Aurora Solaris

The Truth Is Up and Running

After two years of writing and many, many set backs — including the loss of 30 pages that had to be rewritten from memory and several health issues on the home front — The Truth Is a Lone Assassin is finally a completed novella. This book is my second excursion into "literary science fiction" and my ninth written work. I published this book earlier today and it's available in trade paperback at Lulu.com. 

In a day or two the Kindle Edition will be "Live" at Amazon.com and then I'll post the promotional video for it. The paperback will be available at Amazon.com sometime in mid-March 2013. The 4-6 week delay is nothing more than the time it takes for any book to travel through regular distribution channels from The Lulu Marketplace. I will not make this book available at Barnes & Noble.com unless there is a demand for it there. My first novella, Blind Fool Running, is still languishing at B&N and that is unfortunate for everyone.

After a short break I'll probably (I'm not sure yet) go back to writing my tenth book and my seventh science fiction thriller, the one I began way back in March 2009 and then had to put on "hold" because of surgical and hospital emergencies for both me and my elderly mother. My tenth book is entitled "The IIIrd Option" and it's a hard science fiction story sculptured around several controversial metaphysical themes, including shadow life masquerading as real life and false human beings who populate planet Earth and many other worlds in The Milky Way Galaxy. It will be the most violent novel I've written so far. And there's a reason for that. The completion date for this thriller is open because I've scarcely begun writing it again. Post Updated 2-8-13 for Kindle Edition availability

Winter Pissing Contest

Of course I didn't post photos on the Internet of me or anybody else "taking a leak". Only a sick, degraded fool would do that. But I did use a low-life disgusting hyperbole to involve you in some Appalachian winter humor. For reasons I've been unable to fathom most of the world is head-over-heels fascinated at the very idea of men peeing. I think that somehow defines what we've become as a species. You follow? But, hey, it's not too late to fix that. Cultivating a clean mind is a lot easier than you think. One more thing. If you don't like the fact that I "caught you with your pants down" (another below-the-belt hyperbole), keep the damn things up.

Click on Picture for "Pissing Contest" Results

the latest news from michaelcasher.com

The "Unsilent Minority"

I've nothing to hide about being a gun owner and I want to be up front about the fact that I do own legal firearms. My small collection of simple firearms is for hunting, target shooting and, to a lesser degree, protection. They were all legally purchased from FFL dealers in regular, retail shopping outlets in the late, great 20th Century. I'm not a gun lover. I'm a gun owner.

No, this isn't me. This is one of The "Unsilent Minority".

I'm one of the millions of Americans who own simple, non-military, legal firearms and who never talk about them in public and who are never scared — not for one moment — that somebody will come to our homes and take our firearms away from us. We don't think about that because we're confident that that will never happen in this country for many, many reasons, including the fact that as long as our nation has millions of sane, quiet, cool-headed citizens with traditional firearms in their homes, no foreign country will ever invade us and vanquish us. Not without one hell of a fight.

We're "The Silent Majority" and we're America's backup army. Let's hope they never need us but we'll be ready if they do. In the meantime, we'll legally hunt for wild food, break clay pigeons, plink tin cans and punch holes in paper targets for recreation. And keep our firearms quietly and securely out of sight. And the biggest thing about the right to bear arms is that those of us who take advantage of that right feel very privileged to have it. The gun owners in the "Unsilent Minority", as I like to call them because they're so vocal and often disturbingly animated, don't represent American gun owners at all. They only think they do.

So, we might not dash into the Second Amendment fray and make fools out of ourselves by waving guns around for the cameras, like the "Unsilent Minority", and holler about freedom and rights because we're already secure in that knowledge. We guarantee the right to bear arms by being good citizens who are smart enough to know that keeping a cool head is the best way to own guns and the only way to secure the freedom we're privileged to have. We're the "Silent Majority". We're the ones who keep our heads while others about us are losing theirs. (This post was updated on 1-25-13)

A Head Banging Experience

Don't tell anyone but during the month of December I rewrote the 30 pages that went missing last fall from my second novella, The Truth Is a Lone Assassin. That's right. You got it. Jonco Bugos now has two literary novellas under his belt. The Truth Is a Lone Assassin is no Blind Fool Running but it was never intended to be a clone or a sequel or, heaven forbid, a competitor.

But it's a bit of a shocker, if you can allow yourself to absorb and enjoy the important expository nature of the narrative which is, by the way, periodically relieved by the ongoing story line, a rather compelling tale about a man who makes the most startling discovery anyone could ever make. I finished writing this novella on January 1, 2013. Now I'm finishing up the "building" of the the book for paperback publishing.

I designed the cover myself — just like I did for all my books — and I just finished writing the description for the back cover. I also made a new promotional video for this novella, replacing the old video, but I will not air it until the Kindle Edition is "Live" in the Amazon Kindle Store. Superstitious? You bet I am because I know the real truth about superstition. Did I make copies? You bet I did. I have Kindle and paperback backup copies coming outta my ears.

Right now I'm in the process of doing what no writer should ever, ever have to do. I'm doing the sixth "read/edit" of the entire manuscript. Poor Appalachian hick writers like me do all our own work and wear all the publishing hats we have to in order to get the job done. The writer hat is the only one that really fits me but I wear them all. No one else is going to do it for me.

I plan to publish this ninth book in paperback before the end of this month (January 2013) if everything goes right. Then I'll publish the Kindle Edition, which is a digital manuscript of the exact same text, formatted for the Kindle reader and the Kindle apps for Android, Blackberry, iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, Mac, PC and Windows Phone. And anything else Amazon comes up with for the mobile market.

Wish me luck. I'll need it. I don't think my head can take any more keyboard abuse. Thanks for your time.

Shocking Home Office Party!

Home For The Holidays

From All of Us To All of You

My Favorite Scrooge

We Finally Arrived!

The latest paperback edition of "The Four Blogger of the Apocalypse" has finally arrived at Amazon.com. This new 2012 version has 98 more pages for a total of 276 pages. Enjoy the text posts of bloggers Fred Fortune, Jonco Bugos, Little Green Man and Baby Boomer Boy as they comment, criticize, lampoon and tell it their way in the four blogs this book is all about: Fred Fortune, Jonco Bugos, Little Green Man from Mars and Random Retro Reviews of the 20th Century. This new edition is also available in Amazon's Kindle Store for only $2.99, the same low price as the previous edition. Who says you can't teach an old "indie" dawg new tricks?

Bob Moon's Happy News: Happy Thanksgiving!

Today The Big Apple is "The Big Happy"!

Hi. My name is Michael Casher and I'm a blog-a-holic.

Hi. My name is Michael Casher and I'm a blog-a-holic. I'm not sure if admitting that is the first step toward a recovery of some kind or just a proud proclamation of some sort. It doesn't matter. I don't blog (now it's a verb) because everybody's doing it. In fact, I'm the kind of person who avoids fads on principle so it's not that. And I don't blog to make money because I never made a dime blogging and don't expect to. So, it's not that, either.

If I made money blogging it'd just be a matter of time before some hospital or medical group billed me for all of it so I'd rather not tempt that kind of negative karma, thank you. And I don't really blog for fun because writing a blog and adding images and links and maintaining sidebars and footers and keeping them active and current and interesting is more of a pain in the ass than anything else. So it's not that.

OK, get ready for the real reason because if there ever was an admission that I hope is the first step toward recovery this is it. I blog for therapy. There, I said it. But, every now and then, I have some fun and sometimes I even have a ball blogging and, you guessed it, Think-A-Holic Lounge is my favorite blog to write. I just gave it a face lift this week and now it looks all spacey and exotic. My favorite blogs to write used to be Fred Fortune, Little Green Man from Mars and Think-A-Holic Lounge but the other two (along with Jonco Bugos and Random Retro Reviews of the 20th Century) got turned into a book called "The Four Bloggers of the Apocalypse" so I basically retired them but keep them "alive" with occasional new image posts or videos.

And you know what? Blogging for therapy is a lot better than running naked through the back yard and screaming, "Why me? Why me?"

Powerful Men Public Service Announcement

Powerful Men Public Service Announcement

One Of My Favorite Popeye Cartoons

The first time I saw this cartoon was on a cathode-ray-tube, black-and-white TV set when I was only four or five years old. It was probably a Sylvania or a Zenith or maybe a Philco. Come to think of it, the TV was probably an Admiral floor model. That would have been somewhere around 1955 or 1956. Back then, I thought this cartoon was really funny but also a little bit scary. One of my favorite things about Popeye cartoons was the way he muttered to himself all the time and his funny, flip remarks to others in the cartoons. Thanks to YouTube and YouTube users, Popeye can be more than just a pleasant memory for all of us.

Hats Off to YouTube for Patriotic Election Day Home Page

A Message From Ellis Wanderly

My First 11:11 Experience

I'm writing this blog post today to be on record, first and foremost, about something which I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever but, nevertheless, something resembling paranormal activity and the resulting host of social phenomena that have been sweeping a lot of people off their feet for quite some time now. And now it's finally reached me. I don't know all the details about the 11:11 Phenomenon and I'm not researching it beyond a cursory Google Search for some background. Why am I so nonchalant about this? Because I just don't give a damn anymore.

I'm tired of this smoke-and-mirrors world and its fascination with hooded ascetics, robed charlatans and aging baby-boomer relics pretending to be spiritual guides to a higher realm of existence and the corresponding cloak-and-dagger element dedicated to guarding the imprisoned truth so it never gets out. This kind of pseudo-spiritual nonsense with its "cosmic doubletalk" and phony psychobabble is only masking what truly lies beneath, which is the truth about science and mathematics and their whimsical use as tools by invisible beings who violate the natural order of things just to bewitch and beguile hapless Homo sapiens who are always looking for something or someone to take charge of their lives. Instead of taking their own lives in their own hands and making the best of it.

One thing you folks will always get from me is honesty. Pure and simple. Last night I was online, placing an advertisement for the new edition of The Four Bloggers of The Apocalypse on one of the sidebars of one of my ten blogs here at Blogger when the lights in my writing room began to flicker, off and on, on and off. My computer screen dimmed and then brightened again, several times. The three green lights on my modem went out and the red one came on. I'd lost my Internet connection. The lights upstairs kept flickering, almost like Morse Code. Hurricane Sandy was still two days away from us, so it wasn't that. A misty rain fell outside and the air was still.

I rushed downstairs and asked my mother (who was watching TV) if the lights had flickered downstairs as well and she confirmed that they had. The TV set was still on but the picture was just snow (white noise). I walked into the den where I have a digital clock on the bar with no battery backup in it. Whenever there is the slightest power interruption, this clock begins blinking 12:00. But, it wasn't blinking and the lights were still flickering all over the house, but not outside, not anywhere in town that I could see. The clock on the bar said a steady 11:11. The current real time for U.S. Eastern Daylight Saving Time (we set our clocks back in Pennsylvania to Standard Time at midnight on Sunday November 4th this year). That's right, 11:11 was the correct time on all the other clocks in the house and on our wristwatches.

When the lights stopped flickering in our house and the TV came back on, the bar clock said 11:12 and this, folks, is a very disturbing but very true story. And, no, I don't like it. I don't like it one damn bit. But what are you going to do? Just like everyone else, I'll keep living my life like always and continue writing and being the primary, at-home caregiver for my 81-year-old mother. And I'll keep trying to become a better person each and every day. I don't need "spirit guides" to tell me that. Living and evolving is all that's required of any of us. Living our lives as best we can, each and every day, while looking forward to tomorrow.

Post updated 5-25-14: Disturbing "otherworldly" phenomena is so prevalent in my life that I often ignore it and put it "on my back burner for later". The following is no exception, except that I actually forgot to blog about it. Why? I suppose it's because I no longer give a shit. I'm more impressed by a passing sun shower. Anyway, here goes. On Veteran's Day, November 11, 2013, I walked outside to look at the sky. I had a feeling that the dark-souled powers-that-be just might pull another 11:11 stunt with me, knowing I would kill them outright if I got the chance. I'm not kidding, either, and they damn well know it. I wasn't expecting an 11:11 blinking clock stunt again or another staccato light show in the house and it's a good thing they didn't try it because NOTHING they do to me is FREE. There will be a payback and it will be fatal FOR THEM, a "second-death fatality", no less.

So, around 6:00 PM or so I looked up at the twilight sky from the entrance to our patio and saw an orange ball ascending from the treetops northeast of me, from where I figured State Game Lands 101 would be, about three miles East North East of my house. I knew it wasn't a plane or a star or a satellite, based on my own late 1960's and early 1970's UFO sightings. It "rose" straight up and then flew toward me, making an angled, directional change of course that no human aircraft could make, not even a helicopter, because there was no sound whatsoever. It split into "two round orange balls" at the point where I figured it would be about halfway between the "10 Acres" area of State Game Land 101 and my house. Then it slowly flew above me at what might have been a thousand feet altitude and on an "ENE to WSW tack". And it made no sound whatsoever, at least none that I could hear.

There was the hint of a dark body to it but I couldn't make out its true shape. No airplane at that altitude could fly so slowly and I've never seen light patterns like that. The two orange ball lights appeared to be at least a hundred yards apart and were situated at the nose, but beneath what appeared to be a dark circular "saucer". Somewhat below those orange balls and at what appeared to be about three hundred yards behind the dark, semi-amorphous shape were two lights that did not blink. A green "starboard" light and a red "port" light, both of them about a fourth the size of the front orange lights, which only glowed. They did not shine. And, the red port and green starboard lights, which ought to have been blinking, were on all the time. What did I do? I gave them the finger, said "Fuck You" to them, told them I wan't afraid of them and then went inside. I had supper to prepare and THAT was the most important thing that evening. NOT playing hide-and-seek with high-tech slime who deserve to be exterminated. And THIS, people, is a true story. No shit.

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Faster-Than-Sound Felix Visits UFO Capital

AussieNaut Felix Baumgartner drops in on Roswell, NM

from 24 miles up. "Watch that first step, Felix. It's a Lulu."

Fairy Tales and Folklore in the Bluegrass State

Pinocchio and The Monster Grendel

prepare to swap stories in Kentucky