I’ve started a series on instagram called “From The Conspiracy Theorist’s Bookshelf.” That’s Apophenia in a nutshell – you’ve got a lot of books on conspiracy theories, and aim to synthesize the patterns into digestible bites.

Propaganda: “information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people’s opinions.” – Cambridge Dictionary

Propaganda is the tool that makes hiding true conspiracies possible. It’s often noted that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was popularized as a pejorative to imply someone wasn’t skeptical enough, was easily bamboozled, or otherwise generally gullible. But conspiracy has meaning in law, and it’s ridiculous to think that conspiracies don’t happen. A lot.

The phrase conspiracy theory often means: when the government makes it legal, through loopholes or other means, to act in a morally wrong way and against the will of its general populous.

The continuum: One of my projects this year is a deep dive into marketing and messaging. Useful to know, and because effective messaging is a core component of propaganda.

Advertising: “the business of trying to persuade people to buy products or services.” – Cambridge Dictionary

Marketing: “the work of advertising and offering goods or services for sale.” – Cambridge Dictionary

A theme of Apophenia Gold is the inability of many to recognize propaganda. Apophenia smells it as lies, and sees it as dirty colors, and works to explain the mechanism through The Journal for Apophenic Research.

Recognizing propaganda techniques makes one less susceptible to their charms.

Additional New Things

Successfully re-recorded the Prelude and Chapter 1 as a 45 minute audio file. It’s on the front page and here. Enjoy.

Determined it was possible to export a good looking kindle book from Scrivener. (Writers, Scrivener is literally the best writing program I could hope for. No more need to go into Indesign or heavier programs for publish-ready output. It’s a dream!)

Prelude and Chapter 1 as a PDF are here. (Soon, I’ll be adding the entire book to Amazon, but in the interim…)

Two weeks ago, the intention was to post the audio recording of Chapter 1 in Apophenia Gold publicly. Then I kept recording, and realized: I’m going to re-record chapter 1 last. That way it will be best.

Where’s that first chapter I said I’d be posting?

I’ve spent the bulk of my free time this month making an author recording of Apophenia Gold. My friends alternately think it is (a) hilarious or (b) ridiculous because I committed to the project. I acted out all the voices.

Acting out the voices is necessary for an audio book to be understood. (Imagine listening to a conversation where everyone sounds the same- it’s hard to follow.)

What I learned was this: there are word repetitions and wording problems that I miss in first, second, and third editing read-throughs. I also might miss them in speaking – but I hear them when I listen to the recording. So, it’s a very prudent final editing step.

At this point, I’ve recorded 80% of the book. After that, I’ll re-record chapter 1, with these newly gained voice acting skills, and post it publicly.

How did things change by waking up at 5am?

Waking at 5am consistently for the past month has ALSO led to:

1. Practicing violin/ viola more consistently
2. Practicing second language more consistently.

As I hoped, having that few hours of sovereignty over the morning (typically, nobody calls before 8am) is remarkable.

So what’s next?

• March initiative (TBD)
• Marketing Lessons
• Book Launch

Thanks for Reading!

Rose & Apophenia

Welcome

to the 2nd iteration of the newsletter.

Contents:

1. Today’s Synopsis.
2. Recordings.
3. Stop Motion.

(Do you want to receive these newsletters? Sign up in the box below)

---

Today’s Synopsis:

The World Precipice

“You have, as you know, skills that are rare. Yet, you have chosen to remain silent about these skills, even going so far as to obscure them. Few do this.”

Honey Savannah reads this line, which arrived by sleight-of-hand.

She tallies up her rare skills, and wonders how she can justify trusting the letter-writer. Because she would like to set off on the mission he describes.

Rare skills: synesthesia about voices. She hears them all in full color. And there’s her ability to change her own voice, with the texture equivalent of perfect pitch. She gigs as an audiobook narrator.

There is her pseudonym, and the hidden work: running a conspiracy tracking website.

And there are the subtle perceptions. Lies smell like sulfur. Auras gleam, and demons and angels sometimes appear with sideways glances.

Honey must find out what this mission is about. Four days later, she has a new ID, a new gold credit card, and a new alliance with The Magician. She is staying at an inn outside Savannah, notorious for its clientele.

And the apocalyptic moment opens up. The world precipice. She watches it happen.

---

---

Stop Motion Animation

One of my foundational project goals is to publish without depending on using my face or personality. Turns out, this has a term in the social media world – it’s called “faceless marketing” or developing a “faceless account.”

From brief study, it’s possible, but harder to do. We human beings are entranced, attracted, or repelled by faces, and we rely on the face to provide some many interesting cues about the person.

Prior to social media, choosing to do “faceless” platform building was less of an issue because a single author photo would suffice. Now, there is space for everyone to broadcast a face, and we swim in a sea of personality – more than any prior time. But this makes sense! We are in the era of the individuality.

But back to the choice to do it different: one is faced with the question of creating good, appealing, sticky content without relying on a face. How does one make something (efficiently) that swims up to the surface in this time of personality?

So I return to stop motion. I happen to love this art form, when it’s done with real, tangible puppets. It’s material. It’s real. And producing stop motion doesn’t require staring at computer screen.

The process involves a computer to capture the images, but the animator herself stands by the set, touches the puppets, set, and props, and captures the images using a remote control device. Like most animators, I use Dragonframe. It’s an absolutely brilliant program for stop motion. Thus, the act of animating stop motion means posing puppets and props, and pressing real buttons. No need to touch an electromagnetic device in an ongoing manner. I can review the footage from a distance by pressing a button on the remote control.

Of course, stop motion is very slow to create. 24 frames per second. But, when a good social media video is about 10 seconds long, it starts to look a little more plausible.

The February Initiative

Prompted by a dear friend, all my close people chose words for the year. Mine is “Time becomes Space.” This phrase has many mysterious levels of meaning, but the most exoteric is: “feeling like there is enough space in my time.” Said otherwise, feeling like I have more sovereignty over time.

The simplest way for an artist with my disposition to achieve this is to get in the art-work-day before the real-work-day starts.

So, my February initiative is to wake at 5am, and have four solid hours for creative work before 9am and the real work starts.

It’s very dark in February at 5am.

Thanks for reading. 

Till two weeks.

Rose & Apophenia.

---

(This is the signup box to receive these newsletters)

Hello Everyone.

This is the first Apophenia Gold newsletter. Thank you for subscribing.

Editing and rewriting

It takes a long time to write a book. Especially a first book, when you are still figuring out how things work. I write on paper because paper is relaxing. Writing is like watching a movie and just taking notes.

But editing. Editing is a whole other beast.

And then there is re-writing. Rewriting for content, and rewriting for technical reasons. In the past few months, I completed the largest rewrite: aiming at embodiment. Giving the characters a more embodied sense of the world and themselves.

The Apophenia Gold series is idea driven. It’s about some very important themes (karma, reincarnation, no blame, redemption, etc.) Ideas that must come into general consciousness now. Because of that, in the first iterations of the book, I skimped on characters.

And re-writing was great. James got a back story. Sara developed some interesting quirks and showed her unstable side. Honey – well, she’s a little more human. Little less robot. You get it?

Then there’s the technical rewrite. Moving from exposition to scene.
Flow, pacing, and tension.
Removing adverbs. I love adverbs.
Removing past perfect tense. I love that tense.

Next Steps

I’ll rewrite the first chapter another few times. Maybe like twenty.

I’m reading the book out loud to myself, and recording it. This will highlight errors, pacing, wording. You can listen the Prelude here.

The back-of-book blurb will be rewritten another twenty times too. Most recent version posted here.

Then the book needs to diet. It’s currently at 100k words and I’d like to get it down to 90k.

Marketing

Certain elements of the story are essential. Because of that, traditional publishing has not been high on my list. I don’t want to compromise on certain things.

So where does that leave it? Self-publishing, but there’s no hurry to do that until there is a platform. That’s where you, friendly early readers, come in.
Will you help me share this content?
What do I need to make it zip and sing?

I’ve been posting on Substack at the Journal for Apophenic Research. This is home to the real world conspiracy theories and realities mentioned in the story. It’s also a place to explore the energy and electricity discussions that are most important.

Some recent posts:

Free Energy & Conspiracies (#1 in the Free Energy series)

Free Energy & Societal Outcomes (#2 in the series)

Free Energy & System Stickiness (#3 in the series)

Instagram remains a mystery to me. Can someone suggest how to make it better?

As always, thank you for reading!

I’ll be sending an update every two weeks.

Rose & Apophenia

rose@apopheniagold.com

So, Rose, what’s your launch plan?

Here’s the objective: book one, Apophenia Gold, will be available late October 2024. Book two, Mercury’s Riddles, in November 2024.

And maybe, if all goes well and Rose is very productive, she will launch book three, The Substance of Thought, in December 2024.

What will it take?

Well, first, a functioning website. (check?)

Second, a way to collect emails and send newsletters. (in process)

Third, social media. (sigh)

Fourth, Editing. Again. Again. And Again. (procrastinating)

Five, book layout for the platforms. (Probably will plan on print-on-demand in the major stores.)

Six, a launch and promotional plan.

Seven….Launch.

Curious? Email rose at apopheniagold dot com