As a Remarkable Publishing 'Feet', It's a Size 14, & 'Has Legs!'

[Ed Augusts]

Pardon the 'feet / feat' pun, and the show business term "legs", but
I've achieved something special in the writing and publishing world --
cumulatively as well as incrementally -- without really even trying
specifically to do so -- "it just happened!" I've already achieved
something no-one else has -- FOURTEEN OF 'EM, in fact, and MORE is on
the way! FOURTEEN BOOKS written and published in 2008. Eleven of
them are in 6"x9" perfectly bound, (versus 2 that are 'saddle
stitched' and 1 that is hardcover), glossy-color-covered softcover
("wraps", as they call them in the book world!)

First let me assure you, I'm no stranger to writing. My first stories
were written on my brother's old 1920's Underwood typewriter when I
was eleven years old. I won the Middle School prize for story writing
with my "Red Sands of Mars" at Cypress School in 8th Grade, where I
also brought home the Cherry Lane Science Fair first prize in biology,
and published my story "Emerald of Mars" a few years later, and hawked
it at the PACIFICON the next year, where I met John Campbell,
Forrest J. Ackerman and and won the coveted James D. Phelan prize
[for Patterned Verse], in 1970. I have 300 to 400 poems that I wrote
in the 1964--1972 period, one day I will again "dig into those", since
by now they have become lamp posts to 1960's and 1970's culture.
Okay, okay, so I had all this potential and did very little with it
for decades. I admit it. Real Estate and then the Occult Arts.
Beautiful women and my Mercurial, Uranian nature (47 changes of
residence), were mostly to blame.


Fourteen Books Written & Published in 2008

Despite decades of literary underachievement and the lack of scholarly
credentials (nothing past 2 years of the honors program: "Tutorials in
Letters & Sciences" at San Jose State College with an eventual New
College B.A and a semester of Grad School at San Francisco State),
I've gone through the most productive concentrated period of writing
in my life, since returning to Arizona from San Francisco, and I have
immediately turned each of these creations into books, ready to
sell.

This is an entire body of work, thousands of pages, which I very much
doubt if anyone else has ever attempted or completed the "likes of" in
such a short time period. . I've taken notes and drafts of a number of
on-going book projects and kept pounding away on the keyboard, day and
night, formulating, editing, until I've written, finished & published
FOURTEEN (count 'em! 14) books, and published them as either
paperbacks or hardcovers on lulu.com...ALL IN 2008. That's just SO
FAR... There are more projects, both fiction and non-fiction,
underway.

There is quite a range in these completed and published books, from my
book of short stories titled "Exile and Double Exile", to "The Magic
Wands Book", all about magic wands, dowsing, and the history, legend,
and practical use of magic wands. I was seduced by two Latvian-
American women at an art exhibit in Toronto, one of whom wielded a
birch wand, I hardly knew what hit me, and the intrigue from this
episode started me thinking about magic wands in general. Years
later, I discovered, much to my surprise, that just picking up a rod
of wood that looked like a wand could immediately bring about magical
results. So I have had two personal episodes with Magic Wands: More
than enough to begin a long-term fascination.

"Semi-Mesozoic Pizza with Primordial Anchovies", a selection of my
volcanic, seismological and tsunami-related poetry written from
1999--2003 or so, was combined with "Seismological Moments : Tales of
the Great Baja Earthquake & Tsunami", both of which appeared little by
little over a two-year period on the USENET. If someone wants to go
through 8,000+ Google "Group" references, they can reconstruct much of
the elements of this book, but it would be quite a time-consuming
procedure. Also, my enemies posted a number of "FAKE" "Seismological
Moments" messages as well as other fake, spoofed, or FLAME material
that they put MY NAME on, but I was careful to use genuine Ed Augusts
materials in this book.

My "Augusts Astrological Archives" seemed to be a straightforward task
-- just editing some of the better messages posted in my
"ASTRO_PSYCHIC" Yahoo Group over the past 4--1/2 years, but it ended
up 279 pages long! This is a most varied and wide-ranging archive.
There is plenty more than just astrology here, there are other forms
of divination, and messages and columns about dreams, religion, time
travel, etc.

"Astrology, God & Humanity: Reassessing Our Notions of God" compares
the strange origins and suspicious practices of the three major
monotheistic religions with the validation of scientific observations
by ancient middle-eastern astrologer-priests that brought about the
science of astrology.

"Changes in Human Species", is a "channeled" book, it came from out of
nowhere, and the substantial tome was finished in five days. I've
never done anything else like it! I was hunkered down in a nifty
little studio with a view of the rising Moon. My kingsize bed and my
31-inch TV screen were within 5 feet of the laptop I was using, that
seemed to help me type day & night until it was finished. This book
is an oddity because the subject matter is something I've never really
studied -- only picked-up through osmosis "in my many travels", I
guess.

Culture, fashion and sexuality are not left out, not if you examine
"All the Girls in Nylons & Garter Belts", all about the "look" ,
history and sensuality of the subject matter: a period of history,
mainly involving the decades from the 1940's to about 1975 or so, when
this "look" was "in".

"Getting Rich Buying at Yard Sales" concerns my incredible LUCK with
collectibles, old books especially, and how I made enough $$$ to
retire for 7 years in the Las Vegas area. It is an intimate look at
just one of the "lives" that I've led!

"Meditations on Real Estate" is a diverse bittersweet look at the
Real Estate industry, meant to make people feel a bit nostalgic about
the money they made in the 1970's and 1980's and 1990's , some of
which they may have now LOST, since R. E. has done the
unimaginable.... gone DOWN in value!

It Amounts to a Book Catalogue or a Course of
Study!

The 14-Book total includes two metaphysical titles which I myself re-
typed from 1920's and 1930's editions, one written by Geoffrey Hodson
about his clairvoyant visions of Fairies, the other, by Daisy Buettner
about her visions of the Spirit World.. Good thing I can type fast!
The last time I sat down for a 5-minute timed writing, I hit 103 words
per minute. But that was on an IBM typwriter, 30+ years ago. I am a
s-p-e-e-d-s-t-e-r among writers!

I'm pretty sure one person writing/publishing 14 books in a year is a
unique achievement!
Now, if I can just write things which people find entertaining or
informative enough to read and enjoy!
I have more to come, so: "Watch This Space!"


See this batch of my 2008 titles at: http://stores.lulu.com/edaugusts
Best wishes, -----Ed
.