Aug. 26 - Sept.. 1, 2012 Discussions

My comment for Sunday, Aug. 26 was mostly about the progress with my book.  I received no responses to any queries to agents during the past week, and I've decided to try querying a publisher this week.  Some research I did uncovered a major book publisher that seems perfectly suited to my book.

I'm also preparing the "final" version of the book, creating the pdf files that printing companies need to print books.  I'm currently on Chapter 7.  I added about a page to Chapter 4 where I evaluate Bruce Ivins' September 17, 1993 letter to the editors of the Frederick News-Post defending pedophilia.  The facts seem to indicate that Ivins was thinking of a teenage girl when he wrote that letter at age 47.  A year later, he hired the girl to work for him as an assistant in his lab.

I was amused last week to see the reaction "Anonymous" had to my pointing out to him in my August 22 post, that his interpretations of what Tom Walker wrote in his book were totally wrong.  "Anonymous" stopped posting to this blog, but he posted a bunch of messages to Lew Weinstein's blog where he admits that he didn't understand what he was reading in Walker's book, and he then demonstrated that he also didn't understand what he was reading in the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel report.  In one post, "Anonymous" wrote:

"The consulting psychiatrist, for example, points to the fact that Bruce’s mom went to Monmouth College." 

Bruce's mom did NOT go to Monmouth College. She went to Florida Women's State College where she got a degree in home economics.  The EBAP report (and the "consulting psychiatrist") did NOT say that Bruce's mom went to Monmouth college.  The EBAP report says on page 130:

"By using the ZIP code of Monmouth Junction, Dr. Ivins may have been
portraying in code the connection between KKG and his own identity.
Monmouth Junction may have represented the union of father
(Monmouth, N.J.) and mother (Monmouth College, KKG), i.e., himself.
And it also represented his entanglement, his obsession with KKG."       
  
It's a psychiatrist's way of saying that Ivins may have seen some mystical connection between his own ancestors from Monmouth, NJ, and the origins of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority in Monmouth, IL.

Ed

Aug. 19 - Aug. 25, 2012 Discussions

My Sunday comment for August 19 began with information about the progress (or lack of progress) with my new book: I didn't receive any responses to query letters during the week, and I was setting October 8 as the "deadline" for my attempts to find an agent.  If I don't have a literary agent seriously looking at the book by October 8, I plan to be ready for the final steps in self-publishing - getting the ISBN code, signing the contract with the printing company, and sending out the CD with all the pdf files, fonts and the cover art.

I also mentioned some of the problems I'm having in creating the pdf files.  Formatting the Table of Contents and the List of Exhibits has been particularly frustrating.  But, I'm making progress.

Then I mentioned the latest attempt by "Anonymous" a.k.a. "Dxer" to try to show that he is right about something related to the Amerithrax investigation and I am wrong about everything.

On Saturday, it appears that he posted some questions to the previous thread on this blog that were just a devious and pathological attempt to get me to post something that was scientifically incorrect.  But, all he did was show his ignorance of science and how sneaky he can be.  I was being polite to some unknown person posting seemingly innocent questions as "Anonymous," and he was being devious by framing the questions in a way that he believed would cause me to write things that conflicted with a new scientific report he'd found.  It didn't work.  All he showed was that he didn't understand the scientific report he was trying to use against me.

I had previously stated that I'd delete all further posts from him, but I let those posts stay, since they clearly show how sick and devious he can be.

Ed  

Aug. 12 - Aug. 18 Discussions

In the comment for Sunday, August 12 on my web, I mentioned that I haven't received any responses from the literary agents I recently queried.  But, I think it may just be because it's August in New York City and everyone is either on vacation or their contacts and associates are on vacation.  I also mentioned again the problems I currently have in producing the 6x9 book size pdf file I'll need if I decide to self-publish my book.  I may have to buy a new computer to safely solve all those problems.  I need a backup computer anyway.

But, the major portion of my Sunday comment was about my decision to delete all further posts to this blog by the person who identifies himself here as "Anonymous" and on Lew Weinstein's blog as "DXer."  There no longer seems any value to allowing his posts to go through.  He just argues the same nonsense over and over, and there's clearly malicious intent to his posts claiming no publisher will ever represent my book.  I asked him why Laurie Garrett had to self-publish her book "I Heard The Sirens Scream" even though she almost certainly already had an agent, but he didn't respond.  And, I just got tired of the implied threats in the posts by Anonymous where he says I can be sued for agreeing with the Department of Justice's finding that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer.

"Anonymous" attempted to post one message this morning which I deleted.  It was the same old thing: He doesn't approve of what I read and don't read. 

Ed          

Aug. 5 - Aug. 11, 2012 Discussions

The comment I wrote for my web site for Sunday, Aug. 5 was mostly about my continuing search to find a literary agent to help me get a publisher for my new book.  It's very slow going.

Three months ago, on May 9, 2012, I sent out 12 query letters at one time.  7 agents responded with "sorry, but it's not our kind of project" or "we're too busy right now" rejection slips. The other 5 didn't respond at all.   The rejections arrived after 1, 2, 8, 9, 19, 20 and 35 days.  So, there's no real pattern, other than that Thursday and Friday seem to be the most popular days for sending out rejection slips.

I started to add a comment about some total nonsense posted to this blog by "Anonymous" last week in the July 9 - Aug 4 discussion thread.  He posted:

Therefore, handwriting analysis is a tested theory, it has been subject to peer review and publication, there is a known potential rate of error and there are standards controlling the technique's operation, and it enjoys general acceptance within the relevant scientific community.

And the facts are:

No forensic technique has taken more hits than handwriting analysis. In one particularly devastating federal ruling, United States v. Saelee (2001), the court noted that forensic handwriting analysis techniques had seldom been tested, and that what testing had been done "raises serious questions about the reliability of methods currently in use." The experts were frequently wrong--in one test "the true positive accuracy rate of laypersons was the same as that of handwriting examiners; both groups were correct 52 percent of the time."   (Click HERE for the source.)

Instead, I posted the analogy I wrote in response to a post from Richard Rowley, comparing the solving of the Amerithrax case to putting together the pieces of a 500-piece picture puzzle.

I also mentioned in my Sunday comment that I was trying to think of ways to get the voters for the Emmy awards to see what kind of inaccuracies were in the nominated PBS Frontline program "The Anthrax Files."

Ed