Grateful Dead

What is POTUS please??********************************** I am not young enough to know everything. Oscar Wilde

Watching as the POTUS mimics "W" with this whole "war on terror" thiing...

all of the above and it's complicated. Entire conferences are held on this subject regularly.

Forgive this old author if I'm wrong, but didn't the publishing business use to work a different way? Editors were paid to read manuscripts presented by agents (one pile) and by he authors themselves (the slush pile). If they liked it they signed you to a contract and gave you an advance and made the manuscript into a book and promoted it to a degree (to what degree was always the problem). Now, anybody can do desk-top publishing and it's all like a vanity press except you did all the work to make it into a bonafide book. If you distribute yourself, you keep a lot of the money. If they distribute and promote they make about 5/6ths of the cost of a book. How much space is their at Borders and Waldens and other book chains, not to mention Wal-Mart? Only so much room for a few best-sellers. Am I missing the boat or isn't that a difference in the way authors at least get paid and promoted? And what difference has desk-top publishing made? I guess I wouldn't know if something I picked up is desk-topped or not., and desk-top authors make more money, I guess, minus their promotion and reproduction expenses. Feel free to move this to another thread.

Hope you enjoyed the meaning of the day with loved ones. Still, you pose an interesting question: "How could one be grateful to be dead? If "dead" is not the end.." It is my opinion the some of the tunes Hunter wrote, almost the entire genre, were about people who died sadly, violently (Jack Straw, Me & My Uncle etc.) and according to which part of religion you belong to (or not) you might believe some of them condemned to hell for eternity. That ain't my religion. Mine probably has more hells than yours, just not eternal. There was a guy who used to post here who freaked out at "Friend of the Devil" (star_sleeper?) regularly So, without going uber-philosophical here, You could ddefinitely be grateful to be Dead, especially if it's not the end. Maybe it seems dark to you, but there are things in this world you do not know exist, and don't wanna know. Still. wish you all the happiness this day is meant to bring.

Marye, lamagonzo, thanks for watching for an even keel; but no harm.Built to last? Yes, going on 2,000 years this morning. How could one be grateful to be dead? If "dead" is not the end.

this is a change how? Nonetheless, as the forum moderator, to say nothing of the editor of a friend's recently published novel having nothing to do with the Dead, I would note that this is, in the words of one of the band's cover tunes, drifting too far from the shore here, and let us stick to religion, spirituality and Deadheads here rather than promoting one's fiction or slagging the state of the current publishing marketplace. Thank you. I would encourage Brendan to promote said fiction in the Grateful Dead Library or Your Own Storefront topics...

They'll publish anything and pay you if somebody buys it. Still, one wonders about :...Rose Dawn, an underage, pregnant radio clairvoyant prone to sneezing fits.

Friend of the Devil is a novel about a reefer-smoking 1930s jazz musician, on the run from the law. He is on his way to Del Rio, a Texas border town rolling in dough, thanks to a quack doctor whose ‘goat-gland cure’ brings in well-heeled suckers by the trainload. And just across the river, the Doc’s got a million-watt “border blaster” that he uses to advertise himself along with yodelers, pitchmen, preachers, mystics, and singing cowboys. There, Herbert figures, he can hide out in plain view. But then Herbert does a favor for a stranger in a jam who turns out to be the Devil himself. Now the Devil owes Herbert a favor, something Herbert, a fervent atheist, has absolutely no interest in collecting on. Next thing Herbert knows, he’s stuck in the middle of a convoluted wager between the Devil and God, both of whom seem to take his refusal to acknowledge their existence personally. Herbert vows revenge. Luckily he finds an ally in Rose Dawn, an underage, pregnant radio clairvoyant prone to sneezing fits.

I've followed this thread from the beginning and I have really admired your even-handed moderating.As we all know,this is a topic that can really get out of hand,but you have been able to help keep it civil while still giving everyone a chance to speak their thoughts. Only a group of deadheads could have a 65 page thread on religious beliefs and only have a few posts that requires the moderator to step in.It makes me proud to be a deadhead. Thanks