Open Disclosure

This week, I found myself in a moral dilemma.

I have a book tour blog, Virtual Book Tour de Net, where I post blurbs, interviews, trailers and the occasional review. My guidelines say that as long as it's not hate-promoting or erotica, I'm glad to post it. And for the most part I am. People have different tastes and biases and I respect that. I've come to the attention of a couple of great book-promotion companies, who ask me to tour their clients. I'm honored to this for them, and have found they're terrific people to work with.

One of those is Pump Up Your Book Promotion. They're a full service online book promotions firm. They've sent me some fun titles. This month, I toured for them Marvin Zimmerman's The Ovum Factor--and eco-thriller. I went to their site to get the information, and saw he had a trailer, so I checked it out. About a fourth of the way in, an obviously Catholic bishop or cardinal says, "Scientific research is the ultimate threat to God's creation."

Those of you who know me will understand why I stopped right there, why I will never buy this book and why I'm blogging this now.

For those that don't: I write Catholic sci-fi. My husband, Rob's, and my first book, Infinite Space, Infinite God is a rebuttal to this whole Church vs. Science cliché that is not only wrong but stupid and reflecting a narrow-minded albeit popular bias--as anyone who does a few minutes of research into the history of the Church will discover. (No, I don't feel strongly on this subject. Why do you ask?)

I thought about not promoting his book on my site. However, I said myself that as long as it's not hate-mongering or erotica, I'm glad to post it. I don't believe his book is doing either. I'm more inclined to think that he's jumped on the DaVinci Code trendy bandwagon by using the Catholic Church as a conspirator than that he has some particular bias against the Church or religion. And, at least according to his trailer, they are part of a broader group of "conservative forces" out to stop his hero. Nonetheless, it does not matter.

I have no intention of reading Zimmerman's book. I don't want to contribute to his royalties. Regardless of what his book says, if he's content to let his trailer broadcast this message, it's enough to stop me.

I'm posting this along with a link to my site and the Zimmerman's page on Pump Up Your Book Promotion which has the video along with a synopsis. If eco-thrillers are your thing, go look and make up your own mind before you buy.

I don't want to make a big deal of this, but I felt I needed to make it clear where I stand.