By Sheldon Teitelbaum, Zion’s Fiction co-editor: So, if I were Chabad’s Rabbi Cunin, one look at the Telethon “Tote” ($1,548 and 25 days to go) and I’d start dancing like Kuni Lemel big time. I feel I can bring Reb Cunin into this because once, the only place I could interview him for the LA Times was on an airplane from L.A. to New York I had no other reason to visit. Every time he emphasized a point, which was often, he poked me in the shoulder. I carry around bursitis to this day, bless the fellow.

So, we’re not doing so hot. Course, it’s early in the game. My reckoning? The story samples are maybe a little weak for the weight they have to carry. That’s what happens when you raise money to buy and translate new work. You make do. But we don’t. We are going to try to swap them out ASAP with stronger material — in two cases by the same wonderfully talented authors.

Also, we have a big piece coming in the Jewish Journal’s monthly Tribe Magazine on Oct. 31 (when I shall be dressed, appropriately, as Doctor Who for our annual cul de sac Halloween Chile and White Russian shindig) and, simultaneously, in the San Francisco weekly Jewish paper.

Meanwhile, another day, another dozen story pitches. I even pitched Peres at his personal email. Said Mr. President, the only place you or I are going to see a New Middle East is in the pages of our book. He didn’t seem impressed. 

So, as Chekhov declared to Captain Kirk in Star Trek IV when he was arrested aboard a nuclear wessel, “Now vould be a good time to visit the Zion’s Fiction Project Kickstarter site and see what there is to see.” You don’t have to back us. You do have to tell your friends on the half chance they have a doddering great uncle in an attic somewhere who loves this kind of stuff.

As Scotty said in that same movie (speaking into a Mac Plus mouse, no less), “Hello Computer!”

Or, use this url: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1988485855/the-zions-fiction-project

A visit to www.zionsfiction.com (where you can check out our press so far) will also put you in front of a button you can click to take you to Kickstarter. Alas, it doesn’t respond to “Hello Button” either.