E. C. (Gene) Ayres Blogspot

There's an old children's taunt--the kind most of my generation got to hear at least once growing up in the streets and schoolyards of America. It goes like this: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Followed by the usual body language: pointing, thumb on nose, wrinkled face, and whatever. It's possible girls heard this kind of nonsense more often than boys, because girls pretty much had to rely on words for both attack and defense, whereas boys had all sorts of weapons at their disposal: fists, elbows, knees, shoulders, and yes, sticks and stones, or baseball bats, knives, and guns, in more recent times. Maybe that's why women read more than men. They are more comfortable with the power of words, because for much of history it was the only power they had. The absurdity of that childish claim should be obvious to anyone who's ever lived in a civilized society governed by laws, or religious doctrine, or as in Christian and ...

This image represents perhaps the oldest, if not most powerful symbol in the world: the so-called 'All-Seeing Eye.' Whose eye, exactly, is this, and what is it they see? The most obvious and common assumption, of course, is that it sees all and therefore, presumably, it is the eye of God. But which God? The earliest representations of this symbol were the seven manifestations of the Eye of Horus, in ancient Egypt. Sometimes depicted as a falcon, Horus could literally see all and was considered by his Rosicrucian and Masonic descendants as probably the original named God in the human panoply. Later versions, adopting the pyramid, and later on a simple representational triangle, all have their historical basis in this original Eye. Christians converted this triangle as to represent the Trinity. In 1782, the Eye of Providence was adopted as part of the symbolism on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States. It was first suggested as an element of the Great Se...

What is it about belief, that compels us mere mortals to reject all reason, logic or common sense, let alone science, in pursuit of that which we cannot have, and yet must? Religion, of course, has served to fill this gap in people's lives, and role in their hearts and minds for thousands of years. Religion is a proven provider of sustenance to a certain kind of addiction that seems to afflict most, if not all humans. It is potentially beneficial, of course, as was the probable intent of the prophets and originators in terms of its more positive messages. And of course, like chemical addictions, it is also potentially destructive, and has in fact taken the lives of millions over time, as it continues to do so even today. Music and art also provide an escape into an alternate state, like religion, and to some (including yours truly) it is a better outlet. When I go to a top-level performance of a Beethoven symphony, or a Bach or Mozart sonata or a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, it...

In the winter of 2004 an old friend paid me a visit to my then-home in St. Petersburg, Florida, and made me an offer that, while I didn't refuse, took me four months to accept. It was an offer to come to China and teach for a year at a public university in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, of the People's Republic of China. For those of you who are not of the Boomer generation, you may not recall a movie, based on a book, that was a mega-hit thriller in the 1960s: The Manchurian Candidate . Manchuria was a nation in and of itself prior to the British occupation, consisting of today's three northernmost (and eastern-most) provinces of China, of which Heilongjiang is the largest and northernmost of the three, the capital city of which is Harbin (pop. 7,000,000). The Manchu were the native race of this region, who had their own language, and also their own emperor who, not satisfied with their confinement to the north decided to expand southwards. This decision, by the future Q...

As an author, I have had a long and complicated love and hate affair with eBooks, and know this will sound self-serving, but my first mystery novel, Hour of the Manatee , was the very first book ever published in electronic format. It happened like this: I'd been doing a reading of my second Tony Lowell Mystery, Eye of the Gator at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in St. Petersburg, Florida, when a man came up to me afterwards and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. His name was Don something (real name best forgotten in any case) and he claimed to have invented the first eBook reader. Moreover, he had a working model to prove it. The year was 1997. What Don wanted was a book that had some public visibility to convert onto his reader as a demo, and my first book, as a national book award winner and still selling well, would suit his purpose perfectly, and I could see no down side at the time. So I agreed. Don's business plan, such as it was, was to publish eBooks in mini-...

With apologies to my readers, it has been a long time: one year, to be exact, since my last posting. I have been busy, mind you. My Italian publisher Newton Compton Roma contracted another book, as second in a new series featuring investigative reporter Jake Fleming, who, in my prior book, Il Libro Segreto di Shakespeare , discovered evidence pointing to another author of the Shakespeare Canon (and no, it was not Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford). I am still seeking an English language publisher, which is a unique situation to be in indeed, given that this book has been published (under my pseudonym John Underwood) in seven languages, to date. The last time this has happened was For Whom the Bell Tolls , by Ernest Hemmingway. Not that I am claiming peerhood with Hemmingway, but that is a fact. Meanwhile, a true hero of mine (granted, I am a professional iconoclast) has resurfaced, literally, and I consider this very good news indeed. Richard of York, the last of the Plantagen...

Whether or not the Reader accepts the premise that William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, was not what he seemed (i.e. a writer/poet and man of letters) or my own premise that he was in fact the inventor of Hollywood (i.e. the first celebrity producer) William Shakespeare was not a fool or a foil, as depicted in the film Anonymous : he was anything but. I see him not only as a forerunner to Cecil B. de Mille and Louis B. Mayer, but also a forerunner to the Vampire Capitalist and Wall Street corporate greedmeister as depicted in the movie Wall Street by Michael Douglas. Shakespeare had a lot of business savvy, was denounced for being greedy just like Gordon Gekko, was accused of piracy and plagiarism just like Dan Brown and Steven Spielberg, hoarded grain to drive up prices during a famine just like Monsanto, owned a theater company (i.e.studio) just like Goldwyn (well, a partner, anyway, with my own ancestor John Underwood among others), and fostered a bastard son who became England...