Pearl Luke's Blog: Pearl Luke's Book and Writing Blog, page 28

Mar 23, Creative Writing Contests and Competitions

Creative writing contests and competitions with big cash prizes like the ones below can provide a real step up for writers. Writing competitions can jumpstart a career.

Mar 23, The Missing Person

The activity is fun for young children but might be used to inspire imaginative stories with adults, as well. Try this with a class you are comfortable

Mar 23, The good old walk outside

Take students outside and have them look, listen, touch, taste, and smell around for fifteen minutes. Ground rules: No talking to one another No cell

Mar 23, DEADLINE APRIL 30, 2012, 2012 Spring Romance Short Story Contest, $500 USD

http://www.coffeeandcreampublishing.c...

Mar 23, Where can I find someone to read a draft of my novel

Hi I am writing my first book right now and would like someone to read it a little and tell me what they think. I don't want to post it in a public forum

Mar 23, Revise and Resubmit

An editor said my novel has merit but she would like me to Revise and Rewrite if I want to. Apparently, I'm doing too much head hopping. When I read my

Mar 23, If Not Cliches, What Else?

If none of the 681 cliches/phrases you show on the Cliches Page are to be used 'as a rule' then surely writers will run out of phrases to explain certain

Mar 22, March 22nd Book Giveaway ~ The Ice Balloon by Alec Wilkinson

Alec Wilkinson began writing for The New Yorker in 1980. Before that he was a policeman in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and before that he was a rock-and-roll musician. He has published nine other books—two memoirs, two collections of essays, three biographical portraits, and two pieces of reporting—most of which first appeared in The New Yorker. His honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lyndhurst Prize, and a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. He lives with his wife and son in New York City.



About The Ice Balloon

Alec Wilkinson brings us the story of S. A. Andrée, the visionary Swedish aeronaut who, in 1897, during the great age of Arctic endeavor, left to discover the North Pole by flying to it in a hydrogen balloon. Called by a British military officer "the most original and remarkable attempt ever made in Arctic exploration," Andrée's expedition was followed by nearly the entire world, and it made him an international legend.

The Ice Balloon begins in the late nineteenth century, when nations, compelled by vanity, commerce, and science, competed with one another for the greatest discoveries, and newspapers covered every journey. Wilkinson describes how in Andrée several contemporary themes intersected. He was the first modern explorer—the first to depart for the Arctic unencumbered by notions of the Romantic age, and the first to be equipped with the newest technologies. No explorer had ever left with more uncertainty regarding his fate, since none had ever flown over the horizon and into the forbidding region of ice.

In addition to portraying the period, The Ice Balloon gives us a brief history of the exploration of the northern polar regions, both myth and fact, including detailed versions of the two record-setting expeditions just prior to Andrée's—one led by U.S. Army lieutenant Adolphus Greely from Ellesmere Island; the other by Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who initially sought to reach the pole by embedding his ship in the pack ice and drifting toward it with the current.

Woven throughout is Andrée's own history, and how he came by his brave and singular idea. We also get to know Andrée's family, the woman who loves him, and the two men who accompany him—Nils Strindberg, a cousin of the famous playwright, with a tender love affair of his own, and Knut Fraenkel, a willing and hearty young man.

Andrée's flight and the journey, based on the expedition's diaries and photographs, dramatically recovered thirty-three years after the balloon came down, along with Wilkinson's research, provide a book filled with suspense and adventure, a haunting story of high ambition and courage, made tangible with the detail, beauty, and devastating conditions of traveling and dwelling in "the realm of Death," as one Arctic explorer put it.

(Information © 2012 Random House, Inc)

To enter to your name in the draw for this book, please follow the instructions at the bottom of the review of The Ice Balloon at BookClubBuddy.com

Mar 15, March 15th Book Giveaway: Dinner with Lisa by Rod Prendergast

R. L. (Rod) Prendergast was the entrepreneurial kid you saw on your neighbourhood street selling lemonade on a hot summer's day. Recognizing young Rod's preoccupation with money, his mother bribed him to read with an offer of 25 cents per book—and instilled in him a lifelong love of reading.

Although he continued down the path of industry—he started and sold his first business before completing his Bachelor of Commerce—he continued to read voraciously. After a number of years working in sales, marketing and management, he spent a year's sabbatical surfing and reading in New Zealand and, free of business pressures, he began to write.

Those first words became the backbone of The Impact of a Single Event—which was long listed for the Independent Publishers Book Award for literary fiction, and which became a national bestseller in Canada. Spurred on by the success of his first novel, he took another sabbatical and wrote Dinner with Lisa. He is currently working on his next book.

To enter your name in the draw for a copy of Rod Prendergast's novel Dinner with Lisa please visit Getting 2 Know Rod Prendergast at BookClubBuddy.com

Mar 15, Has the Twitter Novel Tweetered Out?

The Twitter novel was an intriguing new form in 2008/2009, but where are the Twitter novels now?