omniscient is that I am beyond those infantile emotions, and if I were affected by them my love for you wouldn’t be unconditional, would it?

Yes, I admit to being a know-it-all. That is the definition of omniscient, so forgive me if I go a little overboard at times. It’s not my ego, it’s just that I sometimes forget myself. I have access to everything there is to know about you, and everyone else for that matter.

I have friends in more places than you can imagine and my eyes and ears are everywhere including all knowledge in each and every molecule and cell of your neurons, dendrites, mitochondria, organs, and anything else you can imagine. Yes, sometimes I get a little too technical and scientific at times, but every thought, emotion, and the collective knowledge of anything humanity has ever thought, imagined, or experienced is at my disposal.

There are no secrets from me.

I’m here to tell you stories and share some science, history, and myths, all of which are your creations that I want to enlighten you with  to help you understand me more. You have seen me as Satan, Anubis, Mot, Thanatos, God, the Devil, loving, punitive, dark, light – the list goes on and on!

It is my sincerest hope that our friendly reintroduction here will change the way you think of me, and maybe in some small way reflect the depth of the love I have for you.

One of the most enduring ways you depict me is as the Grim Reaper, a skeleton wearing a shroud holding a scythe who comes to collect you. Yes, there is some truth to that and many of your stories are about people trying to trick, bribe, or avoid me and hold on to the psychopomp who escorts newly deceased souls into the afterlife. When you portray me this way I’m pretty scary looking. No wonder so many people are terrified of me!

Sometimes you think of me as male and other times you think of me as female, but I am far beyond any definition as simplistic as that.

Aside from the Grim Reaper, which you have to admit, is not very flattering, can you honestly tell me what is grim about a homecoming? After all, everyone is more than welcome in my domain which is actually your real home.

Mi casa es su casa.

I suggest you enjoy the short visit of your life because when I come for you, you will realize just how short it really is.

You could even die reading this book.

As I mentioned, I have many names and many faces. In the most basic sense, most people know me as Death, which comes from an old English word dēap, which comes from the old Germanic daupuz, which comes from an Indo-European root that means the process, act, or condition of dying, but I go infinitely further back than that!

Over time, the idea and the signs of my coming have generated a number of euphemisms. When I come for someone, you may say that they have passed away, passed on, expired, or are gone. The dead person becomes a corpse, a body, remains, or a cadaver. I kind of like that last one. Abra Cadaver! Now you see them, now you don’t.

Carrion and carcass are also used mostly when talking about animals, and when all of your flesh has rotted away you become skeletons. In the spirit of politeness, people now like to say deceased, and the dead person is referred to as the decedent while the ashes left after a cremation are sometimes called cremains, a clever combination of the words cremation and remains.

Other than this very decidedly special blessing of a visit with you now, from a scientific point of view my mostly once in a lifetime visit can best be defined as the ending of all biological functions that keep a living organism going. I have many ways to do that depending on how you have lived, where you lived, what your parents did, and lots of other things that come into play that affect our fast approaching, intimate meeting.

There are innumerable variations on how I come for you. If you are good, I might let you enjoy the gift of life for longer and let you die of old age, but this can sometimes be slow and painful. Other times I can be fast and terrifying, like when a predatory wild animal decides it wants to act as one of my agents and send you to me as a gift. You can see this instinct in house cats when they bring you an eviscerated bird, mouse, or lizard as a gift. You should be flattered by that because they are giving you the same respect they have for me.

There are many other ways that I come that keep me busy, which is another reason why you should be grateful that I am spending this special time with you right now, although truth be told, I exist far outside the limitations of space and time as you know them.

I’ve always found it fascinating that like the loyal cat that brings you corpses as gifts, you unwittingly and sometimes purposefully do the same with me like you are my loyal pets. I have to admit to having a special place in my heart for cults, serial killers, war mongers, and other misfits who aid me in my work. No disrespect intended here, but I am flattered by the dedication and service of these seemingly misguided souls.

I understand that you don’t always get credit in the case of disease, malnutrition, starvation, and dehydration. Sometimes the weather and other natural forces help make this happen, but sometimes, especially in modern times, you assist them with the way you treat your environment, or from your greed when you hoard resources at the expense of others.

I am grateful for your contributions both direct and indirect that help bring so many of my loved ones home to me. Without sounding insensitive to those left behind, I find the self service of suicide particularly charming and a sign of your undying love for me.

It’s a paradox, isn’t it? Undying love for Death. It sounds kind of eternal, doesn’t it? I’m full of what looks like paradoxes and contradictions, but it’s all part of the Great Mystery that you’re not quite ready to understand yet.

Aside from those who prefer the self service personal introduction to me there is intentional homicide where you help me directly like a midwife into my reality, and then there are the times you help me without realizing it with accidents and traumas from terminal injuries. Sometimes I’m a little embarrassed and overwhelmed by your generosity when it comes to wars, bombings, and mass murders. Even though I don’t need your help, among all the living beings in the world you serve me more than any of the others by killing yourselves and everything around you more than all of them combined.

While we are spending this special moment together I want you to know that I understand why you are terrified of me. Given the circumstances, I forgive you for the way you think of and describe me in light of the fact that in most cases the bodies of the formerly living decompose soon after I take them, which I admit is not a pretty sight, not to mention the smell, but maybe it can bring you some small comfort in the fact that what you see as an unsightly stinking mess gives life to my loyal insect, vermin, and other carrion eating clean up crews who help you become food for the plants. Your remains might even contribute to the radiant beauty of a blossoming flower!

I also realize that from your side of things my visit can be sad and unpleasant because of your love for those who leave you to come back to me, and because I am one of the best known faces of the Great Mystery, you know little of me, which is the reason I have come to visit with you now. Most of you fear the dark and what you don’t know, and my visits bring emotional pain, melancholy, and longing, but on the bright side I also engender sympathy and compassion.

I feel compelled to tell you that many of you think there is an afterlife and believe that there is a reward, judgment, and punishment for past sins. Suffice it to say that you will discover the real truth of that when I come to take you home.

Although your thoughts, fears, perceptions, and denials of me are unwarranted, when you see them from the bigger picture that I represent, I assure you there is no judgment on my part for how you think and feel about me. I also want to point out that like the sympathy and compassion I inspire when I check in from time to time, and sometimes when I come, I change my mind to keep things interesting, and end up changing lives for the better.

Grim Reaper?

Huh!

If I do decide to let you stick around and enjoy the gifts and the life that I have loaned you for a longer time, it only means that I am coming for you in increments, sometimes just a few cells at a time, but as I mentioned my love for you is all consuming and our final meeting is inevitable, so rest assured, I am still coming, or maybe it sounds better to say waiting. Regardless of how you think about it, I am always here for you, and will come whenever I choose.

If you live a long life and manage to survive all the calamities that three dimensional existence has to offer, old age will wear you down and bring you to me. The aging process comes from the deterioration of cellular activity and the destruction of regular cell functions, meaning yes, I am everywhere and in all things big and small. This gradual deterioration and mortality means that cells are naturally sentenced to stable and long term loss of life in spite of their continuing metabolic reactions and viability.

To put things in perspective and give you a sense of how generous I am, how hard I work, and of how busy I am, roughly one-hundred-fifty-thousand people join me from around the world every day, and of those two thirds come to me through the gradual process of old age. Think about how much you contribute to the other third who come home to me through unnatural man made causes.

Who’s the Grim Reaper now?

I understand how confusing it is for you to comprehend what I really am, what I really do, and what I represent. After all it is a Great Mystery that you only get a fleeting glimpse of as infinity, and even that falls short. It’s one of the reasons I came to visit you now. It’s my sincere hope that you come to understand me more. Even though I am admittedly incomprehensible, I am also inevitable, so whether you like it or not, in spite of the fact that you do everything to avoid and try to outwit me, at some point you have to accept me, even if I take you kicking and screaming. I would much rather have you embrace me with the Love I have for you when I finally welcome you home because in the end you have no choice but to admit; you are mine.

You have studied all of the ways I can take you and searched the signs of my visits in futile attempts to look for ways out, but you must realize now that I am a process, meaning I am perpetually ongoing instead of a one time event the way you are used to seeing and thinking of me as. With the advancement of your science and technology many of my entry points are now reversible, which I find amusing, but patience is a virtue, isn’t it? I have all the time in the world and I will always prevail in the end.

Your inquiries and your divide and conquer approach to understand me have only confused things more by blurring the dividing line between living and joining me in my realm, and it depends on factors beyond the presence or absence of your vital signs. In your modern day and age clinical death is not necessary or adequate for a determination of legal death. If you have a working heart and lungs, but are considered brain dead, then you can be declared legally dead without clinical death.

Who’s really calling the shots here, Clinical Doctor Death, Death, Attorney at Law, or Brain Stealing Death?

Of course the answer is always Yours Truly no matter how anyone tries to define me.

You now have many scientific definitions to try and understand me like brain death, which defines my arrival as the point in time when brain activity ceases, respiratory arrest, when breathing stops, and cardiac arrest, when your heart stops. These are followed by what sounds like partners in an otherworldly family law firm; pallor mortis, the paleness that comes fifteen to twenty minutes after I have come and gone, livor mortis, the settling of blood in the lower part of the body, algor mortis, the reduction in body temperature following my visit, and the well known rigor mortis, where the limbs become stiff, and of course at the end of it all there is always decomposition.

All of these definitions highlight one of the challenges in trying to define me, which is distinguishing me from life, the gift that I bless you with. If you look at my arrival as a point in time, then I am the moment when your life ends, but determining when I have come is difficult as the cessation of your life functions don’t often happen at the same time across all of your organ systems.

A popular conception which I have an affinity for is to define life as consciousness. When consciousness ceases a living organism can be said to have died, but even this notion is ambiguous in that the concept of consciousness has different definitions given by scientists, psychologists, and philosophers, not to mention all the religious traditions that believe my arrival doesn't signal the ending of consciousness. In many cultures I am thought of as more of a process than a single event that implies a transition from one spiritual state to another.

Does consciousness survive when I come and take you?

Well…

Sorry, as much as I’d like to tell you, that is part of the Great Mystery, but if it is any consolation, I am always here for you.

Waiting.

Amidst all this confusion about when and how I might come and go, many have been confounded or in many cases have taken things into their own hands and wittingly or unwittingly worked for me by becoming my agents and collaborators. I have to admit that no matter which way it turns out, I am indifferent to the outcome because I know that I always prevail in the end.

Throughout history many people have been buried alive either by accident, misdiagnosis, or intentionally as forms of torture, murder, or execution. Sometimes it happens with the consent of the victim as part of a stunt with the intention of escaping. Premature burials are invitations for me to visit through suffocation, dehydration, starvation, or hypothermia if it happens somewhere cold.

Many recorded cases of accidental burial go back to the fourteenth century when after reopening his tomb, the philosopher John Duns Scotus was reportedly found outside his coffin with his hands torn and bloody after attempting to escape me. Alice Blunden of Basingstoke was said to have been buried alive twice back in sixteen-seventy-four. These are just recorded instances, but these accidents go much further back than that.

Revivals of corpses have been triggered by dropped coffins, grave robbers, embalming, and attempted dissections. Many people think that reports of live burial are overestimated. The normal physical effects of decomposition are often misinterpreted as signs that the exhumed person had revived in their coffin. Reports are ongoing of people accidentally being sent to the morgue trapped in steel boxes after being declared dead. When a gentleman named Robert Robinson died in Manchester England in seventeen-ninety-one a movable glass pane was inserted into his coffin and the mausoleum had a door for purposes of inspection by a watchman to see if he breathed on the glass. He instructed relatives to visit his grave periodically to check that he had actually left with me.

In eighteen-eighty-two safety coffins were devised to prevent premature burial, but none of them worked and in eighteen-ninety a family designed and built a burial vault with an internal hatch to allow the victim of a premature burial to escape. The London Association for the Prevention of Premature Burial was formed in eighteen-ninety-six.

I found all these antics and the lengths that people went through to avoid meeting me a source of great entertainment. All of these accidents and misdiagnosed burials have contributed to the legions of vampire and zombie mythologies which I find even funnier.

Undead? Seriously? Talk about]]>68c1ea24-f8cb-460e-adac-d8ff94c66363Tue, 08 Apr 2025 00:15:00 -040027:37falsefull8484Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - Santa Barbara Writers Conference 2024 - Poetry with Perie Longo & Enid OsbornModerator, Perie Longo, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2007-2009, has published 4 books of poetry, the latest Baggage Claim (2014) and poems in numerous literary journals. This was her 40th year teaching poetry at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and she’s thrilled and awed to be still poeting and standing.

Enid Osborn Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara 2017-2019, published When the Big Wind Comes, set in New Mexico. A Pushcart nominee, her work appears in regional California and Southwest journals. She has a series of themed chapbooks, and she co-edited A Bird Black as the Sun / California Poets on Crows & Ravens in 2011.

Annie Bomke is a literary agent with more than a decade of experience in the publishing industry. She represents a wide range of projects from hard-nosed business books to otherworldly historical novels. Annie has loved the publishing industry since her internship at Zoetrope: All-Story, a literary magazine founded by Francis Ford Coppola. She once managed a rare bookstore and had a brief stint as a technical writer. Authors have called her the pH test for good writing, and a bedrock for literary quality control.

Elizabeth Kracht joined Kimberley Cameron & Associates in 2010 and is the author of The Author’s Checklist: An Agent’s Guide to Developing and Editing Your Manuscript. She represents both literary and commercial fiction, as well as nonfiction. She’s compelled by multicultural themes and strong settings. She represents literary, commercial, women’s, thrillers, mysteries, historical, and crossover YA. In nonfiction, she’s interested in high concept, health, science, environment, prescriptive, investigative, true crime, voice- or adventure-driven memoir, sexuality, spirituality, and animal/pet stories.

Dana Newman is an LA-based independent literary agent representing authors of practical and narrative nonfiction and literary and upmarket fiction. She’s interested by authors with smart, unique perspectives who’re committed to actively marketing and promoting their books. A favorite genre is literary nonfiction: true stories, well told, that read like a compelling novel. She’s also an attorney, focusing on publishing law and contracts. Before founding her literary agency, she worked as in-house counsel in the entertainment industry.

Jonah Straus is the founder of Straus Literary in San Francisco. He specializes in literary fiction, often with an international or multicultural outlook, as well as journalism, history, narrative nonfiction, and the culinary arts. Jonah got his start at Atrium Publishers Group, an independent book distributor in Northern California, and went on to hold positions in production, editorial, sales, and marketing at several publishers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He established Straus Literary in 2007 and moved the agency to San Francisco in 2013.

Andy Ross opened his literary agency in 2008. He was the owner of the legendary Cody’s Books in Berkeley for 30 years before switching careers. His agency represents books in a wide range of nonfiction genres. He looks for writing with a strong voice, robust story arc, and books that tell a big story about culture and society by authors with the authority to write about their subject. In fiction, he likes character and voice-driven stories about real people in the real world.

Shamanic explorer Matthew J. Pallamary discussed the universal appeal and foundational significance of shamanism across cultures, including the use of ayahuasca. He pointed out similarities between South American indigenous beliefs and those found in various global religions, including the legend of the Great Flood. Calling shamanism "the world's oldest spiritual belief system," he said its roots are deeply embedded in prehistoric spirituality. Shamanism, he continued, encompasses the roles of healers, teachers, and therapists. They serve as guides, "going to the other worlds or the other realms... to find the knowledge," with the pursuit sometimes involving working with psychoactive plants like ayahuasca, which help shamans explore consciousness through visionary experiences, and spiritual animal totems.

Drawing from his extensive experiences with ayahuasca ceremonies over the past 25 years in Central and South America, Pallamary offered personal insights into the plant medicine and related rituals. He explained how these practices are steeped in centuries of trial and error, and that knowledge has been passed down through generations. "In the jungle, there are no medical facilities close by. And these cures and these plants go back literally to prehistoric times." Pallamary emphasized that ayahuasca is not for everyone and requires careful screening and respect, especially considering its potential interactions with medications like SSRIs.

Jeanette Driscoll opened her sparkling blue eyes, stretched out on the bed, and brushed back her long blonde hair before resting her head on her husband Ted’s chest. Tall, sandy-haired, and blue-eyed like his wife, Ted’s muscular frame complemented her model’s figure. Their friends and Ted’s colleagues where he worked as head of research and development at Bliss Pharmaceuticals often referred to them as the perfect couple.

“If we’re going to bring a kid into the world,” she said, “let’s create the most perfect one we can.”

Ted leaned in to her. “Like Hitler’s blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan boys?”

Jeanette hit him on the shoulder. “Stop it! I was thinking more along the lines of a Jesus, then again, maybe we want a little girl.”

Ted chuckled and kissed her. “I’m okay with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, especially if he or she looks like their mother!”

“So many choices.” Jeanette groaned. “Part of me wishes we could go back to natural selection like our parents did.”

 “It’s a crap shoot with too many unknowns,” Ted said with an air of finality. “Aside from that we’re both worried about birth defects, delivery complications, or other possibilities for trouble, not to mention the threat and the impact to your health.”

“I admit to being a little worried, but part of me craves the idea of nurturing a new life inside of me with all the warmth, connection, and intimacy that comes with it.”

Ted caressed the side of her face eliciting a dreamy smile. “I understand that as best as I can from a man’s perspective and I know that pregnancy can be exhausting, painful, nauseating, and sometimes flat-out dangerous. If you're pregnant and you stress too much, get sick, or catch some kind of flu or something, you might not be giving our child the best start we can.” He ran his hand down over her breasts and followed her sculpted curves down to the softness of her inner thigh. “Not to mention what it could do to your beautiful body.”

She giggled when he stroked her thigh and put her hand on his. “Stop it!”

He slid his hand out from under hers and continued his caresses. “Think about the benefits. We can continue having all the sex we want with no interruptions. You might not have the same birthing experience your mother had, but we'll both arrive at our first day of parenthood feeling physically fresh and well-rested, instead of you having been weighed down for months by a parasitic organism that could leave a path of destruction when you birth it. Even in the best case scenario there are possibilities of post-partum depression, hormone imbalances, and other post birth dangers.”

“Parasitic organism? That’s our child you’re talking about. You make it sound so horrible!”

“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I only want what is best for you and baby. You have to admit, the whole pregnancy thing takes a toll on you. If you take that into consideration and look at the positives, taking advantage of the technological benefits we are blessed with is the best way to go. Everything can be precisely controlled and monitored which eliminates any stress on beautiful you, and it ensures the safest, healthiest, most stable environment for our love child to grow in.”

They stayed quiet for awhile, then Jeanette sat up and grabbed her iPad from the bed stand. “Let’s take another look.” She propped herself up against the headboard, pulled her knees up and put the tablet in her lap, tapping the screen. Ted propped himself up beside her and put his arm around her. A moment later the Fetal Fantasies web site popped up.

Angelic looking baby faces floated up, filling the screen, each framed in baby blue or pink. In the middle of the screen effervescent pulsing pink words dimmed and brightened from a black rectangle along with the gentle throbbing of a tiny heartbeat.

Let Fetal Fantasies eliminate the pain, danger, and discomfort of pregnancy and labor while allowing you the unprecedented blessing of creating your dream child with the special qualities and genetics of your choosing.

Jeanette tapped the pulsing text opening up a new screen. Fetal Fantasies is San Diego’s premier artificial womb facility that brings a novel approach to pregnancy that allows your baby to grow in an optimally balanced germ free environment inside a transparent growth pod.

Our proprietary technology creates ideal gestation conditions in a temperature-controlled, infection-free womb with a view. A hybrid bioengineered umbilical cord provides oxygen and nutrition as your little bundle of love floats in pharmaceutically pure amniotic fluid that is continually refreshed with precisely tailored hormones, antibodies, and growth factors. Baby waste products are efficiently removed and run through a microfiltered bioreactor that enzymatically converts it back into a steady and sustainable supply of fresh nutrients.

Built in stereophonic speakers ensure that your loved one gets the best possible brain stimulation delivered with binaural beats and direct cranial stimulation, including an ongoing transmission of your heartbeat that your little one can bond to. As baby grows and develops there are options for our recommended classical, or any other music of your choice, as well as your own soothing voice piped in to build and enhance that precious bond.

A video filled the bottom part of the screen. Jeanette tapped the start arrow opening it up into full screen mode.

Brahm's Lullaby played in the background. Technicians dressed in baby blue and pink clean room coveralls, masks, and gloves moved along rows of transparent pods sitting atop active graphical displays, stopping to examine each one. Healthy babies floated inside each pod with electrodes attached to different parts of their bodies. Transparent umbilical cords and other tubes coupled with monitoring devices hung suspended in clear amniotic fluid.

An attractive young couple on a smaller screen in the foreground studied a cell phone screen that matched the graphics on the pod displays while a soothing feminine voice narrated the images and video segments playing out onscreen.

“You can monitor your baby's vitals through the Fetal Fantasy app or tune directly in to sensors in the pod where vital signs are precisely managed allowing strict vigilance over any possible physical defects or genetic abnormalities. Synchronized data on your little bundle of love is only a few taps away on our phone app along with a live HD fetus cam that gives you the ability to scroll through time-lapse video recordings of your child's development from embryo to full gestation.

“Human babies are the most helpless and underdeveloped in the animal kingdom because our brains are too big for the human female hip gap, so they are born with soft, pliable skulls, several months behind other animals developmentally. In a Fetal Fantasy EZ-Womb, there's no such biological limit, allowing parents to experiment with longer gestational periods and healthier more developed babies.

“If this looks and sounds a little impersonal and you think you might miss the feeling of your baby kicking, our haptic suit option can bring that sensation back for any parent that wants it, only when they want it.”

An image of the young couple sitting beside each other on a couch wearing VR headsets with wide smiles filled the screen. 

“Want to see the beginning of life from your child's point of view? You can with a VR headset that allows you to tune in to a three hundred sixty degree camera any time you like.”

The image of the young couple panned back showing them in a comfortably furnished room with a large picture window in the background. A baby floated in a single transparent pod above graphical displays next to a window with an expansive view of a twinkling magical night time cityscape.

“If you’re uncomfortable with our standard birth package and are unhappy with the thought of your precious bundle of joy being grown in a four hundred pod baby lab, you can have a rechargeable battery-powered pod installed in your own home.”

The narration changed to a male announcer’s voice.“ Fetal Fantasies provides the best option for folks who like the idea of a baby but don’t want to go through the ordeals of pregnancy and childbirth to get one. Think about it. You might not even need a day off work! Just hold hands with your significant other after a day at the office, head down to the baby farm and dream about life as a parent, or enjoy your special time in the privacy of your own home.”

Alternating pink and blue words dimmed and brightened at the bottom of the screen pulsing in time to the gentle throbbing of a heartbeat.

ENROLL HERE FOR OUR FREE

NO OBLIGATION BUILD A BABY WORKSHOP

Ted pulled Jeanette closer. “What do you think, honey?”

of the 2023 Silver Medal in Literary Fiction from the Independent Book Publisher Awards.

The moving debut novel explores the relationship complexities between mothers and

daughters. She’s also the author of Yes, Yes Cherries, a collection of short stories author Lorrie

Moore called “funny, brave and amazing.” A founding fiction professor in the UC Riverside

Emma Trelles Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2021-2023, received an Established Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She was named a Poet Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets. Daughter of Cuban immigrants, she’s author of Tropicalia, winner of the Andrés Montoya Prize.

Max Talley has had 70 stories and essays published since 2015. His writing has appeared in Vol.1 Brooklyn, Atticus Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Litro, and The Saturday Evening Post. He won the 2021 best fiction contest in Jerry Jazz Musician for “Celestial Vagabonds,” later nominated for a Pushcart. Talley has two published novels and 2 story collections, My Secret Place, and the most recent, When the Night Breathes Electric, which debuted in 2023 from Borda Books.

Matthew J. Pallamary is an award-winning writer, musician, and sound healer who’s been studying shamanism all his life. He has books covering several genres. His latest story collection is The Thinning Veil: 13 Twisted Tales. He explores how art imitates life and reflects our human condition. The veil between the worlds is thinning and the boundaries have become blurred, bringing more weight to the question; what or where are the boundaries between what we believe to be real and what we imagine?

Melodie Johnson Howe, while acting in movies, went to UCLA Extension to learn writing. Her mystery novel, The Mother Shadow was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allen Poe Award. Her second, Beauty Dies, soon followed. She created a new character, Diana Poole, an actress verging on middle age, for her short stories. They’re now collected into one book, Shooting Hollywood: The Diana Poole Stories. Howe’s latest novel is City of Mirrors, also featuring Diana Poole.

Catherine Ann Jones who is an actor, the playwright of 11 award-winning productions, and an Emmy-nominated Hollywood screenwriter, wrote her latest book, East and West, from a personal place. This collection of stories reveals her lifelong relationship to India, including her marriage to Raja Rao, the renowned Indian novelist. The preface pays tribute to India’s timeless interweaving of the spiritual and the worldly, the light and dark, the personal and the universal. These stories speak to a place within each of our souls.

Lisa Cupolo has been a paparazzi photographer in London, an aid worker in Kenya, a script doctor in LA, and a literary publicist at HarperCollins in Toronto. Have Mercy on Us, her debut book, won the W.S. Porter Prize for short story collections. Her work has been published in many prestigious journals. She holds multiple degrees in a range of areas. She’s lived all over the world, but currently resides in Southern California, where she taught fiction writing at Chapman University.

Trey Dowell is a novelist and a short story aficionado. His expertise in writing effective query letters has helped numerous writers get their projects reviewed by agents and publishers.

In this presentation Trey focused on sparking curiosity and building anticipation. Proven query strategies and methods were discussed. Attendees brought their in-progress queries which were read and received feedback.

Melinda Palacio & Lida Sideris

This session offers wisdom from the trenches from award-winning authors on promoting your project. You’ll get practical marketing advice on aspects of building an author platform and putting yourself and your book out there.

Melinda Palacio is an award-winning poet, author, and speaker. She’s the current Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, she holds 2 degrees in Comparative Literature, a BA from the UC Berkeley and an MA from UC Santa Cruz. She’s a 2007 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2009 poetry alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. Her latest poetry collection is Bird Forgiveness, 2018. She is a master of author self-promotion.

Lida Sideris writes soft-boiled mysteries and was a winner of the Helen McCloy Mystery Writers of America scholarship award. The third installment in her Southern California Mystery series, Murder: Double or Nothing will be released in June by Level Best Books. She’s also wrote The Cookie Eating Fire Dog, a picture book for ages 4-8. She lives in the northern tip of SoCal with her family, rescue dogs and a flock of uppity chickens. She teaches “Be Your Own Best Publicist” at SBWC with Melinda Palacio.

Summer Reading List and was a finalist for The Scotiabank Giller Prize, the CALIBA Golden

Poppy Award, and the Prix Fitzgerald. Antoine is also the author of the novels Panorama City

and The Interloper, and he is a contributing editor of the literary magazine A Public Space. He’s

a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recipient of a Carol Houck Smith Fiction

Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin.

Garden, illustrated by her daughter, Susie, was published by Godwin Books/Macmillan in 2024,

with another picture book about Norooz/Persian New Year to follow in 2026. She published

her first novel, Sky of Red Poppies, in 2010. Her sophomore novel, The Moon Daughter, won

Writer’s Digest Book Awards for Best Literary Fiction. She’s also the author of The Commiserator

(in Persian) and has contributed to numerous other literary volumes.

Melinda Palacio, current Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, is an award-winning writer. From South Central LA, she holds 2 degrees in Comparative Literature. A 2007 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and a 2009 poetry alum of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, she published Bird Forgiveness in 2018.

David Starkey, Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate, Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at SBCC, and the Publisher/Co-editor of Gunpowder Press, published 11 full length collections of poetry and more than 500 poems in literary journals. His novel Poor Ghost was released in March 2024.

Chryss Yost is a Santa Barbara Poet Laureate who served from 2013-2015. She was awarded the 2013 Patricia Dobler Poetry Prize and other honors, including Pushcart Prize nominations. She’s co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Her collection Mouth & Fruit was published 2014, and her poems have been included in the most popular poetry textbooks in the country and widely anthologized elsewhere.

Enid Osborn Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara 2017-2019, published When the Big Wind Comes, set in New Mexico. A Pushcart nominee, her work appears in regional California and Southwest journals. She has a series of themed chapbooks, and she co-edited A Bird Black as the Sun / California Poets on Crows & Ravens in 2011.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar Santa Barbara’s Poet Laureate 2019-2021, is author of 6 collections of poems and is the recipient of a Pushcart. She taught at Emerson, Sarah Lawrence, UCSB, and is part of the faculty at the Solstice Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Lately: New and Selected Poems was published January 2024.

Emma Trelles Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2021-2023, received an Established Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council. She was named a Poet Laureate Fellow by the Academy of American Poets. Daughter of Cuban immigrants, she’s author of Tropicalia, winner of the Andrés Montoya Prize.

Paul Willis, Santa Barbara Poet Laureate 2011-2013 is an emeritus professor of English at Westmont College. His poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he’s been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac and nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. His YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green, was released in 2020.

For those of you who have recently discovered the conference and are considering attending, we will be posting the audio periodically so you can get a sense of this amazing week long experience which has been going for over fifty years now.

This first post from the 2024 conference is the Orientation and Welcome which will give you a sense of the conference along with tidbits that will help you get the most from the conference.

We are looking forward to 2025!

You discover who you are by going into your shadow and integrating those parts of yourself that you have denied, he remarked, adding that every time you bring these parts back to yourself, you're bringing in the energy that you've had to use to keep various traumas in place, and as a result of this, energy becomes more available to you and your awareness expands. The center of the universe is located between one's eyes, he declared, and this represents the shift from personality-centered to essence-centered awareness. Pallamary also talked about his fiction writing process and how the art of storytelling is a form of magic-- the word 'spelling' actually comes from the notion of casting a spell, he pointed out.

Brook Ashley, is the author of Dare Wright and The Lonely Doll, which features more than four hundred of Dare’s own photographs and an array of other illustrations. Brook Ashley tells Dare’s story as no one else can, as she was Dare’s goddaughter, lifelong friend, and guardian during her final years. She grew up in Wright’s magical New York universe of Edith and The Bears. A former child actress, Brook is a Realtor and a magazine writer in Santa Barbara, CA.

Bee Bloeser, is the author of Vaccines & Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism, Terror, and the Cold War. With wide-eyed ideals and two young children, Bee eagerly followed her husband to Africa, where he helped eradicate smallpox, in the 1970s. What she encountered there deepened her love for Africa, while it eroded her naïveté. Bloeser now lives in California and is building a speaking career in the wake of the publication of her book.

Hendrika de Vries is the author of the award-winning memoir When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew. She was a child in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam when girls were to be housewives and mothers. When her father was deported to a POW camp in Germany, and her mother joined the Resistance, she learned to become an empowered woman. She’s a retired Jungian-oriented therapist who used dreams and intuitive imagination to facilitate recovery.

Yvette Keller the author of the Douglas Adams’ London Guide from Herb Lester Associates. Her short fiction leans toward SF/Fantasy at an extravagantly relaxed angle. You can find her work in literary magazines such as Enheduanna, Imitation Fruit Literary Magazine, and The Santa Barbara Literary Journal. For fun, Yvette time travels in self-made historical costumes, and performs in short-form improv and live storytelling shows.

Audiobooks and podcasts are a fast-growing area of publishing. Join this team for an insightful seminar on how to accomplish the goals of getting your book

Audiobooks and podcasts are a fast-growing area of publishing. Join this team for an insightful seminar on how to accomplish the goals of getting your book

Melinda Palacio & Lida Sideris

This session offers wisdom from the trenches from award-winning authors on promoting your project. You’ll get practical marketing advice on aspects of building an author platform and putting yourself and your book out there.

Mary Hill-Wagner, is the author of Girlz ‘n the Hood, a memoir of what it was like to grow up on some of the meanest streets in America with 10 siblings and a mother who taught her to protect the weak and love hard. Dr. Hill-Wagner is an award-winning author, journalist, and college professor. She enjoys reading, writing, racquetball, theater, and dogs.

Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways, about the search for healing and finding belonging when Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixedblood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. She’s a contributor to fifteen books in Native Studies and memoir. She’s the granddaughter of sharecroppers and was raised in a large extended family rich with storytelling and music.

Harlan Green, is the author of Building Community: Answering Kennedy’s Call. His memoir covers his work as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a Turkish village, as a photographer and filmmaker for the US Environmental Protection Agency in its earliest days, enforcing the Clean Air and Water Acts, and with Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers of America Union during its mid-1970s struggle organizing seasonal farm workers to better their living conditions.

Connard Hogan is an award-winning author of two memoirs. Once Upon a Kentucky Farm: Hope and Healing from Family Abuse, Alcoholism and Dysfunction shines a light on the struggles of those living with trauma from family abuse, and the healing powers of unconditional love. Barbwire, Brothels and Bombs in the Night: Surviving Vietnam reminds us that no one involved in warfare escapes trauma. He hopes his writing inspires others struggling to heal from trauma.

Dale Zurawski is the the author of Bipolar, a Gift of Thorns, a profoundly insightful memoir about being bipolar and how that affects others. This brave book about some of the darkest aspects of our lives shines a light on her courageous journey uncovering the stigma of being bipolar. This book will help anyone who is or loves someone who is bipolar. For the last 20 years, her home base has been Santa Barbara, California.

SBWC faculty member, Trey Dowell, is a novelist and a short story aficionado. His expertise in writing effective query letters has helped numerous writers get their projects reviewed by agents and publishers.

George Noory

Guest:

Matthew Pallamary

Tuesday - November 14, 2023

About the show

Author, editor, and shamanic explorer Matthew Pallamary has been searching the globe for the truth about reality. In the latter half, he spoke about the nature of expanding consciousness, as well as why he believes the veil between the worlds is thinning and giving rise to more chaotic forces. Consciousness, he said, is the awareness of our thoughts, memories, or feelings, and the sensations in our environment, but it's a subjective experience that's unique to each of us. Our subconscious, things we're not aware of in the moment, can be a tool we draw on for creativity and revelations, he added.

He outlined some of psychologist William James' groundbreaking ideas about consciousness, including how human consciousness has streams of thought that are continuously changing. With the advent of the Internet, Pallamary believes our world has sped up, our boundaries have lessened, and the actions of others are now more interconnected with one another. There is a destructive aspect to this in terms of war and violence on the planet, and he thinks extreme weather patterns and global warming are part of the process we are going through, which he views as a type of purification. He also touched on his new collection of short stories, The Thinning Veil: 13 Twisted Tales, and his visitations to the Amazon jungle, where he has worked with shamans and psychedelics.

Barnaby Conrad III, is author of Jacques Villeglé and the Streets of Paris. His other books are Absinthe: History in a Bottle, Ghost Hunting in Montana, and The Martini. He’s also written monographs on American artists Richard Diebenkorn, John Register, and Mark Stock. He served as senior editor of Art World in New York, senior editor of Horizon, and Editor-at-Large for Forbes Life, and he was a special correspondent in Paris for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Marianne Dougherty, is the author of What We Remember, her debut novel about 4 women who find comfort in friendship before life begins to unravel. In the aftermath of unspeakable tragedy, they go separate ways. Twenty years later, when one is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she asks her daughter to arrange a reunion to pick up threads of a story that began a long time ago. In 2018 and 2022 she was a finalist for a Golden Quill Award for journalistic excellence.

Jim McCutchon is the author of To Free a Slave – The Moral Dilemma of Slavery, a historical novel set in the 1800s on the Ormond Plantation owned by his great, great grandfather. After retiring from a successful career as a urologist, and after raising 8 children, McCutcheon took up writing at age 84. Now at 92, and with two books completed, he resides in Corpus Christi, Texas where he enjoys gardening, crosswords, reading, and lifelong friends.

Diana Raab is the author of 10 books, the latest being An Imaginary Affair – Poems Whispered to Neruda, a collection of sensitive and sensuous poems exploring the challenges and intricacies of being human. The poems touch on key human elements, such as love, desire, passion, memory loss, and gratitude. She’s a memoirist, poet, essayist, blogger, and speaker. She teaches memoir at SBWC and presents workshops in writing for healing and transformation.

Max Talley is the author of My Secret Place, 17 short stories about musicians and artists. These eccentrics are secret heroes of their own lives. Humor is mixed with pathos and social commentary. He was born in New York City and lives in Santa Barbara. He’s a professional musician and artist, as well as a writer. His work has appeared in numerous journals. He teaches a writing workshop at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.

This seminar covers pros and cons of publishing options today: traditional publishing, small publishers, self-publishing, vanity press, and hybrid publishing. Understanding of the range of options facilitates reaching your publication goals.

Holly Kammier is the international best-selling author of Kingston Court, Choosing Hope, and Lost Girl, A Shelby Day Novel. 

Co-Owner of Acorn Publishing, the UCLA Honor graduate is a well-regarded content editor and former journalist who has worked everywhere from CNN in Washington, D.C. and KCOP-TV in Los Angeles, to the NBC affiliate in small-town Medford, Oregon.

Deborah Holt Larkin, is author of A Lovely Girl, a true story of intrigue, murder, and eccentricity, set against the backdrop of iconic 1950s small town California life. Filled with dark humor and bumbling killers, this sometimes heartbreaking, but gripping, story of a scandalous 1958 murder case is narrated by the ten-year-old voice of the author. Deborah Holt Larkin is uniquely qualified to tell this captivating, yet horrifying, crime story. From a front row seat in her family’s living room, she lived the fear and disbelief that gripped her hometown at the time of the murder.

Gar Anthony Haywood, is the award-winning author of 14 novels. Things Unseen, Gar’s latest and most surprising novel, marks his first attempt to explore the subject of God’s existence in the modern world. Booklist has called him “a writer who’s always belonged in the upper echelon of American crime fiction.” He’s written for network television and the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. He leads a popular SBWC workshop, “The Seven Deadly Sins of Novel Writing.” He and his wife Donna make their home in Denver, Colorado.

N. S. “Vish” Vishwanath is the author of Nights of the Moonless Sky set in 16th century South India. In this debut novel, a succession struggle disrupts the peace of the realm when the patriarch dies. Doomed by an inequitable tradition to be cremated alive, his widow, our intrepid protagonist, is thrust into a forbidding darkness – thus spawning a thriller of intrigue, self-discovery, and destiny. A big fan of SBWC, Vish credits it with playing a pivotal role in shaping his writing life.

Marilee Zdenek is is the author of Lying Still an intriguing story about the dangerous relationship between psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Favre, and a family of three women: one, the woman he loved; one, the woman he killed; and one with a journal that could destroy him. This is Zdenek’s first novel. She’s the author of 8 nonfiction books, including The Right-Brain Experience: An Intimate Program to Free the Powers of Your Imagination, an LA Times bestseller. An international speaker and coach, she lives in Santa Barbara and has taught at SBWC for more than 20 years.

 Lisa worked as stage crew for Ensemble Theatre, produced a weekly newsletter for the Santa Barbara County Film Commission (2004-08), and written articles for Montecito Journal, The Independent, and Examiner.com. As a Production Assistant at The Santa Barbara Channels (now TVSB) she learned video production, and produced videos for Association for Women in Communications, the SB Zoo, and the SB Writers Conference, plus she co-produced over 200 episodes of the talk show Literary Gumbo. Storytelling through film became very important to her. Her Ablitt House Journey documentary is available for free streaming, and the Thirty Years of Literary Excellence documentary. She served on the national board for the Association for Women in Communications (2014-19) and currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the Writers and Publishers Network.

Matt’s historical novel, Land Without Evil, received rave reviews along with a San Diego Book Award and was adapted into a magical stage and sky show, which was the subject of an EMMY nominated episode of a PBS series, “Arts in Context.” Matt has taught a Phantastic Fiction workshop at the Southern California Writers’ Conference, the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference, and numerous other venues for over 25 years. His memoir, Spirit Matters, took first place in the San Diego Book Awards Spiritual Book Category. He frequently visits the jungles, mountains, and deserts of North, Central, and South America pursuing his studies of shamanism and ancient cultures.

Matthew J. (Mateo) Pallamary frequently visits the mountains, deserts, and jungles of North, Central, and South America pursuing his studies of shamanism and plant medicines for over twenty five years. He has eighteen books in print in multiple genres and has taught a Phantastic Fiction workshop at the Southern California Writers Conference and the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for thirty five years.

Mateo has also lectured at a number of other conferences and conventions throughout the United States and was a featured lecturer and performer at the Mysteries of the Amazon exhibit at the Appleton Museum and other venues throughout Florida as well as The Larson Gallery and other venues in Yakima Washington.

Websites:

https://mattpallamary.com/

https://mysticinkpublishing.com/

Regency College senior Julian Brehm’s uneventful student life is derailed when he falls for Nina Rinaldi, a beautiful young revolutionary engaged in political activism against the authoritarian regime that rules the country and wages a deceitful, distracting war. Julian's love for ― and moral alliance to ― Nina eventually leads him into a vast undercity beneath the metropolis. Then, east by train and into the war zone itself, where mortal danger in that expanding cemetery of millions threatens Julian’s life; what he witnesses will alter how he perceives the Republic and ultimately his fate within it.

Julian’s adventure can be seen as our own, a world of vacillating morality and unceasing violence. Apathy and passion. Fear and courage of purpose. Julian’s is a hero’s journey into the dark unknown. A love story, which extends in many directions. A war novel of incredible scope and horror. A suspenseful mystery novel with a moral puzzle at its core. And a coming-of-age tale of a young man seeing the world he was born into, more dangerous and more beautiful than he could have ever imagined. Metropolis is a meditation on the meaning of virtue and goodness in the face of the most monstrous crimes. It could just as easily be the story of us.

Author, editor, and shamanic explorer Matthew Pallamary has

been searching the globe for answers to the truth about reality. In the

first half, he discussed his visionary experiences, shamanism, and

writing, as well as his work on attitudes about death. His book "Death: A Love Story,"

was published at the outbreak of the pandemic, and is written in the

'first person' as Death itself as a character. "If you want to know the

truth, I'm not your death, but you are mine," he writes as Death. Death

is everywhere and a part of nature, and in a way, we begin dying the

moment we are born, he stated. "Death is bigger than all of us, and it

has to do with acceptance," he added.

Pallamary talked about his latest book of short stories in the

horror/science-fiction genre, one of which is about legendary author Ray

Bradbury and alien mushrooms. On the topic of shamanism, he said it

deals more with a person's direct experience of learning about

themselves rather than what someone tells you to believe, and that all

religions have their roots in shamanic ideas. Shamanism deeply explores

"radical subjectivity," and some of people's intense visions can put

their everyday problems in perspective. He also touched on ayahuasca

experiences and how people often have similar visions of landscapes and

archetypal symbols like jaguars and condors when they drink the

psychedelic brew.

Dennis has passed on and is sorely missed, but Gayle continues being an inspiration to the SBWC family.

Gayle is an American former journalist, editor and author and is known as the Queen of Espionage Fiction for her spy fiction or spy thrillers novels. She is also the co-founder of International Thriller Writers.

She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona and was an editor at a government think tank, where she also acquired a Top Secret security clearance.

Her fiction career began with literary short stories published under her own name and several pulp fiction novels under male pseudonyms such as G.H. Stone, Gayle Stone, Nick Carter, and Don Pendleton.

In 1996, her first novel Masquerade was published. She also wrote three novels in The Three Investigators, a YA mystery novel series. With Robert Ludlum, she created the Covert-One series and wrote three of the books.

The Hades Factor, which she co-wrote with Robert Ludlum, was a CBS television miniseries in April 2006.

You can find out more about Gayle and her works here:

https://gaylelynds.com/

Her first novel Bastard Out of Carolina was published in 1992 to great acclaim, becoming a best-seller. It was later adapted as a film of the same name, directed by Anjelica Huston for TNT. The book and film both generated controversy because of the graphic content, and the TV film was aired on Showtime rather than TNT. The Canadian Maritime Film Classification Board initially banned distribution of the film in Canada, but it was reversed on appeal. In November 1997, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a State Board of Education decision to ban the book in public high schools because of its graphic content.

Fannie came to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference to hear Eudora Welty speak and ended up sticking around and entering the fiction contest under the name of Edna Furber. Not only did she take first place, but that story became Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and the rest as they say is history!

Here is her talk from the 2018 Santa Barara Writers Conference.

Thank you to Lisa Angle of Ninety Degrees Media for recording and sharing Fannie's talk.

His books have been translated into many languages and optioned for film. Raised in rural North Wales, he currently lives in New York where he is also a book editor and a volunteer E.M.T. for Central Park Medical Unit and R.V.A.C.

Here is his talk from the 2018 Santa Barara Writers Conference.

Thank you to Lisa Angle of Ninety Degrees Media for recording and sharing Simon's talk.

Named for a song in the 1960s musical “Hair,” in which her father starred, Starshine grew up in Los Angeles on the soap opera sets and in the Sunset Strip nightclubs where her parents worked.

She graduated UCLA cum laude and wrote for The Hollywood Reporter before joining the Santa Barbara News-Press as news reporter, theater and rock music critic, Sunday columnist and deputy features editor. She resigned with dozens of colleagues in 2006 over the publisher’s breaches of journalistic ethics.

Her syndicated column won a first-place award from the California Newspaper Publisher’s Association, and she has a second-place CNPA award for Business/Financial reporting.

Starshine lives in Santa Barbara with her husband John, a graphic artist, and their two sons.

Here is her talk from the 2018 Santa Barara Writers Conference .

Thank you to Lisa Angle of Ninety Degrees Media for recording and sharing Starshine's talk.

He loved writers, writing, and the creative process, and spent the whole week at the conference for many years. Aside from showing support for all the regular talent, a big part of Sparky's attendance was in support of his son Monte.

After a few years of bumpy transition that brought the SBWC close to the edge of extinction Monte stepped up to the plate and bought the conference, keeping the tradition alive and insuring its legacy, which no doubt has Sparky smiling in heaven.

In 2007, Goldberg wrote and produced the pilot for a German television program, Fast Track: No Limits which aired on television in some countries and was released a theatrical film in others.

In 2010, he wrote and directed the short film Remaindered, based on his short story for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, on location in Kentucky. He wrote and directed the sequel, Bumsicle, in 2012.

In 2019, he co-wrote and co-created with Robin Bernheim the Hallmark Movies & Mysteries telefilm series Mystery 101 starring Jill Wagner and Kristofer Polaha.

In April 2021, Constantin Films announced that they will be producing a feature film version his novel The Walk based on his screenplay adaptation.

In March 2022, production began on Fast Charlie, a feature film adaptation Goldberg wrote based on the novel Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler, directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Pierce Brosnan. 

In 1980 Viscott began presenting his own full-time show on talk radio, and was notably one of the first psychiatrists to do so. He screened telephone calls and gave considerable amount of free psychological counselling to his on-air "patients."

In 1987 Viscott briefly had his own live syndicated TV show, Getting in Touch with Dr. David Viscott, providing much the same service as his radio show. In fact, the shows ran concurrently. In the early 1990s he had a weekly call-in therapy television program on KNBC in Los Angeles early Sunday morning after Saturday Night Live, titled Night Talk with Dr. David Viscott.

His autobiography, The Making of a Psychiatrist, was a best-seller, a Book of the Month Club Main Selection, and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

In the television show The Simpsons, the character Dr. Marvin Monroe's voice was based on Viscott. The character's retirement was marked by the broadcast of a Dr. Marvin Monroe Memorial Hospital over Lou's walkie-talkie in "Who Shot Mr. Burns? (Part Two)". Since then, several references to Monroe being dead have been made: a glimpse of his gravestone in "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily", a Dr. Marvin Monroe Memorial Gymnasium seen in "Bye Bye Nerdie".

Notable books by Viscott

• The Making of a Psychiatrist See
• The Viscott Method
• Risking
• I Love You, Let's Work It Out
• The Language of Feelings
• Emotional Resilience
• Finding Your Strength in Difficult Times
• Emotionally Free
• How to Live with Another Person
• Feel Free
• Winning
• Taking Care of Business
• What Every Kid Should Know
• Labyrinth of Silence

Barnaby was a bestseller at the age of twenty nine for his novel Matador and he bought a bar in San Francisco that he named The Matador after his book and his career as a matador.

Before his success, Alex went into the Matador and asked Barnaby if he could touch his arm. When Barnaby said yes, Alex did so and said to Barnaby, "Thank you, I always wanted to touch a real writer."

Robert Gover (November 2, 1929 – January 12, 2015) was an American journalist who became a best-selling novelist at age 30. His first novel, One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding, a satire on American racism, remains a cult classic that helped break down America's fear of four-letter words and sexually explicit scenes, as well as sensitizing Americans to sanctimonious hypocrisy. Gover worked with writers for three decades. On the Run with Dick and Jane was his ninth novel. His previous book, Time and Money, explores economic and planetary cyclical correlations. In 2015, the Eric Hoffer Prose Award was renamed the Gover Story Prize in his honor.

Gayle was featured in episode 36 of the Mystic Ink Voices of the Masters Series.

Dennis was a generous, thoughtful, and prolific writer that most writers only dream about becoming and was a mainstay at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for many years.

An earlier SBWC talk from Dennis titled "How to Write Mysteries" can be found on episode number 3 of the Mystic Ink Voices of the Masters Series.

Dennis was so prolific, he wrote under multiple pseudonyms.

Over four decades Dennis published 80 novels and 200 short stories, in both mystery and literary themes.

He was a recipient of the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA), the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement Award from MWA, Southern California Chapter.

As Michael Collins

Written under the "Michael Collins" pen name, his Dan Fortune stories constitute one of the longest-running private detective series written, beginning in 1967 with Act of Fear, which earned a 1968 Edgar Award, for Best First Novel. As Collins, Lynds is largely credited with bringing the detective novel into the modern age:

"Many critics believe Dan Fortune to be the culmination of a maturing process that transformed the private eye from the naturalistic Spade (Dashiell Hammett) through the romantic Marlowe (Raymond Chandler) and the psychological Archer (Ross Macdonald) to the sociological Fortune (Michael Collins)"

- Private Eyes: 101 Knights (Robert Baker and Michael Nietzel)

"After naming Lynds the Best Suspense writer of the 1970s", Baker and Nietzel continue, the Crime Literature Association of West Germany praised him as follows:

"The break in private eye novels started with Michael Collins. At the end of the 1960s, he gave the form something new, a human touch needed for years. His novels are much more than entertainment. There is a philosophy behind the detective, and in each book we take a look at a special section of American society."

Baker and Nietzel point out a popular phenomenon that began with Collins's first book: "Act of Fear ... inspired the by-now monotonous chant by critics about each new hard-boiled author being 'the best since Hammett,' 'the new Chandler,' and 'the heir to Ross Macdonald.' Fortune enjoys a senior status among modern private eyes", predating Lawrence Block, Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, Joseph Hansen, Joe Gores, Michael Lewin, and Bill Pronzini.

As Michael Collins, he also wrote two science fiction novels, Lukan War in 1969, and its sequel, The Planets of Death, in 1970. Both novels are about mercenaries in a future where they are despised and reviled by most people. When suddenly the society is attacked by a very dangerous enemy, they are called upon to fight and die to protect the same people who were treating them so badly not long before.

As William Arden

Beginning in 1968 with The Mystery of the Moaning Cave and ending in 1989 with Hot Wheels, Lynds wrote fourteen novels under the pen name William Arden for the juvenile detective series The Three Investigators, which was originated by Robert Arthur, Jr.. Under this same name, he also wrote five novels featuring private eye Kane Jackson, a former military policeman who has become an industrial security specialist after leaving the military. The first Jackson novel, A Dark Power, appeared in 1968. As Arden, Lynds also wrote the highly regarded espionage short story "Success of a Mission," which was a finalist for the 1968 Edgar Award for best short fiction.

Other pseudonyms

Prolific, explaining that he had more ideas than he knew what to do with, in addition to his Collins name, he created additional series under the pseudonyms Mark Sadler, John Crowe, and Carl Dekker. For a few years, he published under three of these pseudonyms at the same time at three different publishing houses — Dodd Mead, Random House, and Bobbs-Merrill. For many years, The New York Times listed his books annually as among the nation’s top mysteries. One year, two appeared on the same list, each written under a different pseudonym. He also penned 8 Belmont Books mass-market paperbacks of The Shadow from 1964 to 1967 under the Shadow's author by-line Maxwell Grant.

Other works

As he was writing detective novels, he also published literary books and some 100 literary short stories. Five of the stories were honored in Best American Short Stories. He was twice short-listed for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. His mystery and detective short stories have appeared in Best Crime & Mystery Stories of the Year many times. Twice he was the guest of honor at literary festivals in France honoring the American detective novel.

New styles

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Lynds's work took another turn. He began lacing his detective novels with short stories, biographies, and symbolic vignettes, a literary technique that recent mystery writers have copied and expanded. Critic Richard C. Carpenter discussed it in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers:

"Powerful and memorable, [these new works] indicate that Collins has embarked on a new course after some 60 books. Truly he is a writer to be reckoned with."

Selected bibliography

Science Fiction novels by Michael Collins

• Lukan War, 1969
• The Planets of Death, 1970

Dan Fortune novels by Michael Collins

• Act Of Fear, 1967
• The Brass Rainbow, 1969
• Night Of The Toads, 1970
• Walk A Black Wind, 1971
• Shadow Of A Tiger, 1972
• The Silent Scream, 1973
• Blue Death, 1975
• The Blood-Red Dream, 1976
• The Nightrunners, 1978
• The Slasher, 1980
• Freak, 1983
• Minnesota Strip, 1987
• Red Rosa, 1988
• Castrato, 1989
• Chasing Eights, 1990
• The Irishman's Horse, 1991
• Cassandra In Red, 1992
• Crime, Punishment, and Resurrection, 1992
• The Cadillac Cowboy, 1995

Kane Jackson novels by William Arden

• A Dark Power, 1968
• Deal in Violence, 1969
• The Goliath Scheme. 1970
• Die to a Distant Drum, 1972 (aka Murder Underground)
• Deadly Legacy, 1973

Detective short story collections by Michael Collins

• Crime, Punishment And Resurrection, 1992
• Fortune’s World, Crippen & Landru, 2000
• Spies and Thieves, Cops and Killers, 2002
• Slot-Machine Kelly: The Collected Private-Eye Cases of the "One-Armed Bandit,", Crippen & Landru, 2005

Paul Shaw novels by Mark Sadler

• The Falling Man, 1970
• Here To Die, 1971
• Mirror Image, 1972
• Circle of Fire, 1973
• Touch of Death, 1981
• Deadly Innocents, 1986

Mainstream novels and short story collections]]>Dennis Lynds was married to Gayle Lynds who is known as the Queen of Espionage Fiction for her spy fiction or spy thrillers novels and the co-founder of International Thriller Writers.

Gayle was featured in episode 36 of the Mystic Ink Voices of the Masters Series.

Dennis was a generous, thoughtful, and prolific writer that most writers only dream about becoming and was a mainstay at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for many years.

An earlier SBWC talk from Dennis titled "How to Write Mysteries" can be found on episode number 3 of the Mystic Ink Voices of the Masters Series.

Dennis was so prolific, he wrote under multiple pseudonyms.

Over four decades Dennis published 80 novels and 200 short stories, in both mystery and literary themes.

He was a recipient of the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA), the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Private Eye Writers of America and the Marlowe Lifetime Achievement Award from MWA, Southern California Chapter.

As Michael Collins

Written under the "Michael Collins" pen name, his Dan Fortune stories constitute one of the longest-running private detective series written, beginning in 1967 with Act of Fear, which earned a 1968 Edgar Award, for Best First Novel. As Collins, Lynds is largely credited with bringing the detective novel into the modern age:

"Many critics believe Dan Fortune to be the culmination of a maturing process that transformed the private eye from the naturalistic Spade (Dashiell Hammett) through the romantic Marlowe (Raymond Chandler) and the psychological Archer (Ross Macdonald) to the sociological Fortune (Michael Collins)"

- Private Eyes: 101 Knights (Robert Baker and Michael Nietzel)

"After naming Lynds the Best Suspense writer of the 1970s", Baker and Nietzel continue, the Crime Literature Association of West Germany praised him as follows:

"The break in private eye novels started with Michael Collins. At the end of the 1960s, he gave the form something new, a human touch needed for years. His novels are much more than entertainment. There is a philosophy behind the detective, and in each book we take a look at a special section of American society."

Baker and Nietzel point out a popular phenomenon that began with Collins's first book: "Act of Fear ... inspired the by-now monotonous chant by critics about each new hard-boiled author being 'the best since Hammett,' 'the new Chandler,' and 'the heir to Ross Macdonald.' Fortune enjoys a senior status among modern private eyes", predating Lawrence Block, Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, Joseph Hansen, Joe Gores, Michael Lewin, and Bill Pronzini.

As Michael Collins, he also wrote two science fiction novels, Lukan War in 1969, and its sequel, The Planets of Death, in 1970. Both novels are about mercenaries in a future where they are despised and reviled by most people. When suddenly the society is attacked by a very dangerous enemy, they are called upon to fight and die to protect the same people who were treating them so badly not long before.

As William Arden

Beginning in 1968 with The Mystery of the Moaning Cave and ending in 1989 with Hot Wheels, Lynds wrote fourteen novels under the pen name William Arden for the juvenile detective series The Three Investigators, which was originated by Robert Arthur, Jr.. Under this same name, he also wrote five novels featuring private eye Kane Jackson, a former military policeman who has become an industrial security specialist after leaving the military. The first Jackson novel, A Dark Power, appeared in 1968. As Arden, Lynds also wrote the highly regarded espionage short story "Success of a Mission," which was a finalist for the 1968 Edgar Award for best short fiction.

Other pseudonyms

Prolific, explaining that he had more ideas than he knew what to do with, in addition to his Collins name, he created additional series under the pseudonyms Mark Sadler, John Crowe, and Carl Dekker. For a few years, he published under three of these pseudonyms at the same time at three different publishing houses — Dodd Mead, Random House, and Bobbs-Merrill. For many years, The New York Times listed his books annually as among the nation’s top mysteries. One year, two appeared on the same list, each written under a different pseudonym. He also penned 8 Belmont Books mass-market paperbacks of The Shadow from 1964 to 1967 under the Shadow's author by-line Maxwell Grant.

Other works

As he was writing detective novels, he also published literary books and some 100 literary short stories. Five of the stories were honored in Best American Short Stories. He was twice short-listed for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. His mystery and detective short stories have appeared in Best Crime & Mystery Stories of the Year many times. Twice he was the guest of honor at literary festivals in France honoring the American detective novel.

New styles

In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Lynds's work took another turn. He began lacing his detective novels with short stories, biographies, and symbolic vignettes, a literary technique that recent mystery writers have copied and expanded. Critic Richard C. Carpenter discussed it in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers:

"Powerful and memorable, [these new works] indicate that Collins has embarked on a new course after some 60 books. Truly he is a writer to be reckoned with."

Selected bibliography

Science Fiction novels by Michael Collins

• Lukan War, 1969
• The Planets of Death, 1970

Dan Fortune novels by Michael Collins

• Act Of Fear, 1967
• The Brass Rainbow, 1969
• Night Of The Toads, 1970
• Walk A Black Wind, 1971
• Shadow Of A Tiger, 1972
• The Silent Scream, 1973
• Blue Death, 1975
• The Blood-Red Dream, 1976
• The Nightrunners, 1978
• The Slasher, 1980
• Freak, 1983
• Minnesota Strip, 1987
• Red Rosa, 1988
• Castrato, 1989
• Chasing Eights, 1990
• The Irishman's Horse, 1991
• Cassandra In Red, 1992
• Crime, Punishment, and Resurrection, 1992
• The Cadillac Cowboy, 1995

Kane Jackson novels by William Arden

• A Dark Power, 1968
• Deal in Violence, 1969
• The Goliath Scheme. 1970
• Die to a Distant Drum, 1972 (aka Murder Underground)
• Deadly Legacy, 1973

Detective short story collections by Michael Collins

• Crime, Punishment And Resurrection, 1992
• Fortune’s World, Crippen & Landru, 2000
• Spies and Thieves, Cops and Killers, 2002
• Slot-Machine Kelly: The Collected Private-Eye Cases of the "One-Armed Bandit,", Crippen & Landru, 2005

Paul Shaw novels by Mark Sadler

• The Falling Man, 1970
• Here To Die, 1971
• Mirror Image, 1972
• Circle of Fire, 1973
• Touch of Death, 1981
• Deadly Innocents, 1986

Mainstream novels and short story collections by Dennis Lynds

• Combat Soldier, novel, 1962
• Uptown Downtown, novel, 1963
• Why Girls Ride Sidesaddle, short stories, 1980
• Talking To The World, novella and short stories, 1995

DennisLynds.com

]]>5743360a-8db6-45c8-a55a-9b8cdbe4315bSun, 08 Jan 2023 00:15:00 -040045:27falsefull3737Matt Pallamary Midnight Coast to Coast Interview About Holographicosmic Man With George Noory - December 14, 2022COAST TO COAST SHOW NOTES

Author, editor, and shamanic explorer Matthew Pallamary has been searching the globe for the truth about reality. In the latter half, he spoke about his latest work looking at how various sciences, disciplines, nature, and ancient wisdom relate to the idea of the Golden Mean (the middle between two extremes). Through his visionary experiences with ayahuasca, he became fascinated by sacred geometry, and eventually realized that the Golden Mean is a model for holographic reality. "Everything is infinitely connected both in the inner world and the outer world," he remarked, and we're all trying to find our way back home, and "for me, home is at the center."

Prayer is fueled by intention, he noted, and ideally should be an act of devotion. "In the end, prayer is conscious awareness; and if indeed we are all reflections of each other and we are all seeing the inner god within each one of us," then prayer can be seen as a form of action, he observed. Pallamary also related intention to the work of shamans and how the more they grow in personal power, the more centered they become. When working with intention, it is essential to maintain your integrity, he pointed out.

Holographicosmic Man: The Holographic Heart of the Golden Mean

]]>COAST TO COAST SHOW NOTES

Author, editor, and shamanic explorer Matthew Pallamary has been searching the globe for the truth about reality. In the latter half, he spoke about his latest work looking at how various sciences, disciplines, nature, and ancient wisdom relate to the idea of the Golden Mean (the middle between two extremes). Through his visionary experiences with ayahuasca, he became fascinated by sacred geometry, and eventually realized that the Golden Mean is a model for holographic reality. "Everything is infinitely connected both in the inner world and the outer world," he remarked, and we're all trying to find our way back home, and "for me, home is at the center."

Prayer is fueled by intention, he noted, and ideally should be an act of devotion. "In the end, prayer is conscious awareness; and if indeed we are all reflections of each other and we are all seeing the inner god within each one of us," then prayer can be seen as a form of action, he observed. Pallamary also related intention to the work of shamans and how the more they grow in personal power, the more centered they become. When working with intention, it is essential to maintain your integrity, he pointed out.

Holographicosmic Man: The Holographic Heart of the Golden Mean

]]>46cfb0c7-49ec-4f50-8100-9c6fb96dc41bFri, 16 Dec 2022 00:15:00 -040046:08falsefullGayle Lynds - My Secret Thriller Life: Santa Barbara Writers Conference - Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - 2001Gayle Lynds along with her prolific and talented multi-genre husband Dennis Lynds have been long time supporters and members of the Santa Barabra Writers Conference for many years.

Dennis has passed on and is sorely missed, but Gayle continues being an inspiration to the SBWC family.

Gayle is an American former journalist, editor and author and is known as the Queen of Espionage Fiction for her spy fiction or spy thrillers novels. She is also the co-founder of International Thriller Writers.

She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona and was an editor at a government think tank, where she also acquired a Top Secret security clearance.

Her fiction career began with literary short stories published under her own name and several pulp fiction novels under male pseudonyms such as G.H. Stone, Gayle Stone, Nick Carter, and Don Pendleton.

In 1996, her first novel Masquerade was published. She also wrote three novels in The Three Investigators, a YA mystery novel series. With Robert Ludlum, she created the Covert-One series and wrote three of the books.

The Hades Factor, which she co-wrote with Robert Ludlum, was a CBS television miniseries in April 2006.

You can find out more about Gayle and her works here:

https://gaylelynds.com/

]]>Gayle Lynds along with her prolific and talented multi-genre husband Dennis Lynds have been long time supporters and members of the Santa Barabra Writers Conference for many years.

Dennis has passed on and is sorely missed, but Gayle continues being an inspiration to the SBWC family.

Gayle is an American former journalist, editor and author and is known as the Queen of Espionage Fiction for her spy fiction or spy thrillers novels. She is also the co-founder of International Thriller Writers.

She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, Arizona and was an editor at a government think tank, where she also acquired a Top Secret security clearance.

Her fiction career began with literary short stories published under her own name and several pulp fiction novels under male pseudonyms such as G.H. Stone, Gayle Stone, Nick Carter, and Don Pendleton.

In 1996, her first novel Masquerade was published. She also wrote three novels in The Three Investigators, a YA mystery novel series. With Robert Ludlum, she created the Covert-One series and wrote three of the books.

The Hades Factor, which she co-wrote with Robert Ludlum, was a CBS television miniseries in April 2006.

You can find out more about Gayle and her works here:

https://gaylelynds.com/

]]>d16171ae-d1ef-48c5-a266-1a598506b4f8Sat, 10 Dec 2022 00:15:00 -040059:22falsefull3636Sue Grafton & Stewart O'Nan: Santa Barbara Writers Conference - Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - 1998Santa Barbara resident and SBWC regular Sue Grafton was an American author best known as the author of the "alphabet series" ("A" Is for Alibi, etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California , which was based on Santa Barbara . Before her success with this series, she wrote screenplays for television movies.

Stewart O'Nan's first book, and only collection of short stories, In the Walled City, was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Many of the stories in that collection also originally appeared in publications such as Ascent (the short story "Econoline"), Columbia (the short story "The Third of July"), Jam To-Day (the short story "Mr Wu Thinks"), The Nebraska Review (the short story "Winter Haven), Northwest Review (the short story "The Finger"), The South Dakota Review (the short story "The Calling") and The Threepenny Review (the short story "Steak").

In this combined talk Grafton and O'Nan spoke together and titled it "Aria For Two Authors".

]]>Santa Barbara resident and SBWC regular Sue Grafton was an American author best known as the author of the "alphabet series" ("A" Is for Alibi, etc.) featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone in the fictional city of Santa Teresa, California , which was based on Santa Barbara . Before her success with this series, she wrote screenplays for television movies.

Stewart O'Nan's first book, and only collection of short stories, In the Walled City, was awarded the 1993 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Many of the stories in that collection also originally appeared in publications such as Ascent (the short story "Econoline"), Columbia (the short story "The Third of July"), Jam To-Day (the short story "Mr Wu Thinks"), The Nebraska Review (the short story "Winter Haven), Northwest Review (the short story "The Finger"), The South Dakota Review (the short story "The Calling") and The Threepenny Review (the short story "Steak").

In this combined talk Grafton and O'Nan spoke together and titled it "Aria For Two Authors".

]]>ea767dc5-2601-402b-a229-f727ac7e4abcTue, 22 Nov 2022 00:15:00 -040001:06:24falsefull3535Ray Bradbury: Santa Barbara Writers Conference - Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - 1997Ray Bradbury kicked off the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for the first thirty seven years, and anyone who attended, came back again and again to listen to his inspiring, passionate talks.

In the first year of the conference he came to the Cate School where the conference began and brought his sleeping bag and stayed up late into the night regaling attendees with his amazing stories from episodes in his life.

This talk from 1997 is titled "The Mixture as Before".

]]>Ray Bradbury kicked off the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for the first thirty seven years, and anyone who attended, came back again and again to listen to his inspiring, passionate talks.

In the first year of the conference he came to the Cate School where the conference began and brought his sleeping bag and stayed up late into the night regaling attendees with his amazing stories from episodes in his life.

This talk from 1997 is titled "The Mixture as Before".

]]>fbd4ee7d-86c9-46c4-83e3-d286429fd7ceMon, 31 Oct 2022 00:15:00 -040001:30:35falsefull3434Robert McKee: Santa Barbara Writers Conference - Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - 1997Robert McKee is an author, lecturer and story consultant who is known for his "Story Seminar", which he developed when he was a professor at the University of Southern California. McKee is the author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, Dialogue: the Art of Verbal Action for Stage, Page and Screen, Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World and Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen. McKee also has the blog and online writers' resource "Storylogue".

Robert McKee’s "Story Seminars" have been held around the globe including Boston, Moscow, Amsterdam, Beijing, Mumbai, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and annually in New York City, Los Angeles, and London. The three-day seminar teaches writers the principles of storytelling. McKee's one-day "Genre Seminars" teach writers the conventions of different styles of storytelling including thriller, comedy, horror, love story, action story, and writing for television.

Rather than teaching story as a "mechanical" form, McKee gained attention for teaching story principles, allowing writers for theater, novels, film and television freedom to apply them as they wish provided the story ultimately "works."

His lectures at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference were some of the best ever in regards to writing and story structure which are based around his book, Story , a book any serious writer should read again and again.

]]>Robert McKee is an author, lecturer and story consultant who is known for his "Story Seminar", which he developed when he was a professor at the University of Southern California. McKee is the author of Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, Dialogue: the Art of Verbal Action for Stage, Page and Screen, Storynomics: Story-Driven Marketing in the Post-Advertising World and Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen. McKee also has the blog and online writers' resource "Storylogue".

Robert McKee’s "Story Seminars" have been held around the globe including Boston, Moscow, Amsterdam, Beijing, Mumbai, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and annually in New York City, Los Angeles, and London. The three-day seminar teaches writers the principles of storytelling. McKee's one-day "Genre Seminars" teach writers the conventions of different styles of storytelling including thriller, comedy, horror, love story, action story, and writing for television.

Rather than teaching story as a "mechanical" form, McKee gained attention for teaching story principles, allowing writers for theater, novels, film and television freedom to apply them as they wish provided the story ultimately "works."

His lectures at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference were some of the best ever in regards to writing and story structure which are based around his book, Story , a book any serious writer should read again and again.

]]>54ee1f01-2ffd-462d-9838-03cb73438257Thu, 06 Oct 2022 00:15:00 -040001:14:00falsefull3333Fannie Flagg Humor Panel with Jonathan Winters: Santa Barbara Writers Conference - Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - 1997Fannie Flagg, is an American actress, comedian and author. She is best known as a semi-regular panelist on the 1973–1982 versions of the game show Match Game and for the 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which was adapted into the 1991 motion picture Fried Green Tomatoes. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay adaptation.

Fannie came to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference to hear Eudora Welty speak and ended up sticking around and entering the fiction contest under the name of Edna Furber. Not only did she take first place, but that story became Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and the rest as they say is history!

Jonathan Winters was an American comedian, actor, author, television host, and artist. Beginning in 1960, Winters recorded many classic comedy albums for Verve Records. He also had records released every decade for over 50 years, receiving 11 Grammy nominations, including eight for Best Comedy Album, during his career. From these nominations, he won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children for his contribution to an adaptation of The Little Prince in 1975 and the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album for Crank(y) Calls in 1996.

With a career spanning more than six decades, Winters also appeared in hundreds of television shows and films.

]]>Fannie Flagg, is an American actress, comedian and author. She is best known as a semi-regular panelist on the 1973–1982 versions of the game show Match Game and for the 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which was adapted into the 1991 motion picture Fried Green Tomatoes. She was nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay adaptation.

Fannie came to the Santa Barbara Writers Conference to hear Eudora Welty speak and ended up sticking around and entering the fiction contest under the name of Edna Furber. Not only did she take first place, but that story became Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and the rest as they say is history!

Jonathan Winters was an American comedian, actor, author, television host, and artist. Beginning in 1960, Winters recorded many classic comedy albums for Verve Records. He also had records released every decade for over 50 years, receiving 11 Grammy nominations, including eight for Best Comedy Album, during his career. From these nominations, he won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children for his contribution to an adaptation of The Little Prince in 1975 and the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Comedy Album for Crank(y) Calls in 1996.

With a career spanning more than six decades, Winters also appeared in hundreds of television shows and films.

]]>d58d9c71-f3bf-4147-a7e3-f9f010826578Fri, 09 Sep 2022 00:15:00 -040001:06:18falsefull3232T.C. Boyle: Santa Barbara Writers Conference - Mystic Ink Publishing Voices of the Masters Series - 1996Santa Barbara resident T. C. Boyle was a keynote speaker at the 1996 Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Also known as T. Coraghessan Boyle, he is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published sixteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

He was previously a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Boyle grew up in Peekskill, New York. His name was originally Thomas John Boyle; he changed his middle name to Coraghessan when he was 17 after an ancestor of his mother. He received a B.A. in English and History from the State University of New York at Potsdam (1968), an M.F.A. (1974) from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a Ph.D. (1977) from the University of Iowa.

In Understanding T. C. Boyle, Paul William Gleason writes, "Boyle's stories and novels take the best elements of Carver's minimalism, Barth's postmodern extravaganzas, Garcia Marquez's magical realism, O'Connor's dark comedy and moral seriousness, and Dickens' entertaining and strange plots and brings them to bear on American life in an accessible, subversive, and inventive way."

Many of Boyle's novels and short stories explore the baby boom generation, its appetites, joys, and addictions. His themes, such as the often-misguided efforts of the male hero and the slick appeal of the anti-hero, appear alongside brutal satire, humor, and magical realism. His fiction also explores the ruthlessness and the unpredictability of nature and the toll human society unwittingly takes on the environment. His novels include World's End (1987, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction); The Road to Wellville (1993); and The Tortilla Curtain (1995, winner of France's Prix Médicis étranger).

Boyle has published eight collections of short stories, including Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994). His short stories frequently appear in the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly and Playboy.

]]>Santa Barbara resident T. C. Boyle was a keynote speaker at the 1996 Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Also known as T. Coraghessan Boyle, he is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published sixteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York.

He was previously a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

Boyle grew up in Peekskill, New York. His name was originally Thomas John Boyle; he changed his middle name to Coraghessan when he was 17 after an ancestor of his mother. He received a B.A. in English and History from the State University of New York at Potsdam (1968), an M.F.A. (1974) from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and a Ph.D. (1977) from the University of Iowa.

In Understanding T. C. Boyle, Paul William Gleason writes, "Boyle's stories and novels take the best elements of Carver's minimalism, Barth's postmodern extravaganzas, Garcia Marquez's magical realism, O'Connor's dark comedy and moral seriousness, and Dickens' entertaining and strange plots and brings them to bear on American life in an accessible, subversive, and inventive way."

Many of Boyle's novels and short stories explore the baby boom generation, its appetites, joys, and addictions. His themes, such as the often-misguided efforts of the male hero and the slick appeal of the anti-hero, appear alongside brutal satire, humor, and magical realism. His fiction also explores the ruthlessness and the unpredictability of nature and the toll human society unwittingly takes on the environment. His novels include World's End (1987, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction); The Road to Wellville (1993); and The Tortilla Curtain (1995, winner of France's Prix Médicis étranger).

Boyle has published eight collections of short stories, including Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994). His short stories frequently appear in the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly and Playboy.

]]>c26e047b-b75e-48d2-ac19-783fc8a70356Wed, 24 Aug 2022 00:15:00 -040001:19:43falsefull3131Part 2 of Night Dreams Talk Radio show interview with Matt Pallamary "On Crazy Things In The Paranormal" by host Gary AndersonWe had a great Part 2 show on Friday night 8/12/22 on Night Dreams Talk Radio with Gary Anderson interviewing Matthew J. (Mateo) Pallamary "On Crazy Things In The Paranormal".

On the show they discussed altered states of consciousness and psychedelic substances, among them DMT, Psilocybin, LSD, Cannabis, and Ayahuasca, as well as shamanic plant diets in the jungles of the Amazon.