Sherry isn't Fine

My search for a literary agent continues and as I surf the net for the one who thinks he/she is right for me, I keep running into the URLs for sites set up by someone who calls herself Sherry Fine. These websites are designed to relieve unsuspecting would-be authors of $60 to $90.

The most recent find is http://agentliterary.info/ , a page that Google sends you to if you conduct a search on "agent literary." Sherry's no dummy. She knows where to find desperate and innocent marks for her game of bait and switch.

Three of the five sites you will find when you click on this offering are poorly disguised clones of each other. Click on "Literary Agency Seeks Writers" and your browser will take you to www.wlwritersagency.com. Click on "Screenplay Literary Agency Seeks Talent," and you will end up at www.wlscreenplayagency.com. "New Literary Agency -- Childrens Books" will take you to www.WLChildrensAgency.com.

I wonder if Sherry is fooling enough writers to make her scam worthwhile? If anyone has been a victim of Ms. Fine's unethical enterprise and has a story to tell, I hope you will share it with us on our forum. In the meantime, if WL LIterary Agency, WL Literary Agency and Marketing Companym WL Childrens Agency or any similar sounding venture catches your eye, reboot your computer to get the cooties out of it and keep on looking for a legitimate literary agent.

17 Months and Counting

With the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre still more than 17 months away, the events of November 18, 1978, in that American enclave in Guyana, still conjure up references even today. It only takes a trip through Googleland to find citations referring to the mass murder/suicide three decades ago.

An Ontario Canada punk/thrash band, whose members no doubt weren't even born yet at the time of the massacre, has named its latest album for it. "Radar Hate drink the Kool-Aid and record Jonestown" shout out the headlines at Canada's ChartAttack.com website.

Of course, the alternative rock band Brian Jonestown Massacre has been around for nearly two decades. It has kept the name Jonestown alive as much as any other entity.

Documentarian Stanley Nelson's Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People's Temple, debuted on PBS in April and is slated to make the rounds in the country's art cinemas during the time leading up to the 30th anniversary of the massacre.

Another bizarre indication that Jim Jones, the Peoples Temple and Jonestown are as popular as ever are the "Jim Jones" ringtones for sale on the Internet. Why anyone would want a cell phone that plays the last words of a cult leader urging his members to kill themselves is beyond me.

Then there is Fox News's Bill O'Reilly. This parody of a journalist not only uses "Kool-Aid drinker," as a term for people he disagrees with, whenever he says it, the cute little Kool-Aid icon comes on the screen. I can't imagine why Kraft Foods allows him to get away with this trademark infringment, especially when this disparaging of the beverage is not at all accurate. The actual powder used to create the potion that the residents of Jonestown partook of was Flav-Or-Ade, a product made in the United Kingdom.

I suppose we may as well get used to more tasteless marketing of Jim Jones and Jonestown memorabilia the closer we get to the 30th anniversary. Already on this blog we have warned readers about fake Jim Jones trinkets being touted on e-bay.

The worst that will happen in these coming days will be the misrepresentation of what really happened in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. One inaccurate reporter at the Chico (CA) Enterprise Record, wrote an article comparing the event to the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who set themselves afire to protest an unjust war. That comparison would have been valid had Jones self-immolated himself and not forced his followers to kill their offspring and themselves.

Jones was just another mass murderer who managed to kill, what at the time was the largest number of victims of a mass murder. In 2000, his 914 deaths were surpassed by a cult leader who managed to kill 1500 of his followers. Let's hope there is not some other warped cultist waiting to break that record.

Charles Huff -- A Legend in His Own Mind

Many conspiracy theories abound about the Jonestown Massacre. Some of them seem to have a basis in fact, like the discrepancy in body count that was due to the infants and children being placed in a mildly concave area and then layers of older children and adults laying over them. If you were not there, this seems like an unbelievable story.

But many conspiracies have been fueled by the statements made in a letter by a man named Charles Huff who purports to have been one of seven Green Beret troopers who were the first Americans to arrive in Jonestown after the massacre. I know that claim to be false because I was the third American soldier of the task force in Jonestown. My commander and brigade surgeon were the first two, but they didn’t stay any appreciable amount of time.

Huff’s story was printed in the Church of Scientology International’s Freedom Magazine in 1995. The cult, in an attempt to seem more mainstream, had taken over the Cult Awareness Network, whose newsletter first published Huff’s sensational lies.

Mr. Huff’s excerpted letter follows.

“I was assigned with the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces Panama. On November 18, 1978, we were alerted by the State Department to “rescue” American citizens in Guyana.

All the information we knew was that a U.S. Representative Leo Ryan and his staff were killed or wounded and American lives were in danger. Within five hours of the request of the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, and the State Department we were “on site” in Jonestown.

This claim is patently ridiculous. The State Department was not even aware of the massacre until late Saturday evening. Unless Huff and his team were sitting in a hotel at Timheri International Airport, they could not have flown to Jonestown and arrive on November 18. The task force’s helicopters were not ready to fly until Monday, November 20. So right from the beginning of his letter, Huff, whose bona fides as a Green Beret have yet to be confirmed, is a liar.

For the next 30 days we stayed to return the compound back to the Guyanese government. When we arrived at Jonestown, we were met by the local Guyana Defense Force (six local policemen).

This is Lie #2. The GDF did not arrive in Jonestown until the morning of the 19^th and there were more than a half dozen troopers in the security force. I met them and rode in a helicopter with some of them.

We found one elderly woman who had slept through the murders.

The elderly women, Hyacinth Thrush, was discovered Sunday morning, 19 November, by GDF troopers who found her wandering in shock through the enclave.

Sixteen American personnel committed suicide upon their return to Panama and other places. Three were murdered. One year later, those of us still alive were recalled from the Nicaragua Civil War to hear a CIA briefing on all the events which led up to Jonestown. As a veteran of Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the invasion of Panama, the Persian Gulf and Somalia, I have never been more affected than the Jonestown murders.”

I was stationed in Panama for another two years. There were no American personnel that I knew of who committed suicide. Some became alcoholics, but I knew of no one who died at their own hand or anyone else’s. As for this fantasy CIA briefing about events leading up to the massacre a year before, that doesn’t even sound reasonable. Why would soldiers be recalled from their duties in a combat zone to receive a briefing about something that happened a year earlier?

Another Nice Rejection

I received another nice rejection today. This agent had my query and book proposal for more than a week, so she actually had plenty of time to review the material. Her reply was upbeat and most considerate and gave me the impression it was not a form letter. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Brailey,

Thank you for your query, but I’m afraid I’ve decided to pass on your project. Since you will want to find an agent with complete enthusiasm for your work, unfortunately I am not the right person to represent you.

You should know that my decision is based on my workload and the type of material I'm currently representing. It is not in any way a reflection on the quality of your work, and I encourage you to continue to seek representation.

Thanks again for the opportunity to consider your project.

Best wishes,

It's rejections like that that give a writer the motivation to keep on contacting agents.

Reunion?

I went to the Military.com URL today, researching the whereabouts of some of the people involved in the Joint Humanitarian Task Force to Guyana. I was researching the veracity of one of the alleged minor figures in the conspiracy controversy that has grown up around the Jonestown Massacre. I will have more on that later in the week.

But while seeking out my former comrades, I came up with the thought of having a reunion of task force members. November 18, 2008, will be on a Saturday and that will make it exactly 30 years to the day of the unprecedented mass murder/suicide. What better way to commemorate this horrific event than with a reunion of men and women who haven't seen each other in three decades?

I envision having it in my adopted hometown -- Indianapolis. After all, this is the city that Jim Jones first preached in and the original home of many of the followers that left the Hoosier State for California and eventually Jonestown, Guyana. I have emailed the men from my unit who had email addresses in the Military.com site, but that was only two former soldiers. If anyone knows the whereabouts of MAJ Victor Burgos, the 193rd Infantry Brigade Surgeon in 1978, CPT Richard Skinner, the commander of the 601st Medical Company at the time and SP$ Randy Fielder, SP4 Clifford Yoder, and SP6 Sam Bernal, I would appreciate it. I already know how to contact the other two members of our medical team -- SP4 Eric Vega and SP4 Mike Sanborn.

Any other members of the task force, no matter what branch of service, are invited to join us from November 17 thru 19, 2008, as we gather in Indianapolis to keep alive the awful experiences we shared so long ago. Perhaps then we can alert those who were not born then that "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Email me at JeffBrailey@military.com or by calling (317) 627-0359 and leaving a detailed message of how to contact you, if you want to be part of this historic reunion.

Talking to the Dead

By Jeff Brailey

A frozen rain and snow mix covered the ground as I left the house. For a moment, I toyed with the idea of blowing off the 140-mile road trip to Florence, Kentucky. I could think of a dozen reasons to jump back into bed and only one reason to brave the winter weather – curiosity.

I opened the car door, adjusted the seat and turned the ignition. Suddenly the distinctive voice of Gordon Lightfoot flowed from my radio speakers. “If you could read my mind love, what a tale my thoughts could tell, just like an old time movie, ‘bout a ghost from a wishing well…”

The hair on the nape of my neck stood up and that song cinched it. Even a blizzard couldn’t keep me from receiving my first psychic reading.

About four weeks earlier I emailed an Indianapolis psychic requesting an interview for an article I was thinking of writing. It took her two weeks to reply and when she did it was to ask questions about the nature of the proposed article.

I wrote back that with renewed interest in psychic phenomenon, evidenced by the Court TV show Psychic Detective and the new hit NBC series, Medium, I thought readers might be interested in her work.

Within a few days the psychic sent me a rather terse email stating she was not seeking media attention at this time. A couple of days later came the invitation to the reading Gordon Lightfoot convinced me to attend.

My Indianapolis psychic and a Kentucky counterpart were holding a reading for around six or eight people in Kentucky and since I had expressed interest in their work, I was invited to receive a free reading. Because the two women have no desire whatsoever for media attention, I’ll call them Beverly from Indy and Jan from Kentucky.

I arrived in Florence about an hour and a half before the scheduled group reading. I stopped in a strip mall parking lot and pulled out the email directions and phone number Jan had sent me. Large snowflakes fell as I dialed.

A vibrant cheery “Hello” filled my ear.

“Is this Jan?” I inquired.

“Yes Jeff, it’s me.”

I didn’t ask how she knew it was me. I told the friendly psychic I arrived a bit early and asked if she would mind if I came over. She said, “I wish you would.”

I arrived at Jan’s comfortable condo about five minutes later, meeting her husband who introduced me to her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Jan said shaking my hand, “Your father has been here all morning.”

“My father!” I said shocked. “Are you sure?”

“Well, he says he’s your father, Jan laughed.

When Jan is scheduled to do readings, she prays about each individual she will read that day. When she prayed my name she said my father immediately came through. She described him as being tall, very energetic and a fast talker. I concurred with her description.

We agreed to wait for Beverly to arrive from Indianapolis before starting the reading. I sat down and gathered my thoughts.

My father was actually the last person I thought would contact me from the Great Beyond. He passed away 41 years before. We were not particularly close. His sudden death had a profoundly negative affect on the relationship between my younger brother and me.

We chatted for a while and when Beverly arrived, introductions were performed and Jan told her about my pushy father. Beverly went to freshen up as other guests arrived for the reading.

Since my father had been waiting the longest, mine was the first reading. What I heard from Jan and Beverly caused a dam in my brain to burst and my emotions came out as forcefully as a flash flood. They revealed information no one but my family members are aware of.

For example, Beverly said, “It was his heart and it happened at home very suddenly and you were not there.”

“Your father loves you, although he didn’t always tell you, he’s telling you now,” she continued.
Jan chimed in, “He’s talking so fast. Slow down, we’ll be here, we aren’t going anywhere.” Then to me, “You have two fathers or another man you consider your father.”

“Yes, my step dad” I replied.

“He and your dad were friends before he crossed over,” she accurately reported. I had known Jerry since I was a little kid. He married my mom four years after my father passed away.

“They are together,” both psychics said with laughs, “They were pranksters in life and are a couple of pranksters there too.”

That was true. Dad was one of the world’s great practical jokers and when he got together with his friends, especially Jerry, it was usually pandemonium.

I thought nothing could shock me anymore but what came out of Jan’s mouth next floored me. “Tell your mother they are together and they all will be together when she crosses over, just as they will be together in death.”

I never told anyone about the gravesite where my father and step father are interred. A stately granite stone sits in the middle of the plot. My father is buried on the front side and Jerry is on the back side. Mom will share the plot with them when she passes.

There were quite a few more revelations that validated that my father contacted me from beyond the grave. An uncle, a nephew and a cousin came through. Jan and Beverly told me things I thought no one in Indiana or Kentucky could know about my family and me.

The reading continued with each person in attendance affirming the presence of a loved one who had crossed over. Some of their revelations were as shocking to them as mine were to me.

I have began reevaluating my beliefs about eternity and life after death. My experience was not spooky or scary. In fact, it was reassuring and comforting.