CONFIRMATION COVER REVEAL!

7/16/18 The time of...CONFIRMATION. Less than one month now and my new novel is available!

Hail Satan! Lucifer Returns!

OK, so I feel like digressing now and again, writing about some of my favorite TV shows and films. And my very favorite, just for its audacious premise, is FOX's - or formerly FOX's - "Lucifer." The devil himself as a crime-fighting hero? I think it's probably one of the best high-concept ideas that was ever on television. I had been meaning to read the Neil Gaiman graphic novels the show is based on and I think I will get around to it very soon. Perhaps while I wait for "Lucifer" to return on Netflix.

Fox had axed "Lucifer" a month ago, but the show's devoted fans started a #SaveLucifer social media campaign immediately. I did my part in retweeting it, of course, and now I'm ecstatic to see that Netflix just stepped in and saved the show. Read an article about it right here. 

It does keep raising interesting questions about the validity of the TV ratings system and how best to gage audience preferences in the era of new media technologies. Or whether science fiction and fantasy shows should even be attempted on the four main broadcast networks. Sci fi and fantasy have been thriving on cable and streaming services for years now, so perhaps all future productions like this that think way outside of the box and past the stale old lineup of the usual cop shows, lawyer, shows, doctor shows, and sitcoms should head straight for cable and streaming.

But now I'm just excited to see the devil back on TV!

Please let this be a joke! Please let this be a joke!

Hmm...so a friend of mine recently shared this link to a story about the latest in Flat Earth thinking and Flat Earth conspiracy theorizing. Apparently the flat Earth model is not enough to accommodate Australia. The giant pancake flying through space - or whichever model whatever group of Flat Earthers choose to believe in - would not be big enough to hold the Australian land mass. Thus we get this conspiracy theory that Australia is really an invention by the great global - pun intended - conspiracy. So Australia does not exist, so say these yo yos. Got that? Australia has been invented by NASA and all the people who claim to be from there are actors all in league with the conspiracy and just pretending.

Oh, boy! Need we say more? Life in the 21st century.

This is almost as wonderfully deranged as the conspiracy theory about Finland not existing. Yup, I just ran across this the other day. Check out this link to the story. Finland is really a Russian/Japanese hoax concocted after World War II.

"But wait!" you might say. "So what about all the hundreds of years' worth of recorded history referring to Finland? How about all the people who've been to Finland? Or the ones who claim to be from there? Or couldn't you just get on a plane or a ship and just travel to Finland?"

Recorded history? Recorded by whom? "They" can make up the fake books! In the hidden printing plants of the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers.

People from Finland? Actors! Just like the Parkland and Sandy Hook crisis actors.

Flying or sailing to Finland? The airlines and cruise ship companies - all in on the conspiracy - are actually taking you to Sweden where an army of Swedish actors are then pretending to be Fins.

Ah, the great derangement of the 21st century. This makes my job of deprogramming college kids who are open minded to garbage like this even more...well, at least colorful.

Where I Answer Questions About CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED

Last week I had the fantastic opportunity to answer questions about my upcoming novel, my writing process, and how my academic work informed what will be my first published work of fiction. This link to the Ask Me Anything web page has all the answers to the questions I had a chance to reply to. I was able to answer some excellent questions about the culture of conspiracy theories and their dangers and the way the issue provides a major theme for my new book.

Talking About Conspiracy Theories and Education in Los Angeles

In two weeks I'll get the opportunity to visit my favorite city in the world and give a talk about teaching college students to become more critical consumers of information at the University of Riverside Spring Global Education Conference. I will be discussing exercises I use in my Conspiracy Films class to teach students how to deconstruct and debunk the most absurd of conspiracy theories circulating on the Internet and pop culture. Yes, conspiracy films can be fun, but we need to know how to distinguish between fantasy and reality, don't we? The need for a more media literate generation of young people has never been more important than today.

My first novel to be released on July 16

While this is something that has been in the works for a while, I now wanted to announce that my first novel, CONFIRMATION: INVESTIGATIONS OF THE UNEXPLAINED, will be released this July 16 by World Castle Publishing. It will be available in both print and electronic formats from all booksellers.

This is a project that I am particularly excited by because World Castle Publishing gave me the opportunity to combine several of my main interests from fictional entertainment to concerns I have written about as an academic and media commentator. A science fiction/suspense hybrid, the story focuses on an unexplainable event that shocks the world and the chaotic ripple effects it sends through societies everywhere. Much of the chaos is caused by the fear-mongering of unscrupulous conspiracy theorists.

So keep an eye open for more updates on the book, a cover-reveal coming soon, excerpts, and more cool things.

But as the jacket copy will read:

THE EVIDENCE OF ANOTHER WORLD IS HERE...

In Mount Shasta City, California. In San Francisco. In New Jersey. In San Diego. Then in Scotland, in Italy, and Cairo. In dozens of locations around the world, 20-ton granite globes suddenly appear. They usually turn up overnight, sometimes in remote locations and other times in the middle of cities in places no one could have put them without detection. For the first time, the world is witnessing a truly unexplainable phenomenon.

AND THE THREAT IS REAL...

As Rick Ballantine and Cornelia Oxenburg, cast members of the low-rent supernatural reality show "Confirmation: Investigations of the Unexplained," quickly realize, the globes' greatest effect is the way they make people speculate about their origins and purpose. Some think the globes are placed by aliens. Others think it's all a hoax. Many more fear sinister government conspiracies behind it all. But each of these points of view believes they're absolutely right...and others who disagree are dead wrong...and dangerous...and must be dealt with by any means necessary! Before the true, incredible origins of the globes is finally revealed, the "Confirmation" cast comes to see the extremes people are capable of when their beliefs are challenged and threatened...even in their own group.

How to Deal With a Professional Scumbag

If anyone was still doubting that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is one of the most vile human beings around today, his rantings about "false flag" attacks and "crisis actors" being behind mass killings like the Colorado theater shooting, the Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, and Parkland shootings, and the Boston Marathon bombing should erase all doubts in any sensible mind. And they should erase all doubts in any one with any tiny sliver of human decency.

Now notice that I didn't write anything along the lines about his rantings being "demented" or "delusional" or "insane." Alex Jones is among the lowest dregs of humanity exactly because he is completely sane and knows what he is doing. His bovine manure about these crisis actor conspiracy theories, accusing grieving families of lying about the loss of their loved ones, are carefully calculated to rile up a very specific sector of society - the disaffected, the ignorant, those with significantly diminished intellectual capacities, the fantasy prone, the losers of life who need to look for scapegoats to blame their lot in life on. People like this are Jones' bread and butter and he knows exactly what he needs to do to keep them listening to, watching, and reading his bilge. These people need to have their siege-mentality paranoia fed and Jones tells them exactly what they want to hear. They want to hear about the Illuminati and the New World Order and the Bilderbergers and the International Bankers coming after them to enslave them and throw them into FEMA camps in Area 51 and under Denver International Airport. Jones provides these losers with the exact product they are looking to consume.

Except these losers have been subjecting the grieving families and survivors of these mass killings to vicious harassment and threats. And Jones knows this. He has known this for years and kept stoking the rage of these conspiracist morons with no regard to the viciousness they are capable of.

Except now the victims are fighting back. Jones has been hit with defamation suits by the people he has been tormenting. As this excellent op-ed piece explains, ignoring conspiracy theorists no longer works because it mere emboldens them. Since Jones and his sleazy ilk love words like "war" and "fight" and battle, it's time they were given the war they have been asking for.

This article will definitely be a tool I will be using in my own classes on conspiracy theories to do my own small part through academia to combat this sort of reprehensible conspiracy sewage spill that has been polluting American culture.