A matter or rights

Since when is a document assembled at taxpayer expense suddenly the property of some washed up shrink? And who's this crackpot lawyer, Joel Bernstein, and should I be afraid of him? Aaarggggh! So, I've been getting into this epublishing thing, having suffered enough at the hands (and transoms, and letter openers, and pens) of Big Pub long enough, and I was going to write about that experience, but in the snail mail today was a cease and desist letter (crisp linen; off-white, watermarked paper) on Joel Bernstein's letterhead, and all my plans and enthusiasm got side tracked. All for the sale of, what? Ten books? TEN! How paranoid are these people?

But I digress. Rather, I have jumped ahead. So, let me catch my breath, gather my thoughts, calm down.
Here's what happened: Several months ago, with my wife, I bought a run-down little townhouse. It was full of crap furniture and musty clothes. There were dishes in the dishwasher. The place hadn't seen a mop, let alone a broom, in 10 years, if that. Don't even ask about the refrigerator.

The owner was a psychiatrist or psychologist, judging from the books on the shelves. D. Joseph Bernay. David? I never did figure it out. Signed it exactly like that: "D. Joseph Bernay." How pretentious.  In any case, he was completely impossible to deal with during the sale, delayed it by months, and along the way surrendered the rights to everything he'd left behind--I have it in the sale contract. That's important.

Anyway, as I said, everything he'd left was junk. But I had to get rid of it, so I dig through cupboards. Questions: Who needs 60 boxes of diet lemonade? Who's got three copies of Herman's Hermits on 8-track tape? Who labels the sock drawer? Get the picture? Goodwill won't even take this stuff, so everything goes into the dumpster. Until I find this huge sheaf of papers stuffed into the bottom dresser drawer. It was headed to the dumpster, too, when the rubber band slipped off, and a bunch of hand-written stuff fell onto the driveway, so I started to read it as I gathered it up. But this wasn't old shopping lists or love letters or college notes. This was a journal, and not of this sleazebag shrink, but of a murderer. And there was other stuff in there, too: newspaper articles, letters and documents from other people, and probably 200 pages of interview transcripits. It was all about a serial killer called the Moss Canyon Killer, who was active in the 1990s. I remembered it from the time, but this was actually the material from the killer. A cover sheet indicated that Bernay was the court appointed psychiatrist in the case. One of them, anyway.
Cool, creepy stuff. Mutilation. Bludgeoning. Young girls, boys. Severed body parts. I spent the rest of the day, and a few days afterward, sorting through the stuff, simultaneously disgusted and enthralled. For the past four months, I've been putting it into shape: transcribing the letters and such, putting it all back into order. It was an enormous amount of work.

A couple of weeks ago, I uploaded the text to Kindle, titled Inhuman, and fewer than a dozen people bought it. One of them, apparently, was the good doctor himself, who apparently contacted this ambulance chasing Joel Bernstein, who then sent me a nasty lawyer letter.

But here's the deal: Bernay signed over the rights to everything in the townhome. I sure don't see him coming after that crusty old nightstand, with the porno books in the drawer. Just this. Meanwhile, I've spent a lot of time and effort on this. I scanned everything and put it up on the Barnes & Noble Nook reader, still titled Inhuman, because I think it's pretty bizarre stuff. But if I'm going to get sued within an inch of my solveny, I wonder if it's worth it. I think Bernay and Bernstein are crazy and full of it, respectively... but I really don't want to get sued big time.

More later. This is too distressing.