Mathilde Apelt Schmidt's Blog, page 89

Three Cups of Tea

Meeting with Greg Mortenson at Diamont Palace

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson

Last night’s event at the Diamont Palace in Union City drew about 900 people. The event was sold out and every place of the huge hall was taken. The event was sponssored by the Association of American University Women of Fremont, California. Mr. Mortenson had already staged a performance that day for a younger audience at the Logan High School auditorium, but he did not seem tired at all. He spoke completely free, wandering back and forth on the stage while speaking. Outside it was pouring rain,

Marketing my books

I wrote a few books, so what. Now I’d like people to read them. I wrote them to share my views with my readers.

Here I am, almost three months into having a blog and pos...

Here I am, almost three months into having a blog and posting once in a while, forgetting what I’m doing between postings. But eventually, I might “get in the flow.” I’d like to share with you how it feels to finally arrive at the genre that suits you more: writing a novel. I wrote my first novel last year, in 2008. It was built on one of the short stories in “Lake Dwellers” and has the same title as that story: The Old Castle in Austria.

This novel eveolves around several categories: two culture

My Happiness Book: You are never too old for happiness.

I was still putting together my second book, “The Lake Dwellers,” when I heard Dan Gilbert on the radio while driving at night. He was promoting his book, “Stumbling on Happiness.” I was intrigued, went next to my bookstore and purchased the book, a bestseller. Mr. Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard and he teaches about Happiness. the book is studded with experiments and calculations, which I felt had nothing to do with inner happiness. I had my own ideas about this subject and I decid

San Francisco Writers' Conference

Last weekend (Presidents' Day) I spent in San Francisco. It was a very stimulating conference, six hour-long work sessions on Friday and Saturday, great meals, about 300 writers, agents, editors, and publishers, and about twenty volunteers who helped the whole event functioning smoothly. I went with a friend and we stayed together most of the time. We had a room at the hotel, the great Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill. Best-selling writers, like Jane Smiley, were the key-note speakers. On Sunday morning

San Francisco Writers’ Conference

Last weekend (Presidents’ Day) I spent in San Francisco. It was a very stimulating conference, six hour-long work sessions on Friday and Saturday, great meals, about 300 writers, agents, editors, and publishers, and about twenty volunteers who helped the whole event functioning smoothly. I went with a friend and we stayed together most of the time. We had a room at the hotel, the great Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill. Best-selling writers, like Jane Smiley, were the key-note speakers. On Sunday morning

Writing my first book and planning more.

It took me only three months to write the first draft of my first book. I did not care much about typos or poorly written sentences. I just wanted my memoirs written on paper and share them with my family. I had no wish to publish them. Ten years later I changed my mind. Some of my family members were serious readers and helped me getting my memoirs ready for printing. Now I tried to find a publisher. My daughter had started a career as literary agent and she advised me to go via iUniverse, a se

My first book, My Life on Two Continents.

Jan. 30th, 2009. So, I took an autography writing class and started filling a few blocks of lined yellow paper. It was fun, living in the past again and jotting down every thing I could remember. Whatever I wrote about my years in Bremen, the youngest of four sisters, was so different from what my own children experienced. Times were tough, we had inflation and then recession, then came Hitler and threw his weight around and nobody could escape his new order. Girls and boys had to belong to orga

My Books, continued

Jan. 23, 2009 Well, Inauguration Day has passed, and wasn’t that history in the making. My husband Leo and I watched the whole thing (both of us are retired, so we had the priviledge to see it all in the morning, direct from where it happened). Now, back to my books. After ten years, in 2005, I consulted my diaries and found some very interesting enties. I started writing “The last ten years of my life” By now I had visited several writing groups, even had invested in a college course about wri