Marc Morrone talks Birds 101...

Television personality Marc Morrone is here doing what he does best, educating the public about pet keeping. This is a great, concise primer on the pros and cons of keeping exotic birds as companion animals:



Marc had some very kind words for my third novel, Little Birdies! :

"One of my favorite books of all time was Watership Down, by Richard Adams. The author's descriptions of the pastoral English countryside were vivid and organic, and transported the reader into an imaginary world in ways that only a great novel can do.

It's that ability to carry readers away and immerse them in a fictional world that I most like about Little Birdies! by Anthony F. Lewis. The fact that the setting for much of the book was New York's densely forested Hudson Valley and the spectacular Mohonk Mountain House only upped the measure of personal satisfaction for me. Lewis captures the region's look and feel in a manner that effortlessly sweeps the reader away to the woodland steams and primordial highlands that inhabit the story.

Another mark of a world-class novelist--the late Michael Crichton comes to mind here--is attention to detail; especially scientific detail. There are few things more upsetting for me than when an author ruins a perfectly good story by getting the facts wrong. Such is not the case here. Like Crichton, Lewis has exhaustively researched his subject matter, providing the reader with a convincing and realistic platform from which to launch the story.

There are many good stories around. What sets books like Little Birdies! apart from the rest is the author's attention to detail and the ease with which he draws the reader into the story. Do yourself a favor ... curl up with a copy of Little Birdies! and be prepared to be transported."

 Read the opening chapters of Little Birdies! here, the reviews here. And, of course, the book is available at Amazon, in both softcover and Kindle editions,

Paleontologist Jack Horner on Building a Dinosaur from a Chicken...

Recorded at TED (Technology Entertainment and Design, March 2011), famed paleontologist Jack Horner touches on subjects ranging from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, to recovering soft tissue from fossilized dinosaur bones, to his own efforts to retro-engineer a dinosaur from a chicken embryo. "If you want dinosaur DNA, go to the dinosaur." Fascinating stuff...



For my take on the subject, be sure to check out Little Birdies!  As always, you can read the opening chapters here.

"Birds are technically dinosaurs."

In a far-ranging, almost hour long discussion, famed paleontologist Jack Horner talks about all things dinosaurs. The dino-chicken discussion start around 15:00. About a half-hour in, he talks about what a very tiny window on the past we actually have, that fossilization is extremely rare, and how it is limited by location and continental geologic activity spanning millions of years. The Jurassic Park/Michael Crichton discussion starts at about 48:00. If you're interested in dinosaurs/paleontology, put on a pot of coffee; this one is well worth your time.


"Dinosaurs were the dominant land animal for 140 million years, and those are the extinct ones; they're still a dominant animal as birds. So how and why a few big, clunky ones went extinct is, to me, not interesting at all."  Fascinating stuff...

And if that's not enough for you, please be sure to check out Little Birdies!  "...you'll never look at birds the same again! "

More on the CBS/Jack Horner segment: Real-Life Jurassic Park...

Lesley Stahl was on the CBS Early Show pitching her 60 Minutes segment. They're going to be covering the T-Rex soft-tissue controversy, and it looks like she's giving a lot of time to Prof. Horner's dinosaur retro-engineering/dino-chicken idea...



Must-see TV...
You know, you could always read about dino-birds here: Little Birdies! 

Paleontologist Jack Horner on 60 Minutes this Sunday...

Famed "Jurassic Park" paleontologist Jack Horner will be interviewed by Lesley Stahl this Sunday (Nov. 15, 2009).

"(CBS) If you saw "Jurassic Park," you've already met Jack Horner - sort of. That's because he was the inspiration for the film's main character, paleontologist Alan Grant, and he worked as a consultant on all three films. 

 To find out what Horner is like in real life, 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl met him at a dig site in the badlands of Montana and reports on how the famed dinosaur hunter is shaking up the paleontology world like a rampaging T. Rex - claiming to have found organic material from dinosaurs that has survived for tens of millions of years.

Her story will be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT." 

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Should be good...
Read the entire article here: Scientist's Dino Findings Making Waves

Preview of Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes...

The first seven chapters (56 pages) of the late Michael Crichton's new novel, Pirate Latitudes, have been posted on the Harper Collins web site. You can get there from here. Very cool...

Michael Crichton on the impulse toward totalitarianism...

Michael Crichton died a year ago yesterday, November 4, 2008, leaving the world of the imagination that much poorer for the loss. Not only were his works entertaining, but his was a powerful voice against groupthink, both social and scientific. Here he is talking to a high-school class, discussing his curiosity about people who cannot and will not mind their own business:

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