According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by paraskavedekatriaphobia… the fear of today’s date - Friday the 13th.
The superstition is said to have originated in Norse mythology after Frigga, the goddess of love and fertility was banished to a mountaintop and labeled a witch when the Norse converted to Christianity.
It was said that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil – a gathering of thirteen – and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week.
Well, tonight there are five of us – not thirteen – a few of them are definitively witches and maybe one or two warlocks as well. And our aim is most emphatically benign – we want to entertain you and maybe enlighten a bit, too.
Featured on tonight’s show:
- Can writing machines ever replace flesh and blood authors? It’s not so crazy as it seems- and some publishers would certainly welcome it.
- Do you Twitter? Should you Twitter? We cut through all the hype and tell authors whether the latest and greatest invention in social media is a miss or a must for promoting your book.
- And QueryFail – do you know what it is? And what can you learn from it?
All the above plus The Commissioning Meeting, which continues to plunder Project Guttenberg for that elusive bestseller.
Tonight’s Old School panel is: Donna Ballman, Dave Batram, Eve Harvey and Richard Howse.
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Photo by ….Tim
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