a few days ago, i read

an article

about william s. burroughs and the church of scientology. now, i’m not an egomaniac, but given that i literally

wrote the book

on the subject, i expected a mention.

alas, it seems that the blogger in question neglected to read my book. instead, he pulled a few links from google and wrote a short article. it’s not the worst blog post in the world, but offers little of substance.

then today, a friend e-mailed me a follow-up article , this time from openculture. as i began to read, i realized that the author had delved a little deeper in search of some additional commentary.

alas, when i reached the end, there was no mention of my book. not only had the author not read it, nor any of my supporting articles and essays, but he failed even to offer a “for further reading, check out…"

naturally, i was disappointed.

there has been a lot of talk of scientology recently with the high-profile departure of yet another member: leah remini. various news sources, in reporting, have cited other high-profile defections, including burroughs. but there has been no mention of my book - the only one to fully cover his story.

call it sour grapes, but i was annoyed. i don’t expect every journalist to read the book cover-to-cover, but at least to acknowledge its existence.

but no.

nothing.

what bugs me the most is that the second article, from openculture, cites an essay by lee konstantinou. this article was what initially prompted me to write the book, because it completely butchers the facts. it gets dates wrong and makes bad assumptions. i don’t mean to slander the author but the essay is now outdated and debunked, and yet due to its positioning on google, it is the go-to article for lazy journalists and bloggers.

granted, all of this has helped sales. my book is doing incredibly well this month because people are delving a little deeper, but for those who don’t, or go no further than konstantinou’s essay, the facts are out of reach.