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Michael L Schmicker's Blog

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May.18.2013
I was up on Google News this AM and found this hot-off-the press story: "Paris Hilton Cries at Cannes." This constitutes news? The booboisie are lucky Mencken is dead.    
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Apr.30.2013
Who should play my heroine Alessandra when Hollywood options my new novel Séance? Salma or Penelope? Who can best capture the passion of a fiery-tempered, erotic, 40-year-old Italian woman who levitates tables and conjures up spirits of the dead in dimly-lit séance rooms all across Europe at the...
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Apr.23.2013
Writers are tough sons-of-bitches. It’s hard enough to write a book. Then you have to wade into this street fight we call the publishing industry and start pitching your project. The tweed jacket crowd is gone, replaced by Darwinian corporate mergers, staff churn, the e-book earthquake, anti-trust...
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Jul.12.2012
The “Mysterious Orient” has fascinated me from childhood. I spent five years in Asia as a journalist, entranced by the sing-song tones of the Thai language and the odd Western Romanization of Chinese characters. I had fun some years ago crafting this short piece for East West Perspectives magazine...
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Dec.09.2011
Santa came early this year. I just received my copy of "Even the Smallest Crab Has Teeth: 50 Years of Amazing Peace Corps Stories". I contributed a tale about my nights spent at the notorious “Mosquito Bar” in Bangkok, trying to write the Great American Novel.  We all do crazy, embarrassing...
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Oct.31.2011
 It’s Halloween night, so we'll share with you this woman's truly scary story: “Five years ago I was being strangled. I won’t go into the painful details, but I nearly died. At the time, I was living 1,400 miles away from my mother, estranged from her, hadn’t contacted her in...
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Oct.24.2011
“Due to a series of bad relationships in my life, and to my rundown state of health, I just couldn’t see any sense in my life going on. With my thoughts running round and round in endless circles, I began to think of a way to end it all. Suddenly, as clearly as if she were in the room, I heard the...
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Oct.19.2011
Betty and her son Chris, who live in Michigan, have a dog named Brady. When he disappeared for a week, they placed an ad in the newspaper with a $50 reward.   “At about 11:00 one evening,” Betty wrote us, “I received a phone call from a man who was sure he had Brady. He gave me instructions to...
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Oct.17.2011
English poet John Donne, famous for his line “No man is an island, entire of itself,” would love this ESP story.  “I was giving my son a birthday party,” a woman wrote to us. “The party was in full swing, so to speak, when my eyes were drawn to a clock on the wall. I noticed it was 2...
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Oct.07.2011
“My terminally ill husband was in intensive care at a hospital where he spent the last six weeks of his life. The day he died, I went to visit him before I went to work.  When I left him, I couldn't go to the office but wandered aimlessly around the neighborhood stores with an...
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Oct.05.2011
Joe McMoneagle is a decorated, retired Army officer and former remote viewer (clairvoyant) for the U.S. government’s once top secret, Star Gate “psychic spy” program, declassified in 1995. Millions of Americans have seen him on ABC-TV, or read about his exploits in Time and Newsweek. Few know that...
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Sep.28.2011
“I am a mother of three. Two boys and one girl. The two boys are the older and my girl the youngest.  They are now grown up and attending college.  When my boys were about eleven and seven or perhaps a bit younger, I had taken them to my Mom's house for the weekend.  I am...
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Sep.19.2011
Mike Spradley is a 63-year old Texas executive working in the oil industry. I say he’s psychic.  Here’s his “stump-the–skeptics” experience.  If you can debunk it, let’s hear your reasons. We’ll let Red Room readers decide.  Let the games begin!  “In August 1979, I was working...
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Aug.26.2011
We’re mere weeks away from the 10th anniversary of the horrific 9-11 terror attack on New York City, and I still can’t decide whether Becky’s 9-11 experience is a case of genuine ESP. I’ll let you decide. Here’s her strange story, based on the taped notes from my original interview for...
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Jun.22.2011
It sounds like an urban legend, like the alligator living in the city sewer. A woman about to go out on a date with a nicely-dressed man suddenly senses something horribly evil about him, cancels the date, and later discovers the man was a homicidal killer. Could it be more than just a legend?...
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