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New story: THE WITCHES OF HARMONY

I am drawn to foreign locations. Some of you know that I’m an avid, lifelong student of foreign languages.

At the same time, travel involves many unknowns. There is a lot that can go wrong… especially if you encounter supernatural entities at your destination.

That’s the idea behind my Terrifying Travels series.

The most recent addition to the series is THE WITCHES OF HARMONY, which involves restless 17th-century spirits in the fictional Greater Boston town of Harmony, Massachusetts. Check it out on Amazon.

Amazon book description:

Some business trips are better left unbooked.

Bill Preston has spent years traveling the country for his job, working trade shows in convention centers from one coast to the other. So when he’s assigned to an industrial expo in Harmony, Massachusetts, he expects another routine week on the road.

Then a coworker warns him about Harmony.

He won’t say exactly what happened there. Only that he never wants to go back.

Bill soon discovers that Harmony is a picture-perfect New England town with a history no one wants to discuss. There are whispered stories about witches who escaped the Salem trials—only to meet a more terrible fate in Harmony.

There are warnings not to go outside after dark.

And there are things in Harmony that only certain people can see.

Bill considers himself a rational man. He doesn’t believe in witches, ghosts, or ancient curses.

But something in Harmony has noticed him.

And before this business trip is over, Bill may discover that some places never escape their past.

The Witches of Harmony is a supernatural horror tale of haunted history, business travel, and a New England town with a secret it has been keeping for more than three hundred years.

Moral panic over Pattaya, and an innovative madam of World War II Honolulu

Betty Jean O’Hara (1913-1973) was a famed lady of the night and madam in Honolulu, Hawaii’s Hotel Street red-light district during World War II. O’Hara came up with a novel solution to cope with the demand of randy US sailors during the conflict.

O’Hara set up a Hotel Street brothel that combined sexual services with the assembly-line efficiency of a Ford plant. Each of O’Hara’s employees rotated between a series of three rooms. In one room a man would be undressing, in another a fellow would be engaging in an act of carnal knowledge. In a third room, a satiated sailor would be getting dressed. The Hotel Street red-light district of Honolulu lasted throughout most of World War II.

I never served in the military, but I have met many men who have. In the 1980s I met a man a few years older than me who was stationed in South Korea with the US Army in the late 1970s. He told me stories of “Miss Oh”, a local courtesan in Daegu, South Korea. Based on the gleam in his eye when he reminisced, Miss Oh must have been a proverbial firecracker.

One of my high school acquaintances was in the US Marine Corps during the 1980s. (I’ll call him Mitch.) Mitch also served in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

Many years later, I ran into Mitch at a reunion and he told me some war stories.

While relating his experiences abroad, Mitch also mentioned a handful of experiences with professional women—mostly in the Philippines, where large numbers of US service personnel were stationed through about 1992.

I was somewhat surprised. Mitch had been the archetypical ladies’ man in high school: a handsome, charming, multi-sport athlete. Not the kind of guy one associates with sex workers.

Perhaps sensing my surprise at his revelation, Mitch explained: “You’re a young guy in a foreign country, working in a mostly male organization (the Marine Corps). There aren’t many opportunities for conventional dating and relationships.”

Things are different, though, in this enlightened 21st century. The USS Abraham Lincoln has just docked in Thailand. The aircraft carrier and its crew participated in US military operations against Iran, and stayed at sea for more than 260 days—almost nine months.

And what are people worried about? Some of the male members of the crew may visit prostitutes in Pattaya, Thailand, a city famed for its red-light district. Continue reading “Moral panic over Pattaya, and an innovative madam of World War II Honolulu”

“The Door-to-Door Man”: a short story set in the age of “stranger danger”

It’s an ordinary spring afternoon in suburban Cincinnati, 1980.

Eighteen-year-old Michelle Blevins is home with her younger brother when a stranger rings the doorbell.

The stranger is wearing a blazer, tie, and aviator sunglasses. He says he represents a local law firm. He says Michelle’s parents are in trouble.

And he really wants to come inside.

That’s the setup for “The Door-to-Door Man,” my latest original short story for YouTube.

Those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s will remember that this was the era of “stranger danger.”

In some ways, the world was considerably less connected than it is today. There were no cell phones, doorbell cameras, GPS trackers, or Internet searches. If a stranger appeared at your front door, you couldn’t pull out your phone and immediately find out who he was.

At the same time, people were becoming increasingly aware that the world wasn’t necessarily as safe as they had once imagined.

Serial killers, violent crime, and mysterious disappearances regularly made the news. Parents warned their children about strangers. And yet it was still perfectly normal for unfamiliar people—salesmen, repairmen, deliverymen, religious solicitors, and others—to simply walk up to your house and ring the doorbell.

That combination provides the backdrop for “The Door-to-Door Man.”

I’ve been experimenting with writing very short fiction specifically for YouTube: complete stories that can be read or listened to in a single sitting, accompanied by atmospheric visuals.

“The Door-to-Door Man” is one of these stories. It’s a tale of suspense rather than supernatural horror. There are no ghosts, monsters, or paranormal forces here. Just an ordinary young woman, an ordinary suburban house—and a stranger at the door who may not be what he claims to be.

You can watch and listen to the complete story in the video accompanying this post.

If you enjoy “The Door-to-Door Man”…

You might also want to check out my DEADLY BYWAYS series.

Deadly Byways consists of six novels set in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Like “The Door-to-Door Man,” these stories explore the darker side of an era that many of us remember with nostalgia—but which had plenty of dangers and shadows of its own.

The books are available on Amazon and can also be read through Kindle Unlimited.

If you enjoy suspense stories about ordinary people confronting extraordinary dangers—especially stories set against the backdrop of America several decades ago—DEADLY BYWAYS may be for you.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy “The Door-to-Door Man.”

And remember: be careful who you open your front door to.

-ET

Rick Springfield, at almost my dad’s age, is in better shape than me

Rick Springfield is touring this summer, apparently. That alone is newsworthy, given his age. But the 77-year-old performer is also making headlines because of his physique.

There can be no hedging or prevarication here. This guy is in amazing shape for 77. He probably has good genes. But he also works at maintaining this degree of fitness. (I’ve seen some videos about his fitness routines on YouTube, and they’re definitely worth watching.)

From a personal perspective: I’m 58, and Springfield is three years younger than my dad. I can remember the girls in my junior high class, back in 1981, having crushes on him.

It’s all about maintaining good habits as you age.

One more personal note: I might be able to outrun Rick Springfield, but I definitely don’t have his degree of leanness. Now excuse me, while I head to the gym for an extra workout.

-ET

Who should get the half-staff flag treatment when they die?

Ken Adams, the mayor of Olive Branch, Mississippi, has balked at lowering the flag in honor of the late Dolly Parton—who passed away last Tuesday.

Adams acknowledged Dolly Parton’s universal appeal and good works in a social media post, while also challenging the appropriateness of lowering the flag in her honor.

According to Adams, “It should be reserved for our military heroes, fallen first responders, presidents and other major national leaders, or events that have had a tremendous impact on our country. If we lower the flag every time a well-known or beloved person passes away, I believe we eventually lessen the meaning of the gesture.”

Most recently, President Trump ordered the flag to be flown at half-staff for Senator Lindsey Graham, who died of natural causes in July. (Well, there are some conspiracy chasers who think the Russian FSB was involved, but we’ll table that discussion for the moment.)

And then there was the lowering of the flag for the assassinated Charlie Kirk last year. Kirk was a noteworthy but controversial celebrity/activist who divided public opinion.

On the other hand, no presidential order was given to lower the flag for Jesse Jackson, a civil rights activist and politician who died in February. Continue reading “Who should get the half-staff flag treatment when they die?”

Seth Godin, “the Amazon tax”, and pay-per-click battles to the death

Seth Godin has written an uncharacteristically scathing piece on the Hobbesian state of Amazon advertising. His basic thesis is that Amazon’s reliance on PPC ad revenue has created some perverse incentives.

The company used to focus on delivering the optimal product listings to consumers at the lowest prices. All of this was powered by Amazon’s internal search engine.

This process is known as organic discovery, and it benefited both buyers and sellers.

Organic discovery still exists to a certain extent on Amazon. But now there is something more nefarious and complicated in the mix. Amazon now makes about a billion dollars per week from search ads. PPC (pay-per-click) ads litter every available space on Amazon, including the top of your search results. Because these ads are now so plentiful and prominent on Amazon, anyone who sells there must engage in PPC advertising.

This of course includes new entrants to a particular market, but not only new entrants. Established players must also now invest substantially in defensive advertising on the platform.

Consumers don’t benefit from this excessive ad competition. On the contrary, they end up paying higher prices (because sellers must now recoup high ad costs in product pricing), as well as more limited and shoddier product lines. This is what Seth Godin calls “the Amazon tax”. “Amazon,” declares Godin, “is stealing from the customers they said they were here to serve.” Make of that what you will.

***

I’m an author/publisher. I therefore can’t really comment about how this might affect the electric snow blower market on Amazon. I can, however, say something about its effects on the book market. Continue reading “Seth Godin, “the Amazon tax”, and pay-per-click battles to the death”

Dolly Parton and what celebrity deaths really mean to us

As most of you will be aware, Dolly Parton passed away earlier this week. She was 80 years old.

Dolly Parton, born the same year as both of my parents, was already part of the pop culture landscape by the time I was born. As a result, she is one of those celebrities who has been around for my entire life.

I remember hearing her songs on the radio, of course. I also remember the spate of successful movies that she had in the 1980s: 9 to 5, Steel Magnolias, Rhinestone, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Because of my generational identity—and perhaps because of my gender—I was never a fan of Dolly Parton in the same way that I was a fan of Rush and Sylvester Stallone. That said, I have enjoyed much of her output over the years. I even have at least two favorite Dolly Parton songs: “Jolene” and “Islands in the Stream” (her duet with Kenny Rogers).

At this point in life, I’ve lost too many people whom I actually knew to be profoundly saddened by the death of an octogenarian celebrity whom I never knew. I will admit my selfish inclinations here. Dolly Parton’s death represents a passing of yet one more part of the world in which I grew up, a world which I believe to be in many ways better than the one of the 21st century.

My personal perspective aside, Dolly Parton seems to have been a genuinely good person, and everything that she added to our culture was positive so far as I remember. Her presence will be missed. Dolly Parton, 80. R.I.P.

-ET

The Texas Roadhoax?

As far back as the 1970s, there have been rumors and urban legends about restaurant employees tampering with customers’ food.

I recall one such story from the 1980s, about a steakhouse employee who supposedly urinated on random customers’ steaks. That might just be enough to make even a sane, well-adjusted person go vegan.

One thing I noticed, though—these stories never stood up to scrutiny. How, exactly, did a single employee manage this urinary sabotage in a crowded kitchen environment, with other cooks, managers, and servers coming and going? Did the cook have a name? Well, no, not exactly… he was some dude who worked at X steakhouse. Continue reading “The Texas Roadhoax?”

Can marriage become a bad habit?

One of my childhood friends (we are both 58) recently got married for the third time.

No—before you ask—this is not a case of an older man trading in his same-aged wife for a younger model. All of my friend’s wives have been “age-appropriate”. None of the three were conspicuously attractive, or more conspicuously attractive than the other two. My friend has always been a man of average means and appearance who dated and married at his level.

Many celebrities have made a bad habit out of marriage. Zsa Zsa Gabor was famously married nine times. Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor both married eight times. Nicolas Cage has had five wives—including the late Lisa Marie Presley, who was married four times. (Presley’s father, Elvis, recognized that he was a bad fit for marriage, and married only once. That marriage ended after six years.)

I grew up Roman Catholic in the Midwest, during an era when “traditional family values” were still more than talking points in the culture wars. My parents had an occasionally argumentative—but basically sound—marriage, and I benefitted from that upbringing.

That said, I would argue that marriage is mostly a young person’s game, and that it should only be done once. Back to my friend. Why, exactly, does a man in his fifties, who has already been married twice (and who has two adult children from a previous marriage) need to tie the knot a third time? Marriage can be a wonderful thing; but it can also become a life-disrupting, expensive habit—for men and women alike.

Most of us are good at some things and not so good at others. We can spare both ourselves and others much grief in this world if we learn to recognize the things that we are not good at. A man who has already failed at marriage twice has demonstrated that he is not well-suited to the venture. Something is wrong with his fundamental process. Either he chooses poorly, or he is incapable of the deep, one-on-one interpersonal union that a successful marriage requires.

I wish my friend well, of course, in his latest marital venture. But I can’t help recalling that old saw about the definition of insanity: that it is the insistence on doing the same failed thing over and over again… yet somehow expecting a different result.

-ET

A disappearance in 1987

What if someone you knew in 1987 simply disappeared?

Not just physically.

What if her name vanished from university records? Her coworkers had never heard of her. Her boyfriend insisted she had never existed.

And you were the only person who remembered her?

In the summer of 1987, nineteen-year-old Steve Harris meets Mary Wilson while taking a biology class at the University of Cincinnati.

Mary is fascinated by a campus legend involving the deserted upper floors of Crosley Tower. She persuades Steve to investigate with her.

They find something up there.

And the next day, Mary is gone.

But Crosley Tower isn’t merely haunted.

Something inside the building has disturbed the boundary between 1987 and 2026—between one version of reality and another.

And Mary Wilson may not be gone at all.

She may simply be somewhere—or somewhen—else.

THE WOMAN IN CROSLEY TOWER

A supernatural mystery about memory, time, and a building where realities that should never touch begin to overlap.

Available on Amazon and in Kindle Unlimited.

Online book reviews and ratings: take them with a large grain of salt

About a decade ago, I read a review of Mary Miller’s 2014 novel, The Last Days of California, in a print magazine. The reviewer, a book critic whom I knew by name and trusted, highly recommended Miller’s novel.

I was skeptical. The Last Days of California is a teenage girl’s coming-of-age story. I was a middle-aged man. Not long before that, a young woman in my social circle had recommended John Green’s emotional teen novel The Fault in Our Stars. Against my better judgment, I had purchased The Fault in Our Stars and tried to read it. I was unable to finish—not because The Fault in Our Stars was a bad book, but simply because I was the wrong reader for it.

Nevertheless, I ordered The Last Days of California from Amazon. The book promised to be not only a coming-of-age story, but also a story about the dynamics of 21st-century family life with a little bit of the culture wars mixed in. I was intrigued.

I’m glad I took a chance on The Last Days of California. It turned out to be a wonderful story, even though this is the kind of book I rarely read. (My personal reading tastes veer more toward Michael Connelly and Lee Child.)

But the collective readership of Amazon and Goodreads does not agree with me—at least not the ones who are leaving ratings and reviews. At the time of this writing, The Last Days of California has a 3.5 cumulative average on Amazon and a 3.4 cumulative average on Goodreads.

If I had consulted the online peanut gallery, I would have skipped Mary Miller’s book entirely. Fortunately, by 2014 I already knew the truth about mass online review venues like Amazon and Goodreads.

The Last Days of California, by Mary Miller (Amazon product page, 8/25/2026)

In 2012, it was discovered that John Locke, a bestselling indie author famous for his Donovan Creed series, purchased reviews from review farms. He personally compensated some other reviewers.

Black hat practices like that are harder to carry out in 2026. (There was a widespread backlash over the John Locke scandal, and Amazon took some steps to penalize outright review scammers.)

But gray hat practices persist in the publishing industry. Major publishers and imprints retain lists of friendly reader-reviewers, who can always be counted on to give a particular author a 5-star review. Indie authors are not far behind. Most know better than to specifically compensate for reviews, but there are still indie authors who will raffle iPads for their reader-reviewers. That sends a message—and broadcasts certain incentives. Continue reading “Online book reviews and ratings: take them with a large grain of salt”

Don’t Stop for Gas in Zombie Country: a short story

There are still plenty of places in Ohio where you can get off the interstate and, within twenty minutes, find yourself on a narrow country road surrounded by woods, fields, old houses, and small towns.

Those are the places I often have in mind when I write horror.

I’ve always thought that familiar, ordinary settings make some of the best settings for supernatural fiction. An abandoned castle is already creepy. So is a ruined monastery at midnight. The writer doesn’t have to do much work to convince you that something frightening might happen there.

But what about the gas station you’ve passed dozens of times? Or an old country graveyard beside a two-lane road? What about a patch of woods that looks perfectly harmless at four o’clock in the afternoon—but considerably less inviting as the sun begins to go down?

That’s the territory of “Don’t Stop for Gas in Zombie Country,” the short horror story in the video above.

The setup is deliberately simple: an ordinary trip through the Ohio countryside, an inconvenient need for gasoline, and a small rural gas station.

Then things begin to go wrong.

This is also the kind of story I’ve been exploring in my Uncanny Ohio series: macabre tales built around Ohio places, local history, forgotten corners, and the unsettling possibility that the ordinary landscape around us may contain things we don’t quite understand.

The current stories in the series include Involuntary Deeds, Family Secrets, and The Woman in Crosley Tower, and Eleven Miles of Night.

All three are available at Amazon and can also be read through Kindle Unlimited.

But for now, you don’t need a Kindle. Just watch the video above.

And the next time you’re driving through the Ohio countryside late in the day, you might want to keep an eye on the gas gauge.

-ET

The demand side of the porn equation?

Yet another story about a woman who was fired from her day job, after it was discovered that she had a lucrative side hustle as a suburban porn maker.

Heather Boyd, a married, 37-year-old mother of four, made adult content under the pseudonym “Hella Hot Wife.” When her entrepreneurial side hustle came to light, she was fired from her CNA job.

Please note: I am not “outing” Boyd. She has volunteered to appear on an upcoming TLC special entitled “Double Lives of Suburban Wives”. The show will feature interviews with married women who balance ordinary jobs and/or motherhood with autoporning on websites like OnlyFans.

Nor am I here to judge. At least—I’m not here to judge the women who do this.

I do, however, have some genuine questions about the almost exclusively male, demand side of this equation. The “easy money” of OnlyFans has been overhyped in recent years. (The average online adult content creator makes only about $180 per month.) But there is no doubt that some of these women are making huge sums. There is also no doubt that millions of men around the world are tuning in, credit cards in one hand and something else in the other.

This is what I don’t understand. I could understand the demand side, perhaps, if these OnlyFans models were engaged in the world’s oldest profession, providing in-person sexual favors for a fee. But these women are not doing “sex work,” as is so often alleged. What they are doing is better described as “titillation work.”

This is Lucy removing the football just before Charlie Brown can kick the football. It’s a grand tease, men sending digital dollars to women who are hopelessly beyond their reach. Are there really that many desperate, onanistic men in the world? Apparently so.

I would never assert that I am “entitled” to sex with any woman, including the aforementioned Heather Boyd. But if I can’t have it, please don’t wave it in my face. I would gain no satisfaction from having a sexual experience dangled before me on a computer screen—especially for a fee. The male enablers of the OnlyFans boom are sad cases, indeed.

-ET

Shariah law fails Economics 101

One of the nice things about the pre-internet world was that the foolishness of teenagers and young adults was usually restricted to small audiences. But now we have Gen Z social media influencers. Canyon Mimbs is a 22-year-old convert to Islam who wants to tell the world what he knows–or thinks he knows.

Theology is not my bailiwick. Like Elizabeth I, I do not seek to make windows into men’s souls. But economics is another matter.

Young Mr. Mimbs advocates for shariah law in the USA. Well, why not? Half of Gen Z is joining the DSA, if you believe the internet. There are any number of reasons why shariah law would be incompatible with our American system, but in this post, I’ll focus on one: shariah’s prohibition on interest. Continue reading “Shariah law fails Economics 101”

Caveat emptor and toy soldiers in the 1970s

If you were a comics-reading kid in the 1970s, then you likely remember this full-page Lucky Products ad from the period.

100-pc toy soldier set!

Made of durable plastic!

Each with its own base!

And all of this for a mere $1.75 (roughly $9 to $15 in today’s money, depending on the year).

Many young boys, including some of my friends, ordered the toy soldier sets. They were inevitably disappointed by what they received in the mail, five to six weeks later. While there were a hundred toy soldiers, they were so tiny as to require tweezers to move around. A kid could not really play with such things in any meaningful way.

Was Lucky Products engaged in fraud? Not really. But this was what we might have called a sharp practice. The company deliberately excluded any mention of the sizes of the toy soldiers. And they certainly weren’t going to include any scale photographs in their ads.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. Although I enjoyed playing with toy soldiers as a kid and I saw the Lucky Products ad many times, I was never seriously tempted to send away for this set.

My innate skepticism had already set in by an early age. Part of that no doubt was characteristic of my generation. But I have always been an extremely wary buyer. If something sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. I intuitively grasped that even at the age of nine.

-ET

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt

Lindsay Clancy is the Massachusetts woman who killed her three children. In any normal society, this would make her an instant pariah.

But this is Massachusetts we’re talking about. Child killing is all the rage in Massachusetts, where abortion was recently made legal until birth. Even as Lindsay Clancy is on trial, her exoneration has become a “cause” among progressive feminist factions of the Bay State. Hundreds of supporters, overwhelmingly women, recently rallied outside the courthouse in support of Clancy—who strangled her young children to death with exercise bands.

Lindsay Clancy’s mental health at the time of the murders is the crux of the debate—and the trial. Here are the basic arguments for the two sides: Continue reading “Lindsay Clancy’s mental health and the question of guilt”