Tellectual Press

22/02/2018

KOKIO is a biographical novel based on the life of Neill James, a remarkable and complicated woman who died in 1994. Author Stephen Preston Banks introduces readers to her in the book’s Prologue, and then, in the chapters that follow, allows his fictional narrators to tell the story of Neill’s life as he has imagined it.

You can read the Prologue and learn more about what author Diana Anhalt called “a masterful page-turner of a book” here: http://tellectual.com/Prologue-K.html

20/03/2017

In this first of a comprehensive two-volume study of the Old and New Testaments, Dr. Robert M. Price builds a spacious and sturdy ark to carry Bible readers over the floods of mystery that have long perplexed them. Why are there multiple creation stories? Who are the “sons of god” in Genesis? What’s really going on with those Isaiah passages that preachers love to read at Christmas? Putting a lifetime of biblical scholarship hard at work on perhaps his most momentous project yet, Dr. Price explains the mysteries without scorning them. The beloved old Bible is revealed to be indeed a Fable, but still a Holy one in its sprawling and fascinating way.

Available now in print ($19.99) and for the Amazon Kindle ($9.99). Buy a print copy and get the Kindle version for just $0.99 more.

http://tellectual.com/Holy-Fable.html

In this first of a comprehensive two-volume study of the Old and New Testaments, Dr. Robert M. Price builds a spacious and sturdy ark to carry Bible readers over the floods of mystery that have long perplexed them.

30/10/2016

Tellectual Press uses proprietary software to convert DOCX or ODT submissions from authors into a modified Markdown format and then, with the editor’s addition of special formatting marks like "!PE" for "poetry entry," turn that into the files needed for both Kindle and print versions, beautifully typeset. Here’s an example, a quotation of Psalm 1 (ASV) that appears in HOLY FABLE, a forthcoming two-volume exposition of the entire Bible by Robert M. Price:

!PE n b
^1^Blessed is the man
that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
= Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers:
^2^But his delight is in the law of [Yahweh];
= And on his law doth he meditate day and night.
^3^And he shall be like a tree
= planted by the streams of water,
That bringeth forth its fruit in its season,
= Whose leaf also doth not wither;
And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

!PE n b
^4^The wicked are not so,
= But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
^5^Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment,
= Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
^6^For [Yahweh] knoweth the way of the righteous;
= But the way of the wicked shall perish.

26/08/2016

Hector Avalos calls David Madison's engaging and thoughtful new book a “bold, refreshing take on Christianity. H. L. Mencken would be proud.”

Linda LaScola, co-founder of The Clergy Project, says the “book, written from the perspective of a former Christian minister and scholar, is engaging, personal and erudite.”

In his Foreword, atheist blogger and former Independent Fundamental Baptist preacher Bruce Gerencser envisions “fuming Evangelicals lining up at the doors of pastors’ studies” after reading it, “wanting to know why they have never been told about the theological issues raised in Madison’s book.”

Get your copy now, for the Amazon Kindle or in trade paperback: http://tellectual.com/Ten-Tough-Problems.html

Combining rigorous scholarship with engaging personal reflections and refreshing wit, Dr. David Madison offers understanding and even some laughs while walking with readers past the gravestones of Christian thought and belief.

17/08/2016

Announcing David Madison's engaging and thoughtful new book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief. “A bold, refreshing take on Christianity,” Hector Avalos calls it. “H. L. Mencken would be proud.”

With a Foreword by former Independent Fundamental Baptist preacher Bruce Gerencser, now an atheist blogger.

http://tellectual.com/Ten-Tough-Problems.html

An all-powerful God who permits unspeakable horrors and sent a Son who threatened more to come, forever, to those who don’t believe in him. An inspired holy book that turns out to be full of archaic nonsense, moral failures, and contradictions. A world of disagreement not just between Christians and...

23/06/2016

On a summer morning in 1966, fourteen-year old Michael Fisher set out on his paper route in Superior, Wisconsin. His body was found in a ditch but no killer ever was. Now, longtime Superior resident Judith Liebaert commemorates the Fisher case with a murder mystery of her own. “Sins of the Fathers” is set in her childhood hometown and also begins with a cold case from fifty years ago. But her debut novel is all fiction–from the opening scene where a shadowy old killer confronts a second victim to the surprising end when both murders are finally solved, in a way nobody expected.

http://tellectual.com/Sins-of-the-Fathers.html

Available in paperback ($12.99) and e-book ($6.99).

In her debut novel, Judith Liebaert commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of a real-life cold case in her childhood hometown with a fictional one of her own. But hers is followed by another murder, and then both get solved in a way nobody expects.

06/05/2016

Neill James traveled the world and wrote about her exotic sojourns to places even the most intrepid explorers and war correspondents rarely saw. Her books documented the cultures of Lapland’s Sami reindeer herders, the Ainu of northern Japan, and Mexico’s Otomí. Then, in mid-life, she suddenly stopped writing and traveling and remained for the next fifty years in a remote Mexican pueblo.

Why? In this biographical novel, author Stephen Preston Banks imagines a plausible life story, involving espionage, obsessions, and broken promises.

http://tellectual.com/Kokio.html

SHE HAD JUST FINISHED her bachelor’s degree at the finest women’s college in the South. She was a mediocre student, vainly handsome, a bold and accomplished athlete, and a first-rate stenographer with a professional certificate to prove it....

30/04/2016

“KOKIO is a wonderful contribution to the increasingly popular genre of biographical novels. Rather than dramatizing the story of a famous figure like Virginia Woolf, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath, or Marilyn Monroe, as so many skillful biographical novelists have done, Stephen Banks pictures the unfamiliar life of Neill James, a spectacular woman who was an under-cover intelligence agent, travel writer, novelist, and adventurer. Kokio testifies to the value and power of the biographical novel, which, in this instance, does the important cultural and historical work of resurrecting a nearly lost life.” —Michael Lackey, author of THE AMERICAN BIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL and TRUTHFUL FICTIONS: Conversations with American Biographical Novelists

Now available from Tellectual Press for the Amazon Kindle and in print: http://tellectual.com/Kokio.html

16/02/2016

Dr. Robert M. Price takes a critical look at the moral foundation of Christianity and its main character. With a Foreword by Dr. Valerie Tarico, author of “Trusting Doubt.”

http://tellectual.com/Blaming-Jesus-for-Jehovah.html

“... a masterpiece of scholarship. In accessible, clear, and plain language it exposes the moral bankruptcy of Christianity.” —Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists.

13/02/2016

Christians consider their religion virtually synonymous with morality, believing there can be no moral standard without a God to guarantee it, no moral behavior without belief in God and knowledge of his commandments. Disbelievers are objects of their suspicion, tarred with labels like “relativist” and “nihilist.” But buried under the benign and placid surface of their own theology lies a ticking moral time bomb, and most of them have never realized the sinister implications of what they purport to believe.

Having his loins girt with a lifelong regard for rational truth, wearing the breastplate of former fundamentalism and the helmet of biblical scholarship, Dr. Robert M. Price does some bomb squad investigation around the deadly and hidden charge lurking under the moral foundations of Christianity.

Includes a Foreword by Dr. Valerie Tarico, author of “Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light.”

http://tellectual.com/Blaming-Jesus-for-Jehovah.html

08/11/2015

“Abraham’s Excellent Adventure”: You’ll never look at this Bible story the same way again. Free for your Amazon Kindle until November 11.

http://tellectual.com/Abrahams-Excellent-Adventure.html

The noises were starting again, growling and coughing in the darkness. Panic crawled up Abraham’s arms and shook the calm of the cool desert night loose from his mind. He je**ed his head, instinctively, to spot the source of the deep breathing...

08/11/2015

Get “Abraham’s Excellent Adventure” for your Kindle, free until Nov. 11.

http://amzn.com/B0106UR0LU

Abraham ventures into the desert with his son Isaac to offer up a horrible sacrifice to the God he hears commanding him, and he is stopped by an Angel. But, it turns out, things are quite a bit different from the Bible story we learned about in Sunday School. Will we ever look at the biblical Abr...

31/10/2015

“When we milked the cows every morning and afternoon, we took the fresh milk to this porch and separated the milk and the cream using our ‘separator.’ (The ‘separator’ was a cool farm tool needed on any ranch worthy of the name.)

—Gerald Hickman, Good Times in Old Genesee: A Tale of Two Families (Tellectual Press, 2015). See http://tellectual.com/Good-Times-in-Old-Genesee.html

18/09/2015

In his new book Moses and Minimalism, Dr. Robert M. Price applies the critical scrutiny of his biblical scholarship to an Old Testament figure as central, and yet mythical, as he has found Jesus of the New Testament to be. Available from Tellectual Press in paperback ($9.99) and for the Amazon Kindle ($6.99).

http://tellectual.com/Moses-and-Minimalism.html

The saga of Moses the Lawgiver is a mighty oak that has grown strong and thick through the centuries from an acorn of information found in the first five books of the Bible. But even the biblical Moses was the product of earlier stories...

14/07/2015

A sobering article in The Guardian. Free, of course, because who would read it otherwise?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/02/bestseller-novel-to-bust-author-life

Robert McCrum talks to award-winning authors who are struggling to make ends meet

14/03/2015

“Behind them was the depth of the wood, fresh and untarnished, and shadowy even now when the sun, high on the meridian, was making small all shadows. The sleep of the young world was as yet like that of all other young things, untroubled and sweet to look upon. There was no sound except the insistent song of the insects in the hot grasses of the meadows, and no movement except when the air moved slowly through the leaves of the trees, from time to time, and they woke and stirred, and some palm tree, lifting its head above the Garden, would wave its fronds with a gentle gesture.”

—EDEN by Murray Sheehan. Reprinted by Tellectual Press: http://tellectual.com/Eden.html

A new reprint of a great old book by Murray Sheehan. Available for Kindle and in paperback from Tellectual Press.

08/03/2015

From “Eden” by Murray Sheehan, our new reprint of a great old book. He paints a beautiful picture with his words.

21/02/2015

“And now here she lay, compounded all of subtle curves and delicate surfaces, of balanced shapes and colors, fine textures and a rhythmical flow of line, before the eyes of God, awaiting His breath within her nostrils that should make her live.”

From EDEN by Murray Sheehan, a great retelling of the Genesis human-origins story. Beautifully written and still very engaging to read nearly a century later. Now available in a paperback and ebook reprint by Tellectual Press: http://tellectual.com/Eden.html

A great retelling of the Genesis human-origins story, beautifully written and still very engaging to read nearly a century later.

12/02/2015

Our new reprint of a great old book: “Eden,” a novel about the famous Garden. http://tellectual.com/Eden.html

“You put them in your mouth,” she laughed, “and you press your tongue against them, and you revel in the sweetness of the flesh and the juice, and then you swallow them. There, I told you that you knew nothing about life....”

01/11/2014

“Why do I remain a Christian despite all of my doubts, having so much in common with the doubters, skeptics, and religious critics out there who dig into the foundations of Christianity, only to discover that the entire structure is held together by nothing more than a thin and tattered piece of twine that appears as if it might snap at any moment? The answer is that I simply remain a person of faith.

“Yes, in this book we’ve explored some of Christianity’s worst aspects and moments. But during its best, transcendent moments like the marathon Liturgies of Eastern Orthodox Holy Week, my faith—as riddled with doubt as it may be—enables me to see my own existence for what it is, an insignificant moment in time on a tiny speck of dust in the Milky Way galaxy. It helps me to see what really matters: friends, family, loved ones, and helping others—not in search of a reward, but because we are all living on this speck of dust, together. At its best, my faith enables me to look beyond the shadows of the world, by which our minds are veiled, and contemplate the holy and transcendent. And despite all my doubts, and the intellectual knowledge that there might not actually be anything beyond the shadows of this world, my faith is not something I could easily discard. Nor would I want to. It is a part of who I am, as much as my doubt is.”

From Freedom to Doubt, Tellectual Press’s second title, available until Nov. 3 for Amazon Kindle at the discounted price of just $0.99.

http://amzn.com/B00GM0J74M

In his second book, Charles Shingledecker goes beyond The Crazy Side of Orthodoxy to look at the issues confronting all traditions of Christianity. He accompanies fellow believers on an entertaining and informative journey through the Bible, Church history, and the nature of Christian belief. Nar...

06/08/2014

Commenter “Gogg” who has a blog at headdust.blogspot.com said this about indie/self publishers:

“Your front gate is just one of millions in Amazon City, and these front gates all look pretty much the same, and outside these front gates are all the authors with their home-made cardboard signs trying to catch the eye of the people in the search-engine buses as they pass by (usually along some highway in the distance).”

Well put.

"Ultimately, it does not matter whether the Suriv-Suriv exist or not; what matters is whether or not they are valid."- Ludo Neizvestny (introduction to the second edition of Rachel Alter’s The Road Has No Shadow)

14/06/2014

A new book, edited by Dr. Robert M. Price: http://tellectual.com/

Willem Christiaan van Manen was the greatest of the once-notorious Dutch Radical Critics who went far beyond F.C. Baur and the Tübingen School, arguing that the historical Paul wrote none of the epistles that bear his name...

24/08/2013

Reading Tellectual's next book from cover to cover, after hours spent editing the thing. It's a different kind of reading, with only an occasional bit of mark-up and finally allowing myself to immerse myself in the writer's ideas for their own sake. Good stuff.

15/07/2013

“All I claim, all I plead is simple liberty of thought. That is all. I do not pretend to tell what is true and all the truth. I do not claim that I have floated level with the heights of thought, or that I have descended to the depths of things; I simply claim that what idea I have I have a right to express, and any man that denies it to me is an intellectual thief and robber. That is all. I say, take those chains off from the human soul; I say, break these orthodox fetters, and if there are wings to the spirit let them be spread. That is all I say.”

—Robert G. Ingersoll (who actually had quite a bit to say, in the late 1800s), in his “Lecture on the Liberty of Man, Woman and Child.”

12/06/2013

“Getting Personal”: A posting on my blog about the personal disclosure and social costs associated with writing about delicate subjects like religion.

http://edsuom.blogspot.com/2013/06/getting-personal.html

... It feels a bit personal for some parts of my story being read so widely. I write about this huge, Laestadian-sized family of mine and my early evolution-inspired doubts regarding the faith into which I was born....

28/05/2013

Here are some sobering stats for independent publishers and aspiring authors.

In “2004, 950,000 titles out of the 1.2 million tracked by Nielsen Bookscan sold fewer than 99 copies. Another 200,000 sold fewer than 1,000 copies. Only 25,000 sold more than 5,000 copies. The average book in America sells about 500 copies. . . [O]nly 10 books sold more than a million copies last year, and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000.” —Chris Anderson, “A Bookselling Tail,” Publisher’s Weekly (July 14, 2006).

“According to BookScan, which tracks most bookstore, online, and other retail sales of books, only 299 million books were sold in 2008 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined. The average U.S. book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime.” —Steven Piersanti, President, Berrett-Koehler Publishers (June 15, 2009).

The two sets of figures don’t line up: Anderson tells us that books sell an average of 500 copies each, while Piersanti (three years later, in the face of declining books sales) cites an average figure six times as high. That is much higher than Anderson’s figure, and would be difficult to account for with Piersanti’s own figure of annual sales being less than 250 copies.

The bottom line is that this is something you do for the love of ideas and words, not for money. Now, I have a manuscript to edit...

09/05/2013

Tellectual Press is pleased to announce that it will be publishing Charles Shingledecker’s second book, FREEDOM TO DOUBT. Chuck continues his insightful yet lighthearted discussion of the many doctrinal dilemmas faced by believers, this time looking beyond the Canon Laws of his own Eastern Orthodox Christianity to the Bible, the history of the Christian Church, and the nature of God. It is a compassionate conversation with the faithful, not an indictment or put-down of them, a book that I would have loved to read when I was a doubting Christian myself. I hope it offers some comfort and grace, if not closure, to those making their own lonely way through the dark night of the soul.

Ed Suominen
Manager, Tellectual LLC dba Tellectual Press

24/04/2013

Editing and typesetting does something to your experience of reading books. I have a brand new hardcover in my hands about a fascinating topic, written by a respected author. And as I go through it, I keep noticing things other than the actual content.

"Nice cover design! Clean, crisp font, looks like Palatino 12-point. I like how the page numbers are set off from the body text. Hmmm, he uses the em dash (with no surrounding spaces) quite a bit, too. Engaging sentences, not too long-winded or jarringly short. Boldfaced epigraphs? That's different! Slightly smaller text in block quotes: That seems to work."

Sigh. I wonder if they will ever just be books again.

11/04/2013

Evolving out of Eden is selling at a respectable pace. (Last time I checked today, it was #3 on Amazon’s Kindle store in its main “Science & Religion” category). Discussed more manuscript possibilities with an author today. This is starting to seem real!

04/04/2013

Tellectual Press has been in existence for less than two months, its first book title was released two weeks ago, and now it has two more manuscripts under review. I’m having “two” much fun, misspelling and pun intended.

One is Robert M. Price’s edited collection of English writings from W.C. van Manen, one of the “Dutch radical” theologians who raised questions about just who wrote the supposedly “Pauline” epistles of the New Testament. He argued that the historical Paul wrote none of those epistles, arguments that Dr. Price says have never been adequately refuted.

The other is a very promising manuscript from an author who has published elsewhere but is considering entrusting his next book to Tellectual Press. Pretty cool stuff.