PAUL MICHEL

I've been encouraged to engage more with the "virtual world" on behalf of promotion of my new novel: to explore online marketing, publicity and presence. With all the enthusiasm (and comprehension) of a toddler getting a vaccination, I'm shutting my eyes, gritting my teeth and giving it a whirl. Folks of my generation typically take to the cyberwaves with trepidation. Imagine a middle-aged fellow in 1910, say, upon the purchase of his first car. He may love it, he may speed down the road and honk just to frighten the horses, he may take the sharp corners without overturning, he may sport new driving goggles and a natty scarf that trails behind him in the wind, but in his gut he's scared silly, and when the kid down the street (wasn't he in diapers just yesterday?) zips past him in a cloud of dust (on which he chokes, every time) he longs, for a quick but potent instant, for his carriage, now parked in his barn, home to a family of possums. Yes, I know that Bill Gates himself is my age exactly, but I'm willing to wager that there are nights he sneaks off to one of his garages with a six-pack of Rainier and plays Pong by himself on an old black-and-white TV set, and feels, just for a little while, at home. (Thank god I will never know enough to win, or lose, this bet.)

I used to say that you would catch me blogging the day I put a Bluetooth receiver in my ear, shaved my head, donned a utilikilt and got my lip pierced. One down.

To the point: In my nascent efforts to gain some "traction" in the digital universe I have been exploring likely links and avenues for modest self-promotion. I decided to do some Googling on the subject of Warren Shufelt, the eccentric inventor on whom one of "Houdini Pie's" main characters, and indeed the overall story, is based; the fellow who claimed to have discovered a hoard of gold tablets buried under Los Angeles, the legacy of a long-lost tribe of Lizard People. I'd exhausted the information available to me in 2003, but hadn't done much more research since beginning the novel. It seems that the historical story has proliferated a bit--there are references to it in any number of blogs and forums, myth-debunking sites, Twitter pages, etc.; no new information, but it lives on in the binary imagination. All good. But there's a dark side too (Isn't there always?), as I am again made aware of the voluminous ramblings of one David Icke, a British pseudo-philosopher/conspiracy theorist/first-class nut case who for years has advanced the notion that an elite, alien, reptilian brotherhood rules the earth and controls humanity. (And yes, some of his followers have tied this dementia to the story of Mr. Shufelt and the downtown L.A. dig...)

I'd run into Icke's rants and ravings before, but had assiduously forgotten his name and many of the details about him. But gee gosh darn it wouldn'tcha know, start researching "Lizard People" and he's inescapable. It's not just harmless fantasy; he and his depressingly large number of believers wrap their codswallow in a prickly blanket of anti-Semitic chest-pounding, New-World-Order hallucinating, Holocaust denying and blah, blah, blah--the usually right-of-Genghis Kahn talk-radio crapola,with a dash of a bad acid trip, three hits of stale peyote and your one-eyed neighbor's stinky home brew. But Icke is out there, beaver-busy on the speaking circuit, popping up on the web, and I just know with sickening certainty that our paths will cross in cyberspace--or not so much ours, but "Houdini Pie's" and his. So just for the record: these are not your Lizard People, Mr. Icke. Nor the World Bank's, nor Margartet Thatcher's, nor the frigging Babylonia Brotherhood's. Nor are they mine, per se . If you want to know about them and where they come from, why, you'll just have to buy the book.