THE TOUR & DOCUMENTARY:
Since 1995, "Dr. E" has been building a following for a new rugged American literature. Writing under pen names inclduing Drake Raft, Ranger West, and Becket Knottingham, he has created an unprecedented living work of fiction. 500,000 people visit his jollyroger.com network each month, and he's looking forward to hopping in his jeep and meeting & building his audience on a national book tour promoting several books: Jollyroger.com: Navigating an American Renaissance (nonfiction), the The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com (fiction), Eternity in a Grain of Sand (poetry), Autumn's Ranger (fiction to be published in 2004), and Classical MBA: Navigating High Tech Startups Via Timeless Truths (business how-to to be published in 2004).

As a profitable venture, Jollyroger.com will fund an extensive cross-country tour and the shooting of a documentary also entitled "Jollyroger.com: Navigating an American Renaissance." Publication by a major house will take it all to the next level, allowing Dr. E to get the books in the hands of key reviewers, talk radio hosts, and editors of literary and technology publications and websites. Throughout the tour, Documentary footage will be uploaded to the web, submitted to cable and TV networks, and distributed on a DVD.

THE WEBSITE:
The jollyroger.com network represents the world's largest literary endeavor by a single author, drawing in over 500,000 people each month to participate in Great Books forums and read Dr. E's poetry and prose. The New York Times deemed jollyroger.com "simply unprecedented," adding that the site "teems with discussion, the kind that goes well beyond freshman lit 101." The Los Angeles Times referred to the classical portal as "a lavish virtual community known as The Jolly Roger."

THE PRESS:
Jollyroger.com has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Book Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Raleigh News and Observer, The Charlotte Observer, Home Office Computing, The Triangle Business Journal, The Triangle Tech Journal, The Daily Tar Heel, The Lake Norman Times, The Charlotte Business Journal, The Industry Standard, The Pittsburgh Tribune, The Outer Banks Sentinel and more. Read excerpts here: http://www.jollyroger.com/beaconway/reviews.html.

THE BOOKS:
Jollyroger.com: Navigating An American Renaissance: As a modern-day Thoreau and Benjamin Franklin, Dr. E has pioneered a bold literary vision on the web and turned it into a profitable venture. This book tells the jollyroger.com story through a collection of the foundational essays, poetry, and prose defining a rugged American literature beyond the postmodern fog. The classics buttress Dr. E's vision of a renaissance wherein words mean things, marriages last, businessmen tell the truth, dotcoms and high tech ventures strive for meaningful profits over hype, fiction exalts while entertaining, politicians navigate by the eternal beacons, and sublime poetry rhymes and signifies things. The book is a guide to applying leading Western philosophies to one's life, thereby fostering romantic relationships, excelling in business, gaining a higher education, and enjoying life on a deeper level.

The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com: This contemporary Hamlet is told from the vantage point of two teenagers who embark on a "heart of darkness" odyssey to Princeton to investigate the death of Drake Raft. Written in the deeper context of the classics, the book carries the themes of renaissance and revival through the light-hearted, Huck-Finnish perspective of the narrator. It has been taught in high schools and has achieved the #1 best-selling position for a novel off amazon.com in North Carolina.

THE AUTHOR: Elliot attended Princeton and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of North Carolina, writing every spare second he had. His research on a silicon artificial retina for the blind won several NSF grants and a Merrill Lynch Innovations award. The retina-chip research appeared in publications including Popular Science and Business Week. Elliot founded Classicals & jollyroger.com LLC as a technological tribute to the Great Books, and he recently spoke at the Harvard Law School concerning his Authena.org project for Open Source software for managing digital rights for artists. Elliot, known as "Dr. E" to his students, teaches physics and programming at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has published a poetry book, a novel, a collection of essays, several scientific articles, and poetry in The Wall Street Journal. His books are a call to arms aimed at enlightening and inspiring people to join him in taking the contemporary culture to new heights.

POST PUBLICTAION PUBLICITY VENTURES: 1. THE TOUR/DOCUMENTARY: PROMOTE THE GREAT BOOKS RENAISSANCE A documentary will be shot of Dr. E's tour of bookstore chains, colleges and universities, and indy book shops across the fruited plains. The footage will include Dr. E reading from Jollyroger.com: Navigating An American Renaissance & The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com. Throughout the journey, Dr. E will leverage the web to publicize his talks such as an "Evening Pursuing The White Whale," wherein Dr. E will give away free copies of Moby Dick and other classics, interview the "man-on-the-street" regarding their favorite literature and thoughts on postmodernism, and inspire the audience to read invite favorite classical poetry. The jollyroger.com website will be used to schedule and track the tour with interactive technology, complete with maps, forums, a live camera feed from Jeep, and uploads of daily pictures and scenic video from Dr. E's travels and readings. Dr. E will tour major colleges and universities, lecturing about a Great Books curriculum while reading both classical and original poetry, essays, and fiction, and giving away free classics. http://www.collegiatenetwork.org/ http://www.yaf.org/speakers/speakers.html http://www.collegiatenetwork.org/syndicate.html Along the way, Dr. E may participate in Brewster McCale's Bookmobile venture http://www.archive.org/texts/bookmobile.php (He knows Brewster & friends.) 2. HIGH SCHOOLS/COLLEGES: REACH YOUNG ADULTS The Tragedy of Drakeraft.com was written in part to inspire the rising generation to pick up the classics. It would be fun to visit high-school and college libraries to deliver a light-hearted lecture on the importance of the classics. 3. HIGH-TECH PRESS Leverage the high-tech angle in press releases to garner publicity and interviews on sites such as slashdot.org, wired.com, cnet radio, etc. Dr. McGucken has spoken at the Harvard Law School, the Duke University Business School, and the Lulu Tech Circus concerning digital rights mangement (DRM) and technology for artists, and he has been featured in technology publictions including The Triangle Tech Journal, Popular Science, and the technology sections of Businessweek and Book Magazine. 4. TRADITIONAL PRESS Leverage the classical themes and high-tech angles in press releases to garner publicity in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, Weekly Standard, New York Post, American Spectator 5. TALK RADIO Dr. E has already spoken on several talk shows including NPR, and the huge talk radio network would be receptive to the classical themes in the jollyroger.com renaissance. From: matt drudge Elliot, Are you up for any guest spots on talk-radio? There is a super AM out of Denver, KOA-AM. The station reaches 38 states and 1.5 million on a good night. I have been on the station 3 times in the past month as a guest. Last week they kept me on for 2 hours! Let me know. I will be glad to tell a producer there all about you. You touch my heart, McGucken, with your words. DON'T STOP! Matt Drudge-- columnist at drudgereport.com 6. THE TECHNOLOGY: OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE PROJECTS As the lead software architect of Authena.org (digital rights management for artsists and authors presented at Harvard in May), and the founder of photonavy.com, docfound.com, and 22blog.com, Dr. McGucken is working on software which will allow people to create "Great Books Reading Clubs, complete with calendars, discussion forums, and the texts of the Great Books. With this software, anyone can found a book club and schedule meetings in local bookstores or coffee shops. Over time an international newtork of Great Books clubs shall emerge. 7. THE DOCUMENTARY: JOLLYROGER.COM: NAVIGATING AN AMERICAN RENAISSANCE This DVD/cable show will consist of footage tracking Dr. E's epic book tour and building of a renaissance across the fruited plains. Throughout his journey, footage will be submitted to cable companies and TV networks and presented online. A one to two hour compilation narrative of the tour's highlights will be made available on DVD. Dr. E recently laid claim to all the rights of his first documentary shot while he was working with NBCi, entitled Moby Dick: Call him Ishmael. Or Crazy Ahab. Moby Dick documents Dr. E's quest to find a girl whose favorite great book is Moby Dick. Filmed during the end of the dotcom boom, the over forty hours of footage follow him from New York to San Francisco to Austin to Chapel Hill. Orginally shot as a project with the late NBCi, Dr. E now owns all the footage, as well as the two-hour finished project. More information may be found here: http://jollyroger.com/film. THE FANS: http://jollyroger.com/fans.html!

Notable Quotes:
From: Chris Kitze
To: Elliot McGucken
. . I like the Jollyroger.com name, too. . . The next trick will be to make "the world's classical community" something bigger. . .
Chris Kitze-- CEO of XOOM.COM & NBCI.COM

From: matt drudge
Elliot,
Are you up for any guest spots on talk-radio? There is a super AM out of Denver, KOA-AM. The station reaches 38 states and 1.5 million on a good night. I have been on the station 3 times in the past month as a guest. Last week they kept me on for 2 hours! Let me know. I will be glad to tell a producer there all about you. You touch my heart, McGucken, with your words. DON'T STOP!
Matt Drudge-- columnist at drudgereport.com

From: Rege Behe
Hey Guys,
My name is Rege Behe, and I'm a reporter with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. The last Sunday of every month, we run a poetry page in the Trib. We've featured the likes of Robert Pinsky, Khaled Mattawa, Alastair Reid, Jay Parini, Eavan Boland, etc. I'd like to interview you fellows, perhaps for the April or May page. Would you be interested? We'd have to arrange a photo somehow with one of your local newspapers, but I don't think that would be too hard. If you're interested, please get back to me. By the way, the page is great.
Regards,
Rege Behe, Pittsburgh Tribune Review

From: Hampton Stevens
Dearest Sir,
Just a quick note to remind you that not everyone on the payroll of The New York Times has been sucked down by the Siren's Song of Post-Modern Literary Criticism. Indeed, some of us are even members of the mighty jollyroger.com fleet!
Sincerely,
Hampton Stevens
Hampton Stevens-- The New York Times Opinions Forum Host

From: kiril alexandrov
Glad to see your site, Red Avengers. . . Writers give purpose and shape to discontent about today's civilization. Assessing that work, the Boston Book Review brings readers into the ongoing project of literary life. . . If you ever have a novel or book which comes forth from your ventures, send it our way! Keep up the great work!
Best Regards,
Kiril Alexandrov, The Boston Book Review

MORE FANS: http://jollyroger.com/fans.html!