I am so tired today, gang, it’s just crazy. I have no idea why because I slept okay and things, in general, in my life are going pretty good.

I only have one shift today, with my favorite 95-year-old Japanese man. And he is getting adjusted to the repairman being there now so that’s good. And I’ll get home reasonably early today and then I can just relax.

But tomorrow morning at 9AM, I have an electrician coming to check out the light at the top of the stairs, because it’s suddenly not working. So I may not have time to post here tomorrow before my shift. We shall see!

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I have not posted about this next topic because I really didn’t know what to make of it, and everything is basically optics or a psyop these days, so I tend to leave everything alone.

However, yesterday evening, this was in Charlie Ward’s newsletter, so it sort of made me wonder what really had happened the other day. I re-post it here, but I have no comment really. I’m just going to go ahead and keep praying:

“Thank you all for the love, kindness, and prayers you have sent. Charlie is currently in hospital in the UK, being looked after with the utmost care. Your messages have lifted his spirits more than you can imagine. He is deeply grateful for every bit of support and is holding onto the love you’ve shown him during this time.

He is staying strong, staying positive and looking forward to being back with you all very soon. Please continue to keep him in your thoughts and prayers this means the world to him. 🙏”

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Okay.

On the topic of book publishing — I cannot stress enough how much the industry has changed since my first book deals, back in the 90s, when the erotica market (in print) was at its peak. (eBooks didn’t exist yet.)

But here’s a short summary of how much it has changed: publishers won’t publish erotica now because bookstores won’t stock it anymore and so distributors won’t carry it. So writers have to self-publish, except that now most online distributors won’t even carry most erotic titles (in print or in eBooks). So generating PR for self-published erotica is extremely difficult, since there are next to no outlets left for promoting it.

And each year, the market basically just gets worse and worse and is disappearing. I know that it is all somehow connected to trying to dismantle the sex-trafficking business, and especially the sex-trafficking of children.

I’m used to it now and I know that when/if I self-publish a new erotic title, it’s just going to sit there and if you don’t read my blog or follow me on Instagram, you’ll never know I have a new book out.

Yesterday, though, I was reading over an email from the digital publishing partner of Smashwords, just to get an update with the non-erotica eBook publishing world (I don’t publish with Smashwords anymore, but they still carry 4 of my old erotic titles). And I have now come to the conclusion that publishing , in general, regardless of the topic, just really kind of sucks. Unless you write romance or horror.

If you check this link, it will show you a LONG list of content (about 80 items) that they probably won’t publish for you, primarily because their marketing partners will not distribute it.

This is what they said about erotica, though — although I use LULU now for all my self-publishing. (I’ve been using them, in addition to having used Smashwords and Kindle, for 20 years.)

“We accept many types of erotic content, but we require erotic content be properly self-classified using our Erotica Certification System (ECS). Most of our vendors prohibit some forms of erotica. Any attempt to mislead us about the nature of your content could lead to your account being closed. We do not accept content with pornographic images or content that glorifies taboo subjects such as sexual exploitation of children or rape.”

I just found the whole thing depressing. Not so much the erotica market because that’s been dead now for a while, but for instance, if you wrote a cookbook on Mediterranean recipes, this particular digital publisher will not publish it for you, since their distribution partners deem that a “saturated” market.

So much for the glory days of “self-publishing” now, too.

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Here’s this!

Some photos I liked of Bill Wyman from Instagram yesterday. It was his 89th birthday!

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And here’s this:

A great photo of Lou and Sylvia, taken by Allen Tannenbaum in NYC in 1979:

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And!!

James Tabor is getting ready to launch another great online lecture series with Myth Vision, this one about Christianity Before Paul!! (Another favorite topic of mine, so I can’t wait.)

The lectures will cover:

Christianity Before Paul

1. Streams of Emerging Christianity; Jewish-Christian, Pauline, Gnostics, Orthodox

2. In the Beginning: None Greater than John

3. Embedded Sources: Synoptics and Q

4. Recovering a Lost Non-Pauline Gospel

5. James the Just, Successor of Jesus

6. Reconstructed 1 Peter and the Apocalypse

7 The Didache

8.  Hebrew Matthew

9. The Nazarenes, Ebionites, and Pseudo-Clementines

10. Afterlifes of Jewish Christianity

Bonus: The Archaeology of “Jewish Christianity”

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And I think that’s it for right now. I gotta try to get my energy going here because I have to leave soon for my shift. Gonna get another cup o’ joe and see if that helps…

Enjoy your Saturday, wherever you are in the world.

Thanks for visiting.

I love you guys. See ya!

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Okay, let’s do this again, since I always find myself singing it the minute my eyes open on Saturday morning and my heart melts from all the memories I have of days when everyone I knew was still alive…

Anyway.

Enjoy, gang.