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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

TWEET MORE!

Twitter is the platform that led us into the mobile Internet age. 

It has done for social publishing what AOL did for email.

But things have been declining for Twitter.

The lack of growth in the number of Twitter users has been a concern among shareholders, 

who have seen the value of Twitter shares decline from an all time high of $73 in December 2013 to its current range of about $24 to $25.

 According to Re/code, “Twitter is desperate to find new ways to attract users to the product.”

Twitter may have found a way: 
longer tweets.

In August, Twitter announced that it was ditching the 140-character limit on direct messages, 

the so-called “private side” of the social media giant that lets users communicate with one another privately.

 According to numerous media reports Tuesday, the sacrosanct character limit 

— the distinctive emblem of concision that helped make Twitter famous — 

may be on its way out, and up.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

SHOULD TWITTER INCREASE ITS LIMIT BEYOND 140 CHARACTERS?

AND BY HOW MUCH? 

Oh, 
and 
 A new study suggests that overuse of Twitter could cause relationship conflicts,
 leading to infidelity and breakup.


 The study’s author speculated that these Twitter-related fights could be responsible for cheating and breakups.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT?

**

Long ago, Kathryn and I competed in tango competitions, and lately I have been dusting off those rusty skills.

Tonight, I was allowed to leave an hour and half early from work, and I danced with a lovely gypsy, Lydia, to this tune -- it felt good to be on the dance floor again.

No prizes won -- but sometimes the reward is found within the dance.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

WE LITTLE KNOW WHAT WE DO

Once upon a time...

   a little princess, Amanda Scarpinati, was badly burned by a steam humidifier.

A photo of a loving nurse holding her was published in the hospital’s annual report in 1977.

 The woman in the nearly 40-year-old photo remained a mystery.

 After years of surgeries, Scarpinati saw the image of the nurse as a reminder of the soothing care she received as an infant.

 “Growing up as a child, disfigured by the burns, I was bullied and picked on, tormented,” Scarpinati, now 38, told the AP. 

“I’d look at those pictures and talk to her, even though I didn’t know who she was. 

I took comfort looking at this woman who seemed so sincere in caring for me.”

 After decades of searching for the nurse, Amanda finally found her using Facebook.
  
Scarpinati wrote on Facebook:

 “In a million years I would have never guessed this would grow to be as big as it is 

or that I would in fact be able to put a name to the face that I looked at for all these years.

 She’s just as sweet and caring as I could have imagined her to be.”

LESSON:

We never know what ripples of healing will be started by a small act of kindness on our part. 

{Thanks to Carl Howard/Albany Medical Center/AP/the Washington Post/Facebook}

Monday, September 28, 2015

THERE'S A STORM BREWING


The future's barometer is showing disturbing fluctuations that some less discerning minds deem funny.

A college student needs counseling because he's scored a B on his final.  

A co-ed calls the police because there's a mouse roaming the apartment.

Those would be just good stories, except episodes like this are becoming more and more common. 

Peter Gray, PhD, a research professor at Boston College who studies how children learn and value play, writes about declining resilience in college students in Psychology Today

 His thoughts are frightening for the workplace. 

If today's college students lack resilience, what can we expect from tomorrow's doctors, lawyers, plumbers, and sales clerks? 

As older workers retire and new ones enter the labor force, 

we will be at the mercy of those who cannot tolerate the simple road-bumps of life.

The head of counseling at Boston College writes:

"There has been an increase in diagnosable mental health problems, 

but there has also been a decrease in the ability of many young people to manage the everyday bumps in the road of life."

Will this lead to ever increasing flares of violence in tomorrow's society?


WHERE WILL TOMORROW GET ITS NEW IDEAS?

 One of the problems with young adults lacking resilience is that they do not take risks. 

Every time you present a new idea, you run the risk of getting shot down. 

But failure is crucial to learning how to think more clearly, more effectively.

But if a company's new employees panic at the thought of possible failure, it will not get those new ideas.


TODAY'S PARENTS

Are they doing their part to raise future adults, or are they focused on keeping their children happy?

 Do they yell at teachers who dare give a bad grade to their child? If so, they're part of the problem.


WHAT DO YOU THINK 
OF THE YOUNGER PEOPLE 
AROUND YOU? 

THUS DOES LIFE REPAY



It is said that I am born of stardust and the sea ...

And that is true ... as far as it goes ... which is not nearly far enough.

For the realm of my birth is not even of your dimension whose air would be death for you to breathe.

I allow mortals to call me Meilori Shinseen, for that is as close as your vocal chords can come to my true name.

You quicksilver humans flicker and are gone like inconsequential fire-flies in the night.

I have left so many pieces of myself with each passing eon that I feel hollow inside. 

Heat caressed deserts soon become ice fields.  

Chasms fill and bristle with green forests.  

Everything seems so very transitory.

Nothing remains for long.  I am afraid to touch things now.  

They might be but smoke, and my hand will go right on through them, touching ... what?  

The God at whom you mortals now scoff .

Or would I touch the nothing that my life has become?

I look back at the long vista of my life, hinting of fire and violet -- the winds of its passing mourning the grieving skies above me. 

My blue-frosted footsteps standing out like frozen music ...

 A music which thawed when first I met my Samuel in what you foolishly call Ancient Egypt.

My sister's treachery took him from me then.  But now he is returned to me.

And I, who have given cause for icy fear to so many, now feel it myself,

 for I sense death reaching out to snatch him from me again.

Thus does Life repay those who take her too lightly.


I submitted this book to Jessica Therrien's READ & REVIEW CHALLENGE:

I have not been accepted yet, so wish me luck.  Email me for a copy of the ebook or audio book, and I will gladly send you a copy in return for an honest review.

Wish me luck.

Friday, September 25, 2015

WHY YOU REALLY NEED TO BRAND YOURSELF ... OUCH!

No, AUTHOR BRANDING is not the new hate crime

where gangs of illiterates grab a writer off the streets and brand the letter "A" on his forehead!


Think "Woody Allen Movie,"

and you will come up with a specific type of movie, although his filmography contains varied storylines and genres.

The same applies with Quentin Tarentino, although his range is slightly more narrow than Allen's.

What did the ghost of Samuel Clemens tell me the other day?


"Earn a character first if you can, and if you can’t, then assume one.”
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)



PIXAR and MARVEL have established strong brands.  No matter the title, you know generally what to expect.

And rather than limiting those studio's, their brand allows them to experiment as with GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. and INSIDE OUT.

The audiences knows that they will be entertained.


Kristen Lamb wrote a fascinating post Friday on why it is more important than ever to craft a brand to your writing



And not too surprisingly it comes down to Amazon and the way it does business.

Book Stores have become an endangered species.  Most people buy their books through Amazon.

If you have a Kindle, you may have chosen the cheaper way to purchase it -- 

which entails book ads popping on your screen saver instead of those pictures of famous writers.

How does Amazon choose which books to pop on your particular screen?  

By the type of book you have just purchased.

If your books range wildly from one genre to another -- your book will not be chosen for those ads.


If your books have the Brand of Science Fiction, and a reader is reading a Sci Fi book, 

your book may well appear on that screen saver ad.


If you look up a book on Amazon and go to its book page, 

you will see below its product description:
Those Who Have Bought this Book Have Also Purchased ...

And a string of like genre books will be shown.

With Kindle Unlimited when a reader finishes a book, Amazon will show a list of related books.

BOTTOM LINE:

READERS CANNOT BUY YOUR BOOK UNLESS THEY KNOW ABOUT IT.

Social Media is fine, but why not let Amazon be your sales rep? 


Thursday, September 24, 2015

JUST FOR FUN

Did you know that wolves changed rivers in Yellowstone Park when re-introduced? 

Wolves in the strangest way created life.


And with the debut of the movie PAN --
Here is the HONEST TRAILER
for PETER PAN


Midnight loved both of them.
I thought you might, too.

THERE IS IN THE NIGHT THE RUSTLE AS IF OF WINGS


“Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows,

Help us to see

That without the dust the rainbow

Would not be.”

― Langston Hughes



Captain Samuel McCord has seen untold horrors.

Worse, he is married to an alien empress who will one day destroy both him and his world.

Listen to him speak of her:


It is not only the powers of Meilori but her strangeness that frightens most people. And how could she not seem strange to most humans and they to her?



Why shouldn’t Meilori look upon humanity as strangers, as barbarians, as intruders?  She was here first. 


She ruled the Aztecs when a political execution took place on Golgotha.  Far off Cathay knew her as Empress when Caesar destroyed the Roman republic in the process of saving it.  How alone she must feel.


Oscar Wilde once told me, “All great and precious things are lonely.”


How then could he love her?  Listen again to him:


Meilori was of another time, another realm. 

To see her was to believe in the stuff of magic, perhaps even to catch glimpses of fallen angels in the distance, to hear lost faes’ sad laments in the twilight. 

To see her face would break your heart with longing and yet heal that heart at the self-same time.  And from that moment on, your heart would beat twice as strong as before.


“I loved her
She went away from me
There's nothing more to say
The poem ends,
Soft as it began-
I loved her.”

―Langston Hughes  

Listen to the talented Robert Rossmann narrate DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE --


Coming soon to audio the sequel --


Wednesday, September 23, 2015

DON'T YOU HATE IT WHEN ...



On Thanksgiving, 2012, I published THE THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT,

the 4th book in the legend of Victor Standish --

5th if you count END OF DAYS --

the tale told by Alice Wentworth after Victor was killed at the end of THE RIVAL ...

Victor's ghost plays a pivotal part in END OF DAYS.


During the events of THE THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT,

a once more living Victor travels to the dangerous realm beyond the boundaries of Causality ...

the OFF-REALITY BETTING PARLOR ...

Where dreaded demi-gods like

Destiny, Tyme, Thoth, the Undying Ones, and Hermes

bet on whether pivotal humans live or die at nexus points in reality.

Victor, being Victor, has managed to enrage them all by surviving and costing them their sure-fire bets ...

as all reality begins to melt like candle wax.

To keep on living, Victor must elude the demi-gods, the killers they send after him, and the chaos unleashed by his coming back to life.

Piece of cake.  Devil's Food Cake.

Go read it.  I think you will like it.  George Bernard Shaw writes the forward and appears at the end.

But tonight I visited IMDB and saw this trailer with sinking heart:



Don't you hate it when a movie, TV show,
or book
has a similar
concept to your own?

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

HOW TO WRITE FOR CHILDREN






I was sitting alone in the outer terrace of Meilori's and scowling at an email ad for HOW TO WRITE AND SELL CHILDREN'S STORIES.

"How do you make your submission stand out?
How do you write a children's book with commercial appeal? 
How do you decide what category and genre your book belongs in? 
How do you find agents and publishers to submit your manuscript to? 

 Only $199.00 tuition! 

I sighed and started as I felt strong fingers squeeze my shoulder.  I looked up.  The ghost of C S Lewis.



His jovial voice murmured,  

“I don’t write for children,” the ghost of Maurice Sendak once told me.  “I write — and somebody says, ‘That’s for children!’”

C S Lewis carefully packed his pipe with tobacco and sighed, 

" J.R.R. Tolkien as well often told me that there was no such thing as writing for children.  

And his THE HOBBIT has stood the proof of time -- although that horrid porridge of a movie still makes him weep."

Like a wicked child, Mr. Lewis took gleeful delight in shooting sparks from his right forefinger to get his pipe going.

"I think there are three ways in which those who write for children may approach their work; two good ways and one that is generally a bad way."

He shook his head gravely.  

"I read many modern so-called children's books, and it is blatantly obvious the authors are bored to distraction with them but feel the gadgetry of them is what the modern child wants."

Mr. Lewis puffed meditatively, 

"I put into my 'children books. what I would have liked to read when I was a child and what I still like reading now that I am a mature ghost."

He shaped the pipe smoke into Spanish Galleons that sailed majestically away into the darkness. 

 "Take Lewis Carroll and my friend J R R.  

Lewis wrote to a specific child, Alice Liddell and Tolkien wrote to his own children.  And magic was born because the authors loved their audience."

He gazed off into the shadows.  

"The third way, which is the only one I could ever use myself, 

consists in writing a children’s story because a children’s story is the best art-form for something you have to say:

 just as a composer might write a Dead March not because there was a public funeral in view 

but because certain musical ideas that had occurred to him went best into that form."

He blew out clouds of smoke that flowed into wheeling dancing figures.  

"I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. 

The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz."

The smoke dancers became circling vultures as he continued,

 "Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. 

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish;

 these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence." 

He smiled sadly, 

"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

His ghost slowly began to fade.

"Everything we put into the world is invariably the sum total of our lived experience and our personhood, and our journey,

 to attempt to sculpt the end result into something different would be not only an act of hypocrisy but also, inevitably, a guarantee of mediocrity."

I was saddened as he disappeared but smiled when invisible fingers once again squeezed my shoulder.  

"Do write more Cub with No Clue stories.  I quite enjoy them."

 ***
For just $5.95   (or $1.99 if you belong to Audible) you can listen to the tales the ghost of C S Lewis enjoyed:

Monday, September 21, 2015

HOW TO MARKET YOUR AUDIO BOOK




1.) MAKE A SOUND CLOUD PAGE to showcase a few of your audio books like I did:


Take a listen why don't you?
 There is a promoted book ahead of mine:
the price you pay for a free site.


2.) OFFER FREE AUDIO DOWNLOADS FOR HONEST REVIEWS:

 ACX will give you codes for free downloads.  Use them to create interest.
 
Just give me your email address, and I will send you the code for a free audio of RETURN OF THE LAST SHAMAN 


3.) REQUEST REVIEWS FROM SITES WHICH OFFER REVIEWS -

A simple Google search of “audio book reviewers” gave me:
  1. http://audiobookreviewer.com/
  2. http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/contact/
  3. http://www.eargasmsaudiobookreviews.com/
  4. http://audiobookjungle.com/about/review-policy/
  5. http://audiobookjukebox.squarespace.com/solid-gold-reviewer-program/
  6. http://audiothing.blogspot.com.au/

4.) CONNECT WITH AUDIO BOOK GROUPS

 Here are a few groups to get you started:
  1. Audiobooks Goodreads Group
  2. FREE Audiobook Giveaways! Facebook Group
  3. Everything Audiobooks E.A.R.S Facebook Group
  4. Audiobook Promos – For Authors & Readers of All Genres Facebook Group
  5. Audiobook Blogs & Reviews Twitter List by Karen Commins

5.) FOR MORE TIPS:

check out: http://blog.acx.com/?s=marketing

I HOPE THIS HAS HELPED MY FELLOW AUDIO BOOK AUTHORS.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

THE NIGHT IS DARK, AND I AM SMALL



Grim days ...  we've all had them.  You might be going through one right now.
Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.”
Maya Angelou

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher

Sandra, my best friend, who is fighting cancer, recently told me,

"Some storms never leave.  You have to learn to dance in the rain."

IT IS NOT HOW WE SEE THE STORM BUT HOW WE SEE OURSELVES


1.) Realize that you are an amazing creation
    
Your immune system is intricate and amazing.
    Your mind contains the potential to create by-passes to re-route your thinking past damaged areas.
     During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, I saw simple people rally and become heroes.  You can, too.

2.) Still feel down?
    
Get your endorphins going and your body moving by taking a brisk walk or lifting some weights (even soup cans or water bottles).  Expensive equipment is not necessary.

3.) Still down?

 Go to your city's homeless shelter or Salvation Army Food Center -- help out those who are hungry and hurting.  Getting involved with the hurts of others might make yours seem less urgent.

4.) Make your body work FOR you:

Dopamine is the fuel that keeps people motivated to persevere and achieve a goal.

You have the power to increase your production of dopamine by changing your attitude and behavior.

 Scientists have identified higher levels of dopamine -- also known as the "reward molecule" --
as being linked to forming lifelong habits, such as perseverance.
    
A.) Feel Fat?
     
B.) Take the emphasis off talk of "obesity"

 C.) Shift it to empowering  yoursef to want be healthy because you learn to love the feelings and consequences of being physically active and eating better.

The biggest pay-off isn't simply the shedding of pounds or lowering BMI

it is the broad spectrum of improvements that activity and health brings to your personal and academic lives.

5.) FIXING THE BLAME DOESN'T FIX THE PROBLEM:
     
A.) Stop caressing the problem
     
B.) See yourself walking away from the battle a winner.
    
C.) Brainstorm every way imaginable to solve the problem -- even ones that seem far-fetched.

6.) BREAK DOWN THE PROBLEM BEFORE YOU HAVE A BREAKDOWN:
    
 Most problems can be broken down into do-able units. 

 Clean up your basement one corner at a time.  

Change that tire one lug at a time.  Run that mile one step after another.

7.) THE CLOCK IS TICKING:
    
 I once saw an early black and white movie on the Titanic where all through the movie there was a clock in the lower right hand corner of the screen counting down the minutes to that iceberg.
     
As I saw people bicker about such trivial things or ignore each other, wasting precious, fleeting moments --  I realized we all have that little clock ticking down.
    
 Let the small stuff slide.  Appreciate the beauty and the people around you while you have them.


8.) WALK YOUR INNER CHILD:


A walk often blows away the mental cobwebs and brightens the mood.


Try seeing your walk as you might have as a small child: sense the wonder of a falling leaf, the joy of a scampering squirrel, and the feel of a snowflake on your tongue.


9.) LAUGHTER MAY NOT BE THE BEST MEDICINE BUT ...


     The human mind/body relationship is odd. 


If you force a smile even when you are not happy,


the endorphins are still released in a small amount ... and you feel slightly better.


     But don't over-do it: folks might throw a net over you!
***
For my friend, Patricia Stoltey, here is a photo of my kitten, Midnight:


Friday, September 18, 2015

READING HEALS?

*
"What wound did ever heal but by degrees?," wrote Shakespeare.

Plato wrote, "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."

“If you would have me weep,
you must first of all feel grief yourself.”

~ Horace


 

1.) Each of these quotes made you reflect. IT MAY HAVE ALSO EXTENDED YOUR LIFE!
 
The world is gradually dividing into two populations.

Not the “haves” and “have-nots” of the political agitators. This is something much more precious than mere money: It’s those who learn and those who don’t.

In bald numbers, educated men live 14 years longer, on average, than uneducated men.

Educated women live 10 years longer, on average, than uneducated women.

But learning minds are not limited to those with degrees ... learning minds are merely those who read, reflect, and learn from the prose.

 

2.) READING AS VALIUM.

 

Reading is the best way to relax and even six minutes can be enough to reduce the stress levels by more than two thirds, according to new research.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5070874/Reading-can-help-reduce-stress.html


And it works better and faster than other methods to calm frazzled nerves such as listening to music, going for a walk or settling down with a cup of tea, research found.

Psychologists believe this is because the human mind has to concentrate on reading and the distraction of being taken into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and the heart.

The research was carried out on a group of volunteers by consultancy Mindlab International at the University of Sussex.

Reading worked best, reducing stress levels by 68 per cent, said cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis.

Subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles, he found. In fact it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started.

Listening to music reduced the levels by 61 per cent, have a cup of tea of coffee lowered them by 54 per cent and taking a walk by 42 per cent.

Playing video games brought them down by 21 per cent from their highest level but still left the volunteers with heart rates above their starting point.

 

3.) PLATO NOT PROZAC:
The idea that literature can make us emotionally and physically stronger goes back to Plato.

But now book groups are proving that Shakespeare can be as beneficial as self-help guides. There is a rise in bibliotherapy.


Medical staff tell stories of the remarkable successes they've seen:

the neurological patient who sat in a group saying nothing for months, then after a reading of George Herbert's poem "The Flower"
 

"Who would have thought my shrivelled heart

Could have recovered greenness?"


launched into a 10-minute monologue at the end of which he announced "I feel great."

The brain-damaged young man whose vocabulary significantly increased after he joined a book group;

the husband caring for his disabled wife whose exposure to poetry has proved not just a respite but a liberation.

To outsiders, the outcomes might seem small, but to the staff and patients concerned they're huge breakthroughs.

Judith Mawer of the Mersey Care Mental Health Trust explained,

focusing on a book is the decisive factor:

"People who don't respond to conventional therapy, or don't have access to it, can externalise their feelings by engaging with a fictional character, or be stimulated by the rhythms of poetry."

One particularly successful initiative has been reading poetry to and with dementia patients, some of whom have lost all sense of who and where they are but can recite the words of a poem learned at school 70 years ago.

"One sheds one's sicknesses in books," DH Lawrence once wrote.
Bibliotherapy, as it's called, is a fast-growing profession. A recent survey suggests that "over half of English library authorities are operating some form of bibliotherapy intervention.

Read the evocative words of Emmylou Harris from THE PEARL which touched the dark heart of a patient struggling with Cancer:

O the dragons are gonna fly tonight
They're circling low and inside tonight
It's another round in the losing fight
Out along the great divide tonight

We are aging soldiers in an ancient war
Seeking out some half remembered shore
We drink our fill and still we thirst for more
Asking if there's no heaven what is this hunger for?

Our path is worn our feet are poorly shod
We lift up our prayer against the odds
And fear the silence is the voice of God


And we cry Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah

Sorrow is constant and the joys are brief
The seasons come and bring no sweet relief
Time is a brutal but a careless theif
Who takes our lot but leaves behind the grief

It is the heart that kills us in the end
Just one more old broken bone that cannot mend
As it was now and ever shall be amen


 

And we cry Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah

So there'll be no guiding light for you and me
We are not sailors lost out on the sea
We were always headed toward eternity
Hoping for a glimpse of Gaililee

Like falling stars from the universe we are hurled
Down through the long loneliness of the world
Until we behold the pain become the pearl

 

Cryin´ Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah

And we cry Allelujah Allelujah
We cry Allelujah
***
For the Cancer patient there was emotional healing to these words.

*{A photo of some of the leather bound volumes in one of my
bookcases.}