In my adult life, I've lived with others in community longer than I've lived alone. It suits me, and I hope to be able to live in intentional community for the rest of my life.

Self-publishing books used to have a bad reputation. That has changed a little bit over the past couple of years, but there definitely is the sense that people who get published "for real" must be better writers, and certainly have more cred. I decided to self-publish my novels for a number of reasons, after long consideration and contemplation. These reasons are both philosophical as well as deeply personal.

This is a great song (and catchy, too.)

It's been almost 5 years since I wrote my first novel in the summer of 2006, a science fiction story about aliens who are human. It has finally made it to the light of day! After a lot of consideration about the current massive changes in the publishing world, and my own penchant for all things technical, I decided to self-publish the novel, in eBook form first. If enough people request it, there will be a print run. There may even be an audio book! 

In 2003 at the start of the war in Iraq, I did a news blackout for about a year. I'd gotten so addicted to reading and watching news, and addicted to the need to see what was happening, and I got so disheartened and frustrated that I needed detox.

I have hemmed and hawed about this for years, now. I started writing my novels in the "Casitian Universe" series back in 2006, and I have now completed the trilogy. I spent a few months looking for agents and publishers, and decided, given my penchant for all things open, as well as the massive, amazing changes happening in the publishing business, that I would strike out on my own. I decided, at first at least, to self-publish all three novels in electronic form only.

I imagine many of you have seen the movie "The Matrix." If you have, you know about the Red Pill.

This article was written for Seminary of the Street, for their January 2011 newsletter.

The conversations and conflict in the wake of the shooting in Arizona provides a good object lesson about something Buddhists call “The Three Poisons.” These are concepts familiar to all of us – greed (or craving), hatred (or aversion) and delusion (or self-deception).

I've been following the Wikileaks kerfluffle for quite a while now. Actually, since way before "cablegate". When I saw (on Twitter) that there was an effort to mass-mirror the wikileaks website (that link is on my mirror), I signed up.

So why, you might ask?