The following proposal was sent to McGraw-Hill’s International Marine imprint after I finished writing my manuscript. The day after I emailed it, the Acquisitions editor, Tristram Coburn, responded that he wanted to read the MS.   Two weeks later, negotiations started. 

                           Proposal for a book on the Bermuda Triangle

Title— The Bermuda Triangle: an odyssey of unexplained disappearances at sea.

Nonfiction
Words: 103,740
Author: Gian J. Quasar
Status: completed
Maps: 20 are available.
Artwork: 20 or more are also available for use.
Photos: upward of 80 are available, though doubtless not all would be used.
 

Introduction

The Bermuda Triangle is a popular name for a section of the western Atlantic Ocean which lies roughly between the British colony of Bermuda, Miami and southern Florida, and the island of Puerto Rico. It received this name decades ago because of its reputation for mysterious disappearances. This book is the summation of 12 years of research on the topic. The hundreds of mysterious incidents herein are not based on mystery magazine reading or surfing the web, but on official reports of the investigating bureaus.

Overview

The purpose of this book is not to just recount mysteries of the sea. These provide a base of obvious facts. It is a compilation of a search for a solution that takes the reader through an unnerving collection of circumstantial evidence, probable facts, possible theories, and speculative solutions to fascinating questions.

Proposal

Recently the cover of a popular national magazine (People)captivated Americans when it detailed the puzzling facts of the inexplicable disappearance of two schoolgirls between their homes and their school bus stop. Such an event, in a normal American neighborhood, was chilling, without obvious reason, cunningly executed and heinously premeditated. I am not trying to use an excessive number of adjectives to get your attention. But I want the reader of this to understand that this scenario happens many hundred times per year along the busiest coast in the USA, in the most crowded and guarded sea and airways, in circumstances that are even more incredible. . .

 . . .For these disappearances are not just of people, quietly taken without reason, but accompanied by the total disappearance of the aircraft in which they were flying, or the yachts they were sailing; or even the great freighters they crewed. These are not just boats and planes lost in a big ocean. Their losses are as inexplicable as a person disappearing between their door and the corner of their street. Many have vanished just at the edge of the harbor, others while cruising around a peninsula; many aircraft were on radar, and in many instances just moments from landing. They disappear as if suddenly plucked from safety, without any clue except brief and panicked maydays, like  “a weird object is in my path ahead” or just “Oh, Jesus Christ!”

In no case is there wreckage, bad weather, bodies, or any known reason. In no case will official investigators go beyond this solution: “aircraft damage and injury index presumed.”

When I began 12 years ago to investigate these beyond this Spartan deduction, I had no idea what I would uncover. I began innocently to merely catalog disappearances. I wanted to know if the area’s famous enigma was true. An example of what I have found can be appreciated by first mentioning that the Encyclopedia Britannica still describes the infamous area as a place where 20 planes and over 50 vessels have mysteriously vanished in the last 100 years.  This is a distilling of what was published in many bestsellers of their time. Yet the sum total of my research is to have uncovered 75 aircraft missing in the last 25 years alone, plus possibly upwards of 2,000 yachts and vessels. For the time period prior I have found over 40 aircraft that vanished, including a B-52 on a secret mission, and numerous vessels.

It is, however, not in the recounting of these unsolved mysteries that I felt I should write a book. My search for an answer led me to fascinating discoveries and far reaching concepts. This journey led me to many people who have sailed and flown the area, and survived very unusual things. It led me from the Triangle to a famous scientist in Vancouver, into the concepts of zero-point energy. It led me to concepts of Time and Space, dimensions, magnetic vortices, the enigma of UFOs, and even back to mythical Atlantis and Edgar Cayce’s trances in order to understand why so many thousands believe the unexplained ruins beneath the Triangle’s jade waters are the culprit.

I readily laughed at many of these unconventional ideas when I first began until I understood zero-point energy and the potential of the magnetic field, until I encountered a scientist (Dr. Ivan Lima) who had seen a vortex form, and until I was factually informed of how a “medium”  (Ingo Swann) captivated the CIA with his ESP, and until I was given a copy of the FAA recording of a young man’s desperate mayday describing a “weird object” in the sky harassing his plane before he completely vanished.

Outline

My book first covers these mysteries, case by case, presenting the relevant details instead of laborious vignettes. All this is based upon NTSB and other official accident reports. Eyewitness testimony of survivors of the unusual is almost always based on more than 1 eyewitness. The rest of the book is devoted to the theories, a journey to ancient civilizations, the possibility of a prehistoric super-civilization, to concepts of “remote viewing,” to cataclysms, “quantum longevity,” anti-gravity, and the unavoidable coincidence that leads one to the other and always back to the Triangle’s mystery. I do not write this book in the first person and, indeed, I make no reference to myself. I write this as a recorder of events.  What this book is not: it is not about ghosts, angels, demons, or something supernatural. It is a record of tangible mysteries that have a cause and somewhere a solution.

Market

Although the interest in the Bermuda Triangle is large, the audience most readily interested in it would be aviation buffs, maritime enthusiasts, those who like true life unsolved mysteries, “Atlantis” fans, the UFO genre, the prehistoric genre, and especially timely for those who are interested in zero-point energy and the quest for alternative energy and conquering space.

Competition & Market

Due to the broad theories the mysteries of the Triangle has led me to, I feel the subject has a unique position in competition. Recently, Nick Cook’s book The Hunt For Zero Point (Century in Britain, Broadway Books in USA, 2002, 280 pages, 21.99) has done well. Graham Hancock’s voluminous Finger Prints of the Gods (1995 Crown, 505 pages, 27.50, still in paperback ((18.95)) by Crown) was a best seller; his recent book Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization is just due out by Crown (27.50). The Blue Print of Atlantis (2000 Delacorte Press, 355 pages) was also popular by Colin Wilson. Books containing the Triangle’s missing include: Mysteries of the Deep (Frank Spaeth, Ed. 1998). Richard Winer published a collection of sea mysteries Ghost Ships: True Stories of Nautical Nightmares, Hauntings and Disasters (Berkeley Publishing 2000, 268 pages). 

The other unique position my book holds surrounds the actual incidents of missing ships and planes. No one has recorded any of those lost in the last 25 years except me. Previous books of this genre all sold over 1,000,000 copies initially, with Charles Berlitz’s selling over 5,000,000 in hardback. A generation is becoming increasingly re-interested in the subject.  My web site has received unprecedented attention, becoming No. 1 on the web in its first year, receiving about 25,000 hits per month on the home page alone.  

Me

Personal information left out on the web version.

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