Here I post thoughts, memories, stories, novels, plays,
essays, reading lists, genealogical research, info about ebooks for sale, and matters of
interest to friends and family. This isn't your typical
web. It's meant to be idiosyncratic and fun. I
always welcome feedback and suggestions.
I am finally in a position
to write fiction full-time. All
six
of my recently published novels (Parallel Lives, Beyond
the 4th Door, Nevermind,
Breeze, Shakespeare's Twin Sister, and To Gether Tales) overlap and echo
in interesting ways, with stories inside stories and touches
of magical realism and alternate history. This is not by
intent, but rather that all of them grew from my life
experiences and from exploring themes that matter to me. They can be read in any order.
They are independent stories, with stylistic and thematic
overlaps. Each creates a different view of reality, a
different way of trying to understand the mysteries of life. All
Things That Matter published all of those in 2020 - 2022. They
will also soon publish Echoes from the Attic, which I co-wrote
with Ethel Kaiden. I just finished writing two other novels The
Bard of Eastport and We Met in Ithaca. I am
looking for a publisher for those and for a book of essays
(Untrammeled Thoughts. There is no Box), a collection of
over 4000 jokes (Laugh and let Laugh), three picture
books (Sign Me Up, How to Ride a Cow, and God
Never Made Little Green Mammals), as well as a new
edition of my Lizard of Oz and Other Stories.
I'm also the publisher of Seltzer Books,
with over 14,000 time-tested books in ebook
format, available for sale through Barnes & Noble (Nook),
Kobo, Apple, Google Play, and PublishDrive.
Earlier, I published entire libraries of books on CD and DVD
primarily for the blind, who used "screen readers" to convert
the text to voice. (This included a 4-DVD set with over 20,000
books for just $149). I also made a quixotic attempt to build
and run my own ebook store,
Quench, trying to single-handedly compete with the likes of
Amazon. My publishing company was originally known as B&R Samizdat Express and consisted
of just my wife Barbara (B) and me Richard (R). Samizdat means
"self-published" in Russian. Barbara died in 2012, and I
recently got an offer that I couldn't refuse for the domain
name samizdat.com. So I am now rebuilding the web site as
seltzerbooks.com
In the early days of the Web, I worked for Digital Equipment's
Internet Business Group as their "Internet evangelist." When
the company was swallowed by Compaq (which was later swallowed
by Hewlett-Packard) I worked independently as an Internet
marketing consultant, writing extensively about business on
the Internet. Many of the books,
articles,
and speeches
I wrote back then are available here. My AltaVista
Search Revolution was the first consumer-oriented
book about search engines. Library Journal, called
it "indispensable". My Web
Business Boot Camp was a pioneering guidebook for
Internet start-ups .It is now available for free at this
website.
My original samizdat.com web
site, which I used as a sandbox to test ideas about the Web,
has been preserved by the Internet Archive as part of their Wayback Machine. They have
stored 666 versions of that web site, captured from November
1996 to September 2017. This
link takes you to the part of the archive that is devoted to
samizdat.com. Select the
date you are interested in; then you can browse the archive
the same as you do the live web, clicking on link after
link. Everything from the web site is there, including
all the issues of my Internet-on-a-Disk newsletter and the
hundreds of articles from my blog. (They
now archive seltzerbooks.com as
wellSeltzer,
seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
Follow me on Twitter
twitter.com/SeltzerBooks
My
author
page at Amazon
My author
page at Goodreads
My
blog
at Goodreads
List
of
my published books
Medium account with 200+ stories,
essays, and poems
YouTube
videos
of me reading some of my stories
Web
sites of All Things That Matter Press Authors
Websites of Twitter friends
Youtube videos me
reading some of my stories and excerpts from my novels.
Stories
and
Other Stuff by Richard Seltzer includes all of them
First
Chapters
of Novels by Richard Seltzer
Stories
from
To Gether Tales
The
Lizard
of Oz, complete, chapter by chapter
Children's
Stories
[overlaps with Lizard of Oz]
This bittersweet comedy and romance has touches of tragedy and magic.
Writing during the pandemic and
feeling nostalgia for what has been lost, the narrator, Abe,
recounts stories told around the dinner table on a Caribbean
cruise two years before.
Abe explains the title:
"I'm writing from the midst of
this crisis, not with the wisdom of hindsight. Even if it gets
no worse than it is right now, much has been lost.
"I'm hoping that we can gether. That's a word that
isn't in the dictionary.
"To gether is
to
find new ways to be together, new ways to meet, to bond, to
love.
"Even when physically isolated,
we can come together in spirit, to share experiences and
emotions to the point that we are intimately connected.”
"In any case, may we always
treasure our normal life, knowing, as we now know,
that it is fragile and should never be taken for granted."
On one level, To Gether
Tales is a collection of stories told around a dinner table. But
it's also a novel, in which themes echo from one story to
another and tellers both disguise and reveal themselves through
what they say, all woven together in the frame of the narrator.
first review --
5.0 out of 5 stars Affairs to Remember
Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2022
Verified Purchase
A
refreshing antidote to the struggles borne of the pandemic,
politics and threatening conflicts that haunt our daily lives.
Richard Seltzer’s “To Gether
Tales” takes us on an unusual ocean cruise that elevates our
spirits and counteracts the current climate of cynicism and
despair. Captivating, intimate and
poignant stories brimming with romance, friendship, warmth,
and humor bring a group of voyagers together. Seltzer's
inventive and engrossing writing enables us to join the
journey and participate as if we were on board, ourselves. We
disembark feeling enchanted, renewed
and reinvigorated.
The Princess Tango,
a story from To Gether
Tales, read by the author (YouTube video)
Shakespeare's
Twin Sister
Published by All Things That Matter Press
Shakespeare's
twin
sister wakes up in the body of a 99-year-old woman in a
nursing home in 1987. Kate has quite a tale to tell:
-- her
coming-of-age story, posing as a boy to get an education,
-- twins separated at birth sorting out the mystery of their otherworldly connection to one another,
-- a lifelong three-way love story,
-- soul projection and transference linking individuals to one another and connecting past to present,
-- and the story of a young reporter who falls in love with the soul he finds in the body of an old and dying woman.
As a cross-dressing sword-fighting teenager, Kate beats Mercutio, captain of the King's Musketeers, in a duel in Paris.
As Will's double and writing partner, Kate enables him to do the work of two geniuses.
This outlandish view of Shakespeare's life and times stays true to the facts, while presenting explanations that are intriguingly plausible.
Like Shakespeare in Love, this is a humorous,
romantic take on Shakespeare the man.
Like Yentl, a
brilliant young woman finds creative ways to succeed in a
man-dominated world.
Amazon reviews --
5.0
out of 5 stars Her Double
World was a Stage
Reviewed
in the United States on September 17, 2021
Verified
Purchase
Richard
Seltzer’s story, Shakespeare’s Twin Sister, is a clever
insightful romp.
We first encounter Kate as Lettie, a 99-year-old woman in a
nursing home, 1987.
Her personality transforms and she tells her “real” story to a young journalist,
Bill Greene.
He, in turn, retells a surprisingly plausible tale of Kate’s
multiple identities (male and female) as Shakespeare’s twin
sister.
Apparently, Kate played a large role in the writing of the
famous works.
Not only that, but she is an arch feminist in men’s clothing
with longings of her own.
The book is full of good humor – the Arden family quotes
lines from Shakespeare’s play in their daily banter.
The titles are fun too – “If You Incest!”
Read this novel – it’s a mind-bending hoot!
Reviewed
in the United States on August 8, 2021
Breeze
Published by All Things that Matter Press
Breeze,
a young woman in present-day Connecticut, goes into a
medically inexplicable coma. Her boyfriend, Yannie, a
senior at Yale, has to get
her the help she needs to survive while trying to
solve the mystery of this goddess-like free spirit who
appeared out of nowhere two months before.
In part two, Breeze
awakens in a different body in a different place and
time. She is at Troy in the body of Briseis,
love-slave of Achilles. She fears she’ll be taken
for a demon. She knows the story she is trapped in,
and she learns that she can make changes in what the
story leaves unsaid, so long as she doesn't alter
the direction of the narrative.
In
part three, Breeze finds herself in still another
body. It's the fourth century AD and she’s at the
temple of the Eleusinian Mysteries, near Athens. A
young woman lies down on the altar next to the corpse
of another young woman. In the ritual, she expects her
soul will move to the body of the dead woman. Instead,
the dead woman comes to life with the soul of Breeze.
That glitch leads to humorous complications as well
insights into the ironies of everyday life and love.
Breeze and
Richard's three previous novels (Parallel
Lives, Beyond the 4th Door, and Nevermind) can be read
in any order. They are independent stories, with
overlapping themes and styles. Each novel presents a
different view of reality, a different way of trying
to understand the mysteries of life.
Amazon
Nevermind
Published by All Things that Matter Press
A WWII romance veers off into an alternate reality and
then another and another.
5 out of 5 stars
"Richard Seltzer takes us on another spellbinding
journey into an alterante
reality that defies our familiar perception of space and
time. Nevermind is a story
with a backdrop that seems grounded on the surface, but
turns into a flight of mind-bending twists."
Interview
about
Nevermind at Readers
Magnet
Amazon
Beyond the Fourth Door
Published by All Things that Matter Press
Without knowing why or how, two
college students wake up 50 years older than they were
when they went to sleep and with no memory of what has
happened in between.
The first door is birth. The second is death. Finally,
Frank and Marge go through the fourth door.
5 out of 5 stars
Think Thomas Wolfe. Think The
Razor's Edge by Maugham.
...the main
character...talented, energetic, charismatic...
genre-defying Be prepared for a wild ride."
"Richard Seltzer is a master of
educating us to the possibilities of existence once we
set our mind free and open the door to the unknown."
Amazon
Parallel
Lives
published 2020 by All Things that Matter Press
The story, which begins in an assisted-living facity in New Hampshire, leads
to 18th century Boston and London, where there's
unfinished business that residents, through mirror
selves, must take care of.
5.0
out of 5 stars
"Ingeniously woven trip through space and time"
Amazon
blog
interview
Please read, enjoy and review
What would have been a epigraph for this novel if I had
read it sooner:
"What then is Time? Is its course but one way? Or is it like a swift stream that rolls some
things along faster and some slower, leaves, sticks and
stones, which may change places, and pass each other by,
collide, and combine, even as all are borne along? I
sometimes think that we lead many lives between birth and
dying, and one one, or perhaps two, are ever known to us
consciously, the others pass in parallel, invisible, or
they run backward while the one we busy ourselves with
runs forward."
from Lord Byron's Novel by John Crowley
Works by and about historical figures who are
characters in this novel:
Mercy Otis Warren, historian and playwright
The
Rise,
Progress and Termination of the American Revolution
The original 3-volume work is 1317 pages long.
Mercy wrote early drafts of this work near the time of the
events described, and completed the work about four years
before it appeared in 1805. Mercy wrote in the third
person even when dealing with events involving her
immediate family. James Otis (early advocate of the rights
of the colonies) was her brother, James Warren (speaker of
the Massachusetts House of Representatives) was her
husband, and Winslow Warren (would-be diplomat) was her
son.
Other works by Mercy Otis Warren
Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne,
general and playwright
____________________________
RICHARD'S OTHER WORKS
essays from
Untrammeled thoughts
The
Barracks (from Saint Smith and Other Stories),
novella, 11K words, published
online at fictionontheweb.co.uk. Was
also published online at Untold Tales Publishing which
is
now defunct.
The Barracks takes
place during basic training at Fort Polk, LA, in the
summer of 1970, during the Viet Nam War. The overwhelming
majority of the trainees are reservists. All white, in a
matter of weeks, they'll return home and go about their
usual lives, unless something unexpected goes wrong. Four
black trainees in the same platoon face immediate
assignment to Viet Nam, so they have been deliberately
failing the course, being "recycled," over
and over again. Tensions of the war (which none
of them support) and race relations (which the reservists
never faced before) come to a head over an incident that
in and of itself seems to have little significance but
symbolically looms large.
based on that
novella The
Barracks, a three-act stage play (1989) and Spit and
Polish, a full-length screen play (2001)
The
Gentle Inquisitor and Other Stories, Was
published online at Untold
Tales Publishing, which is
now defunct.
These eight ironic stories deal with serious questions
in unique and playful ways. They'll make you smile and
wonder and prompt you to think about human nature and
the meaning of life from new perspectives.
The
AltaVista Search Revolution:How
to Find Anything on the Internet, Osborne/McGraw-Hill,
1997 and 1998, with Eric J. Ray and Deborah S. Ray
The first consumer book about
search engines. (AltaVista was the forerunner of
Google.)
Winner of the
"Distinguished Technical Communication Award," the
highest award given by the Society for Technical
Communication Publications.
2
editions, Hebrew and
Japanese translations. Braille version published by
National Braille Press
"This complete guide to using
the AltaVista web searching/indexing system will be
indispensable to both librarians and patrons.... Get
one copy to circulate, nail one down in the computer
lab, and pass one around the reference desk." -- Library
Journal
Command_Line Heroes podcast
"Looking for Search" includes interview of me about DEC's pioneering search engine
AltaVista. https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-7/search
Ethiopia
Through Russian Eyes by Alexander Bulatovich,
translation by Richard Seltzer (Red Sea/Africa World
Press, 2000) at
Kobo at
Nook at
Apple
including 78
photos taken in Ethiopia in 1896-1898
"...the most important book on the history of eastern
Africa to have been published for a century...."
Old Africa (complete
review)
My
Third Journey to Ethiopia, 1899-1900 by Alexander Bulatovich, translation by
Richard Seltzer
Assembled
from previously unpublished items in the Russian archives,
this is a lively and detailed account of Bulatovich's travels, at the
behest of Ethiopian Emperor Meneik
II, in the northwestern border regions of the country, at
a time when war with England seemed imminent. Bulatovich provides an insightful
assessment of England's likely moves and what Menelik
could do to block them, even including an invasion of the
Sudan. Once again he provides
previously unknown details about a critical time in
Ethiopia's history. There's also a brief account of Bulatovich's fourth journey to
Ethiopia in 1911, at which time he was a Russian Orthodox
monk and sought to found a
monastery at a lake to the south of Addis Ababa. This is a
companion to Ethiopia Through Russian Eyes.
The
Lizard of Oz,
fantasy, 1974, revised and expanded 2018
at
Kobo at
Nook query
message for second edition at
Apple at
Nook
at
Kobo query message
"An
intriguing and very entertaining little novel" Library
Journal
"Carroll and Tolkien have a new
companion" Aspect
"A work so saturated that the
mind is both stoned with pleasure and alive with wonder"
Lancaster Independent Press
"A
commentary on our times done delightfully" Philadelphia
Bulletin
"A gallery
of figments of contemporary culture that could take its
place on the library shelf of memory along with classic
figures of children's fiction" Valley
Advocate
"Adventures
in Small Press Publishing" the story of how I
self-published this book in 1974
Now
and Then and Other Tales from Ome,
children's stories, 1976
at
Kobo at
Nook at
Apple
"A
highly original collection of short stories, sometimes
humorous, sometimes profound." Boston Globe
The Name of
Hero, historical novel, Tarcher/Houghton
Mifflin, 1981
at
Kobo at
Nook at
Apple
translation
of
this novel into Russian
sources
and related documents
Saint
Smith
and Other Stories, 2011 at
Kobo at
Nook at
Apple
MGMT MEMO: Management Lessons from DEC, 2018
at
Apple at
Nook at
Google Play
Snapshots
of DEC, 2018 at
Apple at
Nook
Web
Business Boot Camp Hands-on Internet lessons for
manager, entrepreneurs, and professionals, Wiley, 2002 at
Apple at
Nook at
Kobo
- Take
Charge of Your Web Site, MightyWords,
2001
Shop
Online the Lazy Way (Macmillan, 1999. Braille edition
published by National Braille Press) at
Nook at
Google Play at
Apple
The
Social Web: How to build successful personal or business
Web sites, 1998) at
Apple
The
Way of the Web Lessons from the Internet. How to
adapt to the new business environment, 1995) at
Kobo at
Apple
Dryden's
Exemplary Drama, senior thesis at Yale (1969)
at
Apple at
Google Play at
Nook
Death
of the Federalist Party, paper written in high
school, in 1963. at
Apple at
Google Play
Dark Woods
and Other Poems at
Apple at
Nook
- Laugh and Let Laugh, word play, over 3200 short jokes (looking for a publisher)
- Trumpisms (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2019) one of the top 10 most popular articles of the year (#6)
- Trumpisms 2.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire. 2019)
- Trumpisms 3.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2019)
- Trumpisms 4.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Trumpisms 5.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Trumpisms
6.0
(Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Trumpisms
7.0
(Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Tumpisms 8.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Trumpisms 9.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Trumpisms
10.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
-
Trumpisms 11.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- Trumpisms 12.0 (Trump jokes at Glossy News Satire, 2020)
- The Gentle Inquisitor (from Saint Smith and Other Stories)
- The Choice (from Saint Smith and Other Stories)
- Creation Story (from Saint Smith and Other Stories)
- Chiang ti Tales (from Saint Smith and Other Stories)
- The Mirror (from Saint Smith and Other Stories) (American Bystander #13, 2019
- Now and Then (from Now and Then and
Other Tales from Ome)
- Revolution (at Glossy News Satire, 2019)
-
Finnegan Died (at
Glossy
News Satire, 2019)
- Size
Matters (at
Glossy
News Satire, 2019)
- Hundreds
and Hundreds of Gerbils to be published in May 2021
online at fictionontheweb.co.uk
- Julie's Book: The Little Princess (from Now and Then
and Other Tales from Ome)
- Mary Jane's Book: The Book of Animals (from Now and
Then and Other Tales from Ome)
- The
Little Oops Named Ker Plop (from Now and Then and Other
Tales from Ome)
- Hands
- Tiger
in the Intercom
- Yanni,
to be published April 2021 online at fictionontheweb.co.uk
PLAYS
Without a Myth and Five Other
Plays at
Apple at
Google Play at
Nook
- Without
a Myth, three-act play (1971)
- Heel,
Hitler, ten-minute play (2015)
- The
Barracks, a three-act stage play (1989)
- Rights
Crossing, a two-act historical play, set in the American
Revolution (1976)
- Mercy,
a two-act historical comedy, set in the American
Revolution, based on the lives of Mercy Otis
Warren and General Johnny Burgoyne. (1975)
- Heel, Hitler, ten-minute play (2015)
- The
Lizard of Oz, children's play (1976)
SCRIPTS
- The Lizard of Oz radio script, episode1, episode 2,
episode
3
- Spit
and Polish, a full-length screen play (2001)
- Traffic
Jam, a short screen play (1972)
- Family on Demand, first episode of proposed
sitcom, co-written with Ethel Kaiden (2004)
- A
Glimpse of the Future, 1993 video about the future of
the Internet, written by Richard Seltzer
SPEECHES
- From Russia and Ethiopia to the
Internet (Wesleyan College) article
- Surviving as a Small Business in the Age of Google:
Generate Search-engine Traffic (NEXPO,
Washington, DC) article
- The Future of Business on the Internet (Lewiston,
Maine) script
- Increase Traffic on the Internet Without Advertising (IQPC Conference, San Francisco,
CA) article
- Corporate-wide Knowledge Management (ExpoManagement 98, Buenos
Aires, Argentina) article
- Business Opportunities on the Internet (Comdex, Buenos
Aires, Argentina) script
- The Social Web: from Hyper-links to People-links
(Web Week 97, Oak Ridge National Labs, Oak Ridge,
TN) book
- Basics of Effective Web Sites: How to Succeed When the
Rules of the Game Change (Boston) book
- Building Communities on the Internet (Internet
Expo/Email World, Boston, New Orleans) article
COLLECTIONS OF ARTICLES
- Complete text of newsletter
Internet-on-a-Disk 1994-2011
- Current
thoughts on all topics
- Distance Education
-
Internet Present & Past
-
Internet History
-
Internet Strategy and Marketing
- EBay and Other Online Auctions
-
Internet Search
-
Community and Collaboration
- Web
Site Design
-
Working At Home
-
Publishing and Ebooks
-
Glimpses (essays toward a personal
philosophy)
- My book
reviews
INDIVIDUAL ARTICLES
- 70
Online Dates - Learning to Date at 68
- Asthma in
Timisoara: A Glimpse at the Romanian Medical System
- Romantic
Romania?
- Training,
Not Censorship: The Need for Cyber-Street-Smarts
- Global
Competition and the Long Road to General Prosperity
(1992)
- Thoughts
on
Reading and Writing
- The
Bugle Boy
- Why
Bother to Save Halloween?
- The
Nostalgia of Tomorrowland
- Adventures
in Small Press Publishing: the Lizard of Oz
- From
Russia to Ethiopia to the Internet
- The
Serge Solovieff Mystery - A
World War I Variant of the Spanish Prisoner and Nigerian
Scams
- Making
sense of the myths behind Greek tragedy, in particular
the mythos of Pelops/Atreus/Agamemnon, grad school
paper (1970)
- Filial
Respect in Confucius and Socrates and the Divergence of
Western and Chinese Philosophic Traditions, paper
written while an undergraduate at Yale, May 1967
- Another
Look at Moliere's l'Avare
(The Miser), paper written while a student at
Brentwood School in Brentwood, Essex, England, May, 1965.
TRAVEL
JUVENALIA
- The Story of the Trojan War in Unintentionally Humorous Verse doggerel written in the sixth grade (age 11)
- Hi-Q or Peg Solitarie, a solution to the game solved and recorded in the third grade (age 8)
- Stories Written in the Second Grade
BOOKS IN
SEARCH OF AGENT/PUBLISHER
OTHER WRITING PROJECTS
- The Name Trilogy, including The Name of Hero, The Name of Man, and The Name of God (opening chapters of Name of Man)
PUBLISHING
Seltzer
Books (titles organized as Virtual Book Tables)
Catalog
(with links to ebook
stores)
READING
Sixty-Twp Years of Reading (complete list of books I've read since 1958)
My Current Reading list (2020)
Recommended contemporary books (published since WW II)
My book
reviews
Book
reviews by Dean Rink
The Cary-Estes Genealogy by May Folk Webb and Patrick Mann Estes
The Cary-Estes-Moore Genealogy by Helen Estes Seltzer
All-inclusive genealogy page (listing over 1600 direct ancestors)
Ray
Brehm's Seltzer and Hocker
Genealogy
Daly
Family Album
Daly Genealogy
Ancestor Surfing (advice on genealogical research)
OTHER INTERESTS
Nancy Felson, Greek Scholar,
selected articles and CV
Dictionary,
a Vocabulary of the Attic Language by S. C.
Woodhouse (1910), a hyperlinked version
DEC
(Digital Equipment Corporation), the world's second
largest computer company before its demise in 1998, where
I worked
1979
to 1998.
Grace
Sherwood, Virginia Witch
Mercy
Otis Warren
Ethiopia
World War II
Robert Greene
General
Johnny Burogoyne
seltzer@seltzerbooks.com
privacy
statement