He was sitting behind the coffee-maker one morning, and there he stayed during the day, but at night he climbed the walls and ate whatever he pleased.

One day we drove to the airport and when I opened the trunk of the car, there he was, all big-eyed and smiley faced. He thought he was coming with us and he hopped on my luggage.

I transfered him from the hot trunk of the car to a nearby oak tree. What else was I to do? We were on our way out of town. When we returned, five days later, I climbed the oak tree with a flashlight looking for him. It was late and I attracted a parkinglot cop who asked what I was doing.

He had a bigger flashlight and I convinced him to beam around the tree for a while. No luck. Our little friend was gone. We drove home, empty-hearted.

When we arrived home, we opened the trunk, and there sitting on my luggage was our friend, big-eyed and smiley-wily. It was night of course and he hopped on my shoulder and I put him in his safe little spot behind the coffee maker.

He was happy to be home. Late that night I heard him bouncing off the walls and Lorry said, "Good little tree frog." Frog by Ramon Shiloh

I once wrote a book about cattle mutilations in northern New Mexico. This was in 1979-1980. I traveled all over New Mexico interviewing ranchers, cattlemen, Pueblo Indians, Navajos, Hispanic farmers, scientists, authors, FBI and tribal police. The book came out to good reviews and I did some interviews. Honestly, I told the interviewers, "I never saw a UFO myself, I just interviewed people who saw them." No one seemed to care, everyome liked the book. Then one day I got a long letter from a disturbed man who said that my UFO book had killed his mother. She died in a hospital and the book was clutched in her hands. Apparently she was grimacing when she died. I assumed -- like any paranoid author -- that she died of boredom while reading my shaky assumptions on the subject of ufology. I stopped writing for two years after this. Time passed and I went on to write one more UFO book and it's still in print: Stargazer. Each year I get strange letters and emails about Stargazer. I say strange but what I mean is, letters of complete innocence -- "Your book reminded me of starwalks I used to take with my dad . . ." And haunting hopefulness -- "Stargazer is the only book I've read which connects me to my Native American roots in the Alaska wilderness." Once I got a letter from a prisoner who read the novel in his cell and said when he got out of jail, he was coming to see me. He really did. A sweet guy. What were you in for? I asked him. "I tried to set off a bomb and failed," he said. Turns out the reason he wanted to meet me was because he wanted to write his own version of Stargazer. Then I got a letter from a nursing student at Kent State in Ohio who said, "Would you please hurry up and write the sequel. You promised, and I've waited almost thirty years." Well, if there is such a thing as a sequel to Stargazer it should begin, I think, with a real UFO sighting, and here it is, folks, the real thing, nothing 'novel' about it.


http://www.staythirstymedia.com/201008- ... usman.html

I first heard about fireballs falling out of the sky when I was a student at Highlands University in Las Vegas, New Mexico back in the 60s. When fireballs rained down upon a house in a village, neighbors would surround it. They'd form a circle around the house holding lanterns until the fireballs, and often stones, stopped falling from the night sky.

At our writing workshop last week in Las Vegas, Joseph Baca contributed his own version of fireballs. With his kind permission, I repeat what he wrote:

"Darkness down this narrow alley, then, quite suddenly, three big round fireballs appeared to my left. They were about the same size as medicine balls and they hovered an inch off the ground among the weeds that did not catch fire. I froze, watching them. The red and yellow light pulsating only five feet away from where I stood.

"I was not dreaming. I was fully awake. I was afraid -- and yet I hesitated. I wanted to know what they were. Should I try to touch them? I wanted to communicate with them but the voices of the past said they were witches. This was what I was led to believe anyway. I ran home with a cold chill in my spine.

"Next day I told my mother what I had seen and she in turn told my father who said -- 'It's El Diablo . . . Joseph hasn't gone to church lately.' But I thought, neither has he. How come the fireballs didn't appear to him?

Today, as a grown man, I find myself going back to that strange night so long ago and wondering if I will ever see again the fireballs that old ones said were witches. Sometimes, late at night, I wonder about that."

Joseph, I too am wondering. Just the other night in Sapello Canyon we saw a fireball descend from the sky and hover in front of us. More on that later . . .

I think time seems to be moving fast but it's really going slow.

In the mid-nineties a computer-meister friend of ours said, "No one's ever going to make any money selling stuff on the internet." I told him I was posting all of my books on my website.

He said, "Good advertizing but it still won't sell the books." Seems like minutes ago when he said those unwise words. Books and books, editions and editions later the books are still moving along in their own stream of time, mostly propelled by the internet.

I remember saying to my friend, "I suppose you're going to tell me that Amazon.com isn't selling any books." His answer -- "Not that many cause they're still not making a profit." I didn't like to hear such discouragement because I was just setting up my first website. I was hopeful that it might help me make a little living.

It did - pre-google, pre-Amazon-making-a-profit. Publishers still had huge publicity departments then and editors took you out to lunch and if you did any promotion for your book there was a limo to pick you up. Those were the days . . . seems like seconds ago to me.

Is that what the brown lizard thinks on my doorstep? Moments ago, I was a great big, scary dinosaur. Now look at me!

Yeah, they do. Sometimes I'm not sure though -- it could be somebody else.

I once had a conversation with Geronimo in Dunkin Donuts. Not the real Geronimo but one who looked like him. Iron Eyes Cody, or somebody who looked just like him, showed up at a reading I gave at Boca Raton. He said to me, "I'm here to draw them in; you sell the books." What a sweetheart. When I went to thank him after the event, he was gone.

Couple years ago on the streets of Manhattan, well not too far from Bleeker and the offices of my agent, I spotted a funny looking little guy with a cellphone and he was saying in a loud New Yawk voice -- "Yeah, I sawr it, but whatdaya want me to do about it?" I said to my wife Lorry, "That guy looks just like Danny DeVito." She said, "That's because he IS Danny DeVito."

Jackie Chan winked at me once in the Atlanta Airport but that was because I picked him out of a sea of faces, a wave of people coming at me. I wanted to throw him a kick but I'm very glad I didn't.

Yesterday we were in Washington DC and we were having dinner at a lovely Ethiopian restaurant just up from Eads St. when in the door stepped a mild little man with beautiful dark gold skin and a haunted sort of worried hawk-like proud, dignified face and Lorry said to me, "How is it possible?"

I said, "What?" She said, "Look at him. . . isn't it . . ."

I finished it for her -- "Haile Selassie, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah."

With no imagination, you would see the spirit of the beautiful little king in all his glory -- old workclothes. There it was, the crowning moment of the imagination -- truth -- the king who faced Mussolini and had him disgraced. The king, who with dignity and solemnity and bravery faced a modern day army with bows and arrows, slings and rocks. Did he not know it was the 20th Century?

Anyone who doubts Selassie I's courage, get yourself to the corner of Eads and 23rd St and walk a little ways, order dinner, sit down and eat the best food you've ever eaten. The king will come walking in. But he won't see you. You will see him.