Into a Sky Below, Forever Official Release Day!

The day has officially arrived! My second book, Into a Sky Below, Forever arrives at stores across the web today.

Here’s the cover description:

Moving. Disturbing. In Denver, a young woman grows up terrorized by something massive and unnatural that watches her while she sleeps. In west Texas, a boy’s world unravels as his brother relates an encounter with a strange figure in the woods. Struggling with insomnia and depression, a man named Mitch begins speaking to a creature of folklore in the trees behind his house. And along the plains of the Rocky Mountains, two college students discover a house that should not exist.

These stories and more make up Karl Pfeiffer’s first collection following his debut novel, Hallowtide. Ranging from fiction to non-fiction, from the poetic to the profane, Into a Sky Below, Forever examines the thin places, where the wild leaks into the refined, the supernatural bleeds into the physical, reality blends with fiction, and where the only things left holding the world together are the things that truly matter the most.

This is a book about birth and rebirth: it’s a study of cycles, sex, and ouroboric processes; it’s an examination of the ways we grow up, grow strong, grow together, and grow apart; an autopsy of the ways we love and rage and reproduce and repeat again.

As always, it’s about finding light amidst the darkness.

On Twitter, three weeks ago, I posted a call to arms for my followers to buy the book today, Monday, if at all possible. With the lack of a presale option for indie-published authors, we’re immediately put at a severe disadvantage compared to the traditional approach, despite all Amazon does to support indies. The only reason pre-sales are well-loved is because they take three month’s worth of early sales and put them through on the same day, shot-gunning a book to rapid-seller, and most-popular lists in an instant.

So I ask that, if you are interested in this book at all, if you might buy it one day, you drop $.99 on a Kindle copy today. Hell, even if you don’t have a Kindle, support the book! It’s the price of a coffee size-upgrade.

But if Kindle’s not your thing, there are other places to pick the book up too. There are sites that will be carrying the book, but because of various approval processes, this could be the difference of hours or days. However, each format is available somewhere on the web. I’ll list them below as they stand now, on the release-day morning.

Kindle is available on Amazon. (The hard copy will be there whenever Amazon’s robots decide they should push their button)

The hard copy is available right now through the Createspace e-store. (in the interest of full disclosure, shipping is kinda expensive on this option, for whatever reason).

Nook is available through Barnes and Noble.

The iTunes epub file may not be going up on the iTunes Store at all (because iTunes is the biggest nightmare to work with in the world), but you can download the epub file from Smashwords. (Or you can download the Nook file, and it should look and function the same).

I’ll keep you updated as to when Amazon starts pushing the hard copy.

Otherwise… buy, read, and I do so hope you enjoy it.

-Karl

Into a Sky Below, Forever Cover Release!

Kicking off August and the late summer, the cover for my next book, Into a Sky Below, Forever — a collection of short stories, non-fiction, and poems — is finally here!

The back cover description (subject to change):

“In Denver, a young woman grows up terrorized by something unnatural that watches her while she sleeps. In West Texas, a boy’s world unravels as his brother relates an encounter with a strange figure in the woods. In a small suburban neighborhood, a man named Mitch begins speaking to a creature of folklore in the trees behind his house. Along the plains of the Rocky Mountains, two college students discover a house that should not exist. And on the Oregon coast, one young man comes to terms with the inevitability of all things. 

These and other stories make up Karl Pfeiffer’s first collection following his debut novel, Hallowtide. Ranging from fiction to non-fiction, from poetry to the profane, Into A Sky Below, Forever again brings us to Pfeiffer’s territory of the thin places: Thin places where the wild leaks into the refined and the supernatural bleeds into the physical; Places where reality appears in fiction, and where fiction disturbs the delicate fabric of reality; Places where it’s only poetry that can grasp at what it is that’s beyond us, where the only things left holding the world together are the things that truly matter the most.

This is a book about birth and rebirth. It’s a book about cycles and it’s a book about sex. It’s infancy and childhood and relationships and divorce and death and spirit, and the way these things repeat in time. As always, it’s about finding light in the darkness.” 

September 16. 2013.

 

 

Recommended Paranormal Reading

A fantastic question, and one that I wish I get more often. I answered this one a couple months ago, but thought it might be easier to lay it out in a blog.

Caveats of course come in the sense that there’s still dozens upon dozens of wonderful and mind-bending books on the paranormal that I haven’t gotten to yet. But there are a few that I think would be wonderful if people started getting their hands on.

1. Paranormal Technology: Understanding the Science of Ghost Hunting by David Rountree. 

If there is one book any serious technical investigator of the paranormal should read, it’s this one. Where in today’s paranormal world many teams are largely ignorant to scientific theories, equipment, and genuine methodologies, this book is quintessential reading to help understand not only how the tools you’re using work, but what they’re measuring. Some is over my head. Some is borderline scientistic and narrow-sighted, but overall required reading. There’s a big part of me that wants to suggest to any investigator to not use any piece of technology again until after reading this book.

 

 

2. Psychic Explorations: A Challenge for Science, Understanding the Nature and Power of Consciousness by Edgar D. Mitchell. 

The paranormal extends SO much farther than simply ghosts. If you want your mind BLOWN when it comes to the paranormal, you absolutely must read this book. A compilation of articles from psi researchers in 1973, this book synthesizes data collected by three generations of psychical researchers, whose conclusions come up again and again that the existence of psychic abilities have been effectively proven to exist, and that the next step is learning more about how they work. Readable. Mind-bending. Wonderful. It’s thoroughly referenced and footnoted, so opportunities for further reading abound. 

(From my reading in this, I’ve got sitting near my headboard my on-deck reading, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by FWH Myers and The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena by Dean Radin, which has gotten a wealth of wonderful reader reviews on Amazon.)

 

3. The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel. 

But the paranormal doesn’t stop at spirits and psychic phenomena. In fact, much of my reading list strays away from ghosts on their own entirely. Because of popular culture right now, we all get the general ideas behind the existence of ghosts. How many of us, after watching the first two seasons of Ghost Hunters can relay the three types of haunting and how EVP is different from disembodied voice? Keel’s Mothman Prophecies is a true achievement in paranormal research. Though I’m a big fan of the Pellington-directed movie, the book is fantastic reading. Diving so deeply into the strange events at point pleasant, Keel can’t help but become a part of the story. Despite breaking one of the first rules of journalism, the book then becomes instantly engaging on a level not purely intellectual, but reads as good as a fiction thriller. Mothman Prophecies brings together UFOlogy, some of the earliest reports of the Men in Black phenomena, poltergeist-type happenings, cryptids, and the titular prophecies. Where one phenomena stops and another begins? That’s the real question below this book.

(Note: Keel also wrote the wonderful Our Haunted Planet, which, while eye-opening as it dissects ancient mythology and the potential reality of gods, aliens, and faeries, is poorly referenced throughout, making many of his lofty claims immediately suspect to the careful reader. Though I’ve only read the opening chapters, it seems that Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia–which is available used for $400 dollars on amazon, or as a free PDF on a quick google search–is a much better presented exploration of similar study).

4. Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience by Anthony Steinbock

Readers familiar with my areas of research know that in much of college, I focused a lot of study on philosophy of religions (both east and west) as well as an emphasis on mysticism. Mysticism is the practice of having an experience of something divine or transcendent of the world around us. Steinbock’s textbook examines what makes a spiritual experience inherently spiritual and where it crosses with the world around us. Indeed, as paranormal researchers, if we are coming into contact with beings or creatures from a plane truly beyond our own, the similarities in experiences immediately come together. If any researchers are interested in the broader implications of what it means to contact beings from “somewhere beyond”, Steinbock is a must read.

(Mystical experience is broadly classified and broadly researched in a way that much of the paranormal hasn’t. Some other books for reading on the subject include William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience. James was one of the founding members of the Society for Psychical research, which is necessarily referenced in Mitchell’s Psychic Explorations book. Funny how they all start linking together again, isn’t it? Also, try Sufism and Taoism: A Comparative Study of Key Philosophical Concepts, Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief, and Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience.)

5. Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans by Malachi Martin

It should be noted that I have a problem with fundamental religious belief (which you’ll understand far more deeply if you pursue the mystical readings), but Martin’s book on possession is one of the best. It very thoroughly documents five case studies on various possessions that he researched. Where many television shows today like to throw around the “demon” word to keep their episodes exciting for the audience at home, the reality of demonic possession is shocking and very different. This book explores not only the exorcisms, but the circumstances surrounding the onset of the possession. This can be difficult to digest for the non-religious reader, as its very fundamentalist. But Martin is a professional and does a fine job of presenting the circumstances with very little bias. Even from the 1970s and with deeply religious background, such topics as transgender individuals are handled gracefully, though certain implications do leave a critical reader a bit wary. Regardless, as a study on the fact of possession, there’s much that cannot be denied, and the presentation here borders on masterpiece.

(If demonology is your thing, there is some fascinating reading on the subject. I also recommend The Dark Sacrament by David Kiely and Christina McKenna and The Rite by Matt Baglio).

Honorable Mention: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion by James George Frazer.

The first time I tossed out these books on twitter, I added also that you should read anything that John Tenney recommends. If he told me there was insight in the phone book, I’d take to the phone book with a magnifying glass. At the time, his go-to book to add to the list was The Golden Bough. Because of his recommendation, this fat tome is sitting on my shelf patiently waiting my read. Written around the turn of the 20th century, this book is considered a foundation for modern-day Anthropology, studying how beliefs over time have changed from magic to religion, and from religion to science.

Those are my suggestions, caveats and thoughts and all. I do hope these help. If you have any suggestions of your own, feel free to sound off in the comments down below!

 

Karl Pfeiffer won the first season of Ghost Hunters Academy and went on to work with the Ghost Hunters International team. He’s the author of the novel Hallowtide, writes for the TAPS Paramagazine and Paranormal Pop Culture Blog, works with investigative teams across Colorado, lectures across America, and leads the public ghost hunts at the Stanley Hotel. More can be found at www.KarlPfeiffer.com

 

Into A Sky Below, Forever

As I mentioned last night on Paranormal Happy Hour over at LiveParanormal.com, I’m planning on releasing my next book early this fall.

It’s going to be called Into A Sky Below, Forever.

From the cover:

“In Denver, a young woman grows up terrorized by something unnatural that watches her while she sleeps. In West Texas, a boy’s world unravels as his brother relates an encounter with a strange figure in the woods. In a small suburban neighborhood, a man named Mitch begins speaking to a creature of folklore in the trees behind his house. Along the plains of the Rocky Mountains, two college students discover a house that should not exist. And on the Oregon coast, one young man comes to terms with the inevitability of all things. 

These and other stories make up Karl Pfeiffer’s first collection following his debut novel, Hallowtide. Ranging from fiction to non-fiction, from poetry to the profane, Into A Sky Below, Forever again brings us to Pfeiffer’s territory of the thin places: Thin places where the wild leaks into the refined and the supernatural bleeds into the physical; Places where reality appears in fiction, and where fiction disturbs the delicate fabric of reality; Places where it’s only poetry that can grasp at what it is that’s beyond us, where the only things left holding the world together are the things that truly matter the most.”

Into A Sky Below, Forever is set to be released in September.

FREE PDF of HALLOWTIDE

I self-published my first novel, Hallowtide, this past October. It’s March now and I want to give it away for free. I put seven years into this book, writing revision after revision, enlisted the help of a number of brilliant editors, and worked on the book’s design for six months before its publication. There’s always errors and more to fix, but I wouldn’t release something I’m not proud of, and there’s nothing I’ve done yet in life that I’m more proud of than this novel.

To go to a free PDF of the novel Hallowtide, go ahead and click this link: Hallowtide Free PDF

or click the photo below.

A self-published debut novel is a hard sell. I get that. There’s a lot of crap out there. I also get that free is the way of the future. It’s more important to me to have my work spread first, and trust that it’s good enough to help support me later. Writing is one of my two greatest passions, and it’s the dream to be able to support myself financially while working on the next project.

The only thing I ask in return is your time to read it and chew on it a bit and, if you feel so moved, to maybe toss a review on amazon to help generate more interest. Of course, digital and hard copies are also available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes if you’d like something fancier.

Thanks all! I hope it moves you the way it has moved me for the past seven years.

Hallowtide is the story of one young man and a journey to Hell. Thought he can’t remember it, Will Andrews was a victim of a high school shooting in 2001. They found Will, bleeding out beside the gunman, pistol in his hand, apparently having saved what could have been hundreds of lives. Now, five years later, he’s crippled by nightmares of Hell.

These nightmares, his therapist  believes, are likely one half of himself desperately trying to communicate with the other. But the deeper Will digs at both the dreams and the shooting, the more the lines between reality and fiction are blurred, and he finds himself in a place where nightmare bleeds into memory, the spiritual leaks into the physical, and the world as he knows it threatens to dissolve entirely. 

Both heart-wrenchingly beautiful, and deeply harrowing, Hallowtide combines Jungian theory with echoes of classic descent narratives, deconstructing western philosophy, depression, religion, and the 21st century sense of the self, while following one young man’s fall into Stygian wasteland and the journey that will change him forever. 

Again, you can click the graphic above to read the free PDF,

You can always find more at HallowtideNovel.com

And you can always find me at www.KarlPfeiffer.com and on twitter @KarlPfeiffer

HALLOWTIDE CONTEST

Here’s goes! I’m announcing a brand new, month-long contest for my novel, Hallowtide!

If you’ve yet to get on board with the Hallowtide train, well, for one: NOW is the time. For two: Here’s a link to the website if you’d like to check it out..

At the start of the month of April, I’m releasing an updated edition of Hallowtide to fix the occasional formatting issues or grammatical error that was overlooked in the initial editing sprint that ended last summer.

With this edition, I want to include some front matter from you guys. The readers.

There’s been a lot of love flying around for the book online already, and I want to bring that together in a Reader Review section at the start of the book, which will be made up of blurbs from YOU GUYS.

It’s going to be very simple. Here’s how it’ll work:

You pick yourself up a copy of Hallowtide. Kindle. Hard copy. Mobi. Whatever fits your fancy.

But you know what, money is tight these days too, I know. And you know what, I’m asking you guys to do me a solid. And you know what, I’d rather my book spread right now than demand ALL THE MONEYS from you.

So I’ll tell you what, I’m offering Hallowtide, in its entirety, FOR FREE as a PDF file through the end of March.

You can download or view the files HERE: Hallowtide PDF

Go ahead and send your friends copies. Tell them what I’m up to. I don’t mind.

It’s so simple:

Check out the book. Read the whole thing, digest it, and then head on over to Hallowtide’s page on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, or iTunes and leave a review. Include your first name, last initial, and state/country.

Now, obviously, blurbs are generally positive, but I value honesty over ego-boosters. So,

If you don’t like it, let me know. If you liked some parts and not others, let me know. I appreciate wit and insight. Leave your review in an honest, enthusiastic, witty, insightful, or comedic way, and I promise I’ll try to put it in the book.

The deadline for the reviews will be March 31, 2013. I’ll do my best to turn them around and have the book available for you guys WITH your blurbs at the front, by April Fool’s Day.

At the same time, I hope to have a page on the novel’s website for special ordering directly through me for personalized and signed copies, which are otherwise unavailable right now. Those will have a bit more of a delay, because I’ll have to order copies, sign, then resend them again to you.

And that’s the contest. Read the book, for free if you like. Leave a review. Get a blurb in the book or all over the website. Become famous for writing the greatest book review ever. Everybody wins. 

All I ask is your time.

(No purchase necessary, batteries not included, void where prohibited, side effects include but are not limited to death by hungry hungry hippos.)

Apple Giving You Errors When You Try to Upload Your eBook?

Wanted to do a quick post to help those other indie publishers out there who want to upload to iTunes, but are having difficulties (on a mac, sorry Windows friends).

There are plenty of good resources through google that will tell you how to format your work for ebook publishing, whether that be Kindle, Nook, iTunes, or whomever. And for the most part, the formatting is all the same. You get rid of tabs, font specifics, excessive returns, insert page breaks, build a table of contents, etc. Uploading to Kindle and Nook was a piece of cake. But Apple made things a headache. First getting approved for their publishing software, then downloading, then entering all the information in, all of that was easy enough. But when I clicked upload, I received a list of errors, like these:

“Error ITMS-9000: “Hallowtide_-_Karl_Pfeiffer.epub: Hallowtide_iTunes_Edition_split_000.htm(12): attribute “vlink” not allowed here; expected attribute “class”, “dir”, “id”, “Style”, “title” or “xml:lang”. This error occurs 47 times.” At Book (MZItmspBookPackage)”

or “ERROR ITMS-9000: “Hallowtide_-_Karl_Pfeiffer.epub: Hallowtide_iTunes_Edition_split_000.htm(13): element “apan” not allowed here; expected element “address”, “blockquote”, “del”, “div”, “dl”, “h1”, “h2”, “h3”, “h4”, “h5”, “h6”, “hr”, “ins”, “noscript”, “ns:svg”, “ol”, “p”, “pre”, “script”, “table” or “ul” (with xmlns:ns=”http://www.w3.org/2000/svg”). This error occurs 18 times.” at book (MZItmspBookPackage).

And so on.

The process of converting your book to ebook is essentially writing it in code the way you write a website in code. eReaders read the code the way that a browser reads website code, as far as I know. You start in word, you try to strip out all the bad formatting, save it as an html file, and then use a program to convert that file into the .mobi or .epub file as you want it for whatever store you’re using. The converter I used was Calibre, which was freaking awesome software, that worked in each case to give me a pretty, customized ebook that I could then upload and publish. Except for the one case: Apple.

The code that Word puts out is sloppy and filled with potentially problematic clutter. Anyone who knows anything about code hates word-published html. It was good enough for all devices but Apple it seems. After an hour or two of frantic research, the first Error that Apple called me on was for having a file name “Hallowtide-Karl Pfeiffer”, to which, anyone with coding background knows that spaces are bad, and should have an underscore, “_” instead. But digging into every error I got was a mess, so I called a gifted programmer friend and asked if he might be able to translate the errors and make the appropriate changes in the document.

This being my gifted programmer friend, he instead designed a program that would strip out all of Word’s bullshit code and make it pretty for Apple. And it worked.

So I’d like to share it with you if you’re having the same problem and might’ve found this post by a google search.

First of all, start in Word. Format the file according to traditional epub specifications. Then export as HTM.

Download Calibre here. Check up on the how to use Calibre, then export your book as an epub file for ipads.

Then click here to download the Fixit package that my programmer buddy made. (It’s not a virus, relax, it’s cool to open it).

(Edit: It’s come to my attention that due to the writing of the program, your file will need to be named “Hallowtide.epub” (no quotes) in order for the software to kick it out properly. It was the name of my first novel and I’m too passive/lazy to have my buddy tweak the program.)

Put your “Hallowtide.Epub” file in the same file as fixer/jar and fix_ebook.sh, the “Fixit” folder that was in the zip is easiest.

Open the program Terminal (if you’re on a mac), type the command:

cd “/Users/Your Computer Name/Desktop/Fixit” (Or the sequence of folders to wherever your folder downloaded to, or to where you moved it)

Followed by the commands:

chmod +x fix_ebook.sh

then:

./fix_ebook.sh

That should poop out a new cleaned up ebook that should be ready to be uploaded to Apple without problems. If that doesn’t work, in terminal, run:

./make_fix_ebook_2 (you may have to tweak security settings on your mac)

Then do whatever ./make_fix_ebook_2 told you to do.

I’ve run into some problems on later files, particularly if you have a lot of image files in your book. But past what I’ve got here, if it doesn’t help you, I can’t say I’m good for any more answers, not being a programmer. If you are a programmer and you’d like to download these files and fiddle with them to make a cleaner, smoother, program that can clean up the clutter from Word, you’re absolutely welcome to. Share this on forums if you’re having similar problems, or know of anyone else having a similar problem.

Karl Pfeiffer is the author of the novel Hallowtide. He was cast on and later won the first season of the pilot reality series Ghost Hunters Academy, and went on to work with the Ghost Hunters International team on the same network. He now works at the Stanley Hotel, leading the public weekend ghost hunts, writes for the TAPS Paramagazine, contributes to the Paranormal Pop Culture blog, and travels the nation. More can be found at KarlPfeiffer.com

Is that the devil?

Three weeks ago, my white-haired, quiet, Catholic grandmother studied my final cover photo on the book before leaning in close and whispering in a voice so laden with concern that it bordered on afraid, “Karl, is that the Devil?”

“No,” I said, turning my mouth down and shaking my head. “No, no, no.” Because it’s not. The literal version of the cover is that it’s the main character burning in hellfire. But the devil is in the novel–if you so choose to read it in that light. And the opening quote is from Carl Jung, pointing out that “Man is not fundamentally good. Almost half of him is a devil.” Indeed, the story takes an eastern light on our western culture and blends the black with the white and tries to find a balance between the two. It’s about self-reconciliation and learning about the devil inside yourself and coming to terms with him. But I didn’t want to explain this to my grandma, so I said, “No.” I said, “No, no, no.”

But if I had answered, I would have said, “What makes you think it’s the devil?”

And the voice inside my head, playing my grandmother would say, “Well he’s on fire. And the flames look like horns. And he looks so angry.”

“Is angry all he looks?”

“He looks tortured. And in pain.”

“So is that what makes a devil? Being tortured, in pain, angry, aflame, and with imagery that suggests of horns?”

“And he looks evil.”

“Is that what evil is then? Being tortured? being in pain and angry and aflame?”

“Of course it’s more than that.”

“And he has that?”

Perhaps no, perhaps yes. If my grandmother does see evil in the image, if she says, “That’s essentially what Satan undergoes,”

I’d say, “then that’s exactly what my book is about. My book is about the Devil.”

 

You can buy Hallowtide through its website at http://www.HallowtideNovel.com

Philanthropy Continued

I was going to leave this as a comment response, but I liked the bend in the conversation and I liked challenging notions of entertainment. So I want to keep the conversation going and see what you guys think.

Robynn left this comment the other day:

I’d suggest that reading purely as escapism is a form of entertainment separate from art. Absolutely this can be one of the goals of writing, and is the approach for many, (for most who want successful and wide-spread consumption of their art, I think in many cases the art needs to be in some way entertaining and escape-worthy). But I wonder about the philanthropy of that artistic side: the one that changes people, changes the world, and challenges the norms, which is a process that isn’t necessarily enjoyable, or one people want to escape into. 

This can be political or dramatic or religious. In whatever it is that’s so sufferable about this world that we want to escape from, good art, I think, should address those exact same things.

Perhaps it’s just the desire to change the world, even if that change is violent, that makes something philanthropic.

But it’s interesting that you bring your metaphor to drugs, and I want to address that too. If my writing is essentially crack, and I’m also a philanthropist by supplying your escape, could not the same be said of drug dealers? Pornographers? Exotic dancers? Action movie directors? Athletes?

Perhaps there is no easy answer, but I like to challenge everything, and this was the direction my thoughts went. Thanks for the comment Robynn, and thanks for letting me use you as a part of the conversation. Floor is yours now, guys. Discuss?

Philanthropic Art

So in California two (three?) weeks ago, I was having a discussion with a wonderful gentleman about philanthropy and art. Chris McCune walks into the room and points out something about what a philanthropist I am. My knee jerk reaction is that I’m not. I think a lot of people in the world today are idiots and I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that charity work doesn’t make me feel wholesome. Chris shook his head and said, “naw man, you’re a writer–you’re a philanthropist.”

And I had to chew on this for a while. Because I’m not sure he’s wrong. But I’m not sure he’s right either.

I write because I’m thinking, and I have stories that come together, and I’d like to put them down permanently and exercise those stories.

The next level is SHARING what I’m writing, and that is distinct from the writing itself. Why do I share what I write? I share what I write because I want to produce ART.

What then is ART? There’s a quote that I’ve been trying to find, but for the life of me cannot (if anyone can help, that’d be wonderful). But the quote goes something along the lines of the purpose of art being to “settle those unsettled and unsettle those settled.” And I quite take to this. There’s another quote by Georges Braque, “Art disturbs, science reassures.” I like this idea of art being challenging, moving, disturbing, unsettling. It’s part of the reason I’m so taken with the horror genre. There is real art that can be done within.

Now the question then is whether or not THAT is something that helps people: whether or not the purpose of ART, if that’s one way to define it, as disturbing, is helpful? Because that can have very negative results. You unsettle someone and they might jump off a bridge.

So the question remains whether or not the act of SHARING a piece of ART is inherently philanthropic.

What do you think?

 

Edit to add: