Into The Duat Blogs

If Music be the Food of Love...

Just a quick note to mention a new venture that I am involved with here in LA. My friend, Ace and myself have decided to start a weekly radio podcast, with our shared love of all things rock and music being the hook. To that end, today we went to see Asia (Feat. John Payne) singer John Payne in his recording studio for an in-depth interview about the past, present and future. It was a great way to spend an afternoon and we finished up with great sushi too!

John is a great guy and was very frank in his interview, outlining the split between himself and Geoff Downes, the latest happenings on the Asia and GPS fronts and what it was like to step into the boots of Phil Lynott when he undertook the War of the Worlds stage production tour.

I will edit the interview down, put in a few of John's recorded work (including an exclusive peek at a brand new track) and add it to the recorded show itself, then up on iTunes as a podcast it goes. I'll also make it available here at Into The Duat. Ace and I will be heading off to the NAMM show next weekend (a huge music trade show here) and will be grabbing more great interviews then. We also have the likes of Lemmy from Motorhead, Ronnie James Dio from Heaven & Hell and many others lined up for the coming weeks. Should be a lot of fun.

Not really in the DUAT area, but I thought I would share it with you nevertheless. I'm an old hippy really and in a previous life I worked in the music business, so old habits die hard. Rock, prog, metal, alt and avant garde are my musical areas of expertise, so expect more of this in the coming weeks (in between visiting ancient sites, writing books, doing TV shows and making DVDs!!). 2009 has started beautifully. Its a big year. A year of change and a year of hope.

LA Dreaming...

So finally its 2009. I say finally because I have been planning for this year for what seems like an eternity now. Now that I am sitting here in LA, I thought I would give you a brief insight into what the following 12 months will hold for myself and Into The Duat.

The new website will be up and running in a matter of weeks. This is being prepared and finialised in the background as I type this. The site will feature not only these blogs (at present this site is just the cut down section of blogs), but also full articles, a video channel, a radio show, guest writers, interviews, competitions, a members area, a store, book and media reviews, and much else besides. Day to day news will not be featured as Greg over at The Daily Grail already does a pretty good job on that front.

A new publishing venture, to be called DUAT BOOKS will be launched. We will be publishing both new writers and long out of print facsimile editions. On the new writers front, we have Chris McClintock from Northern Ireland, whose trilogy, Sun of God, will shake a few cages especially in masonic history circles. Established authors such as myself, Ian Robertson and Mark Oxbrow will also be published through the new imprint. David Ritchie's magnum Opus (working title - Makers of Time) will also see the light of day through the new venture. We will be publishing the books of William Comyns Beaumont as both limited and standard editions too. These facsimile editions will be lovingly reproduced from original sources and will include new introductions by myself along with new research. All these books will be available via the traditional hard copy bookshop route, as well as digital download copies for Amazon Kindle, iPhone eBooks, PDFs and a host more.

Unlocking The Solomon Key will get to see the light of day at last. My book will be an A to Z of the Dan Brown novel, The Solomon Key, which will be out in the not too distant future - certainly in the first half of this year - my book deal for this was actually signed four years ago!

Into The Duat TV. This will be our very own video channel hosted at Vimeo and featuring standard and high definition videos of sites, interviews, video blogs, exclusive footage and much more.

There is much more happening of course, but thats a wee taster of some of things we are bringing to you. A few of us are also working on getting a few events together - conferences and shows with a difference - nothing like you've seen before. Happy New Year to all. 2009 promises to be an exciting one all round.

Simon Cox

Greetings from the North

Hey Simon,

Great to see 'Into the Duat', up and running. This is going to be the place where serious researchers will find amazing discussions and information about familiar and not so familiar topics. Since we all last met up in Esoteric Edinburgh I've been involved in helping with the arrangements for the Histories and Mysteries weekend on the 22 and 23 November.

The line up of speakers looks great and I'm particularly excited about seeing the Mitchell Hedges Crystal Skull. Whatever people think about the 'Skull of Doom', for me it will always remain a symbol of all that is mysterious. In his numerous explorations into 'the mysterious world', Arthur C Clark continually stated that this beautiful gem was the most enigmatic thing he had ever seen in his life.

For anyone interested in this UK exclusive there are now just a few tickets left.

Conference Details Here

Best wishes
Ian Robertson

From an iPhone too!

There's no getting away from how cool this whole blogging idea is. I can even blog directly from my iPhone, as I am now. Never an excuse anymore not to inundate you all with innane ramblings and musings!

Simon

Gobbledy and Gook

To Typepad or not, that is the question. Well, sort of. I'm researching what is the best Weblog management software for the site and its down to Typepad, Movable Type and Wordpress. Not an easy choice for someone who has no real idea what its all about! The blog that you are reading now was written in Typepad, easily done, easily managed and remotely hosted. Movable Type and Wordpress are in effect, software packages that you store on your web hosting service, in your root folder, and they provide an interface directly within your hosted site to interact with. Not so easy. CSS, HTML, PHP, SQL, PERL and other such unfathomable linguistics face you when you take this route. Good job Mark Foster understands all of this....I hope!

I've added some books to the reading list for this month and also added a hearing list to suggest musical accompaniment for your reading interludes. Of course, its all pretty personal and most would listen to my suggestions and conclude that I really had lost my marbles. Its pretty avant garde and a wee bit strange. Intense, but satisfying I think.

Well, its coming along. Now back to the gobbledygook and some decisions to make.....

Simon Cox

The Road To Rosetau

My new business cards arrived today. Into The Duat they proudly display. This is going to be an adventure, I can feel it in my bones! The new website is coming along well. Lots of work still to do with it, but Mark Foster and myself are working away in the background to get it all together before the holiday season sets in. Previously, Mark and myself have had both rosetau.com and kheraha.com as our web homes respectively and these two sites with their original content will be incorporated into the new domain. What's more, the work of geometer and writer David Ritchie, Freemason and writer Chris McClintock, folklorist and author Mark Oxbrow, and his co author (and Freemason) Ian Robertson, will all be featured on the site as fixtures - with regular guest writers and researchers also becoming part of the whole experience. Should be a whole lot of fun........

First blog...

Is there anyone out there?

So, here I am at last, blogging for the first time. As an author and a researcher, I really should have had a blog an age ago, but somehow simply never got round to it. Better late than never I suppose. Its a rather later (or early) 4AM on a Tuesday morning and I should be fast asleep. I have a meeting in London tomorrow afternoon and much to do, but with the aid of some great music and with laptop on, well, my lap, here I am typing away, ready to send it off into the ether like a modern day message in a bottle. My desert island is in the deep wilds of southern England - a damp, cold and windy southern England at that...........