In my position I frequently receive weird stuff.  This time it was fascinatingly weird stuff.  One of my favorite authors, Margret Treiber, who has contributed some great stories in my Twisted Tails anthologies, has outdone herself this time.  She has carried marketing to an entirely new level and I love it.  She has sent one of the stories she wrote for Twisted Tails VI: The Alien Connection to a new market altogether.  She sent it by laser to KOI 961.  Don't know what that is?  Okay, it's Kepler Object of Interest No. 961.  Oh, wait a minute.  They changed the name to Kepler 42.  I forgot.  That's right -- an extrasolar solar system out there somewhere.  Well, actually, we know where it is.

Kepler-42 is a red dwarf located in the constellation Cygnus. The star is approximately 126 light years away, and has three known planets that are all smaller than Earth.  Anyway, she thought that Kepler 42d, that's one of the planets, might be a place we could get more readership.  I hope they respect our copyright laws.  I mean, it would be a sorry mess if, after all this effort, they order one book, then bang out a few billion copies on their own.  There would be no advantage to us that way.

So, she got this nifty certificate of authenticity to prove to me she had actually sent it.  I don't know why she would think I wouldn't believe her.