Alexander M. Zoltai's Blog, page 176

A Mystery Partly Unraveled ~ A Critical Dream

This special Friday Behind The Scenes post will present a fairly large Spoiler—this author will explain, partially, a very important dream in Notes from An Alien—grab a free copy if you want to read the story before you read this post… In the last Friday post I said, “The next three Fridays will explore spheres, [...]

Etymologies & Thesaurus Trees

I think it’s time to show the Word Histories and Synonyms for the three Main Topics of this blog: Reading, Writing, & Publishing. The etymologies are from the Oxford Online Dictionary Pro: READ : Old English rae-dan, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch raden and German raten ‘advise, guess’. Early senses included ‘advise’ and ‘interpret [...]

Tales of Passion ~ Isabel Allende

I don’t have many “Favorite Authors”—I love quite a few, like many, could care less about some… One of my favorites is Isabel Allende: “…acclaimed author of 19 books which have been translated into 35 languages and have sold more than 57 million copies. She holds 12 international honorary doctorates and has received 50 awards [...]

Empathy for Writers & George Orwell’s Experiment

I was born in 1946. That was also the year George Orwell published his essay, Politics and the English Language. In that essay he exposes a “catalogue of swindles and perversions” that writers were using: Staleness of imagery Lack of precision Dying metaphors Operators or verbal false limbs Pretentious diction Meaningless words But, George also [...]

Resources Galore ~ for Readers, Writers, & Publishers

This may be the shortest post I’ve ever done; but, it has Great Depth—if you take this link :-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our Comment Link Is At The Top of The Post :-) For Private Comments, Email: amzolt {at} gmail {dot} com * Google Author Page Tagged: publishing advice, Publishing Resources, Publishing Tips, Reading Adventures, Reading Resources, [...]

An Alien Internet ~ Dangerous?

This is the second special Friday Behind The Scenes post that will have “severe” spoilers—excerpts from the novel. Grab a free copy of Notes from An Alien—to read before you explore this post and to use to find the excerpts in the novel. But, if you’re the kind of reader not bothered by spoilers, this [...]

So, How Clueless Are Traditional Publishers?

I’ve featured Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath here quite a few times—the two most interesting posts being Some Publishing Advice from Two Extremely SuccessfulAuthors and More on The Konrath/EislerConversation. Well, Barry gave a talk at the Pike’s Peak Writers Convention and got some surprising responses and Joe carried Barry’s explanation on his blog: Eisler on [...]

Book Are Alive! ~ Video Proof!!

You read a book and things happen in your mind—Amazing Things! The book comes alive for you… Recent research—covert and dangerous—has proven that books are not only capable of making your mind do things—They Are Actually Living Beings!!! Here is the Secret Video Proof: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our Comment Link Is At The Top of The Post [...]

Honoring The Words of A Literary Critic on World Book Day

Today is World Book Day, founded by UNESCO, but celebrated in the U.K. in March. Ironic if you watched yesterday’s video, The History of English :-) And, being a writer who blogs five days a week about Reading, Writing, and Publishing, World Book Day makes me think about writing more than reading… I’ve certainly had [...]

The History of English (in ten minutes)

I’m a writer—I love English. My favorite word is “word”. There’s a special page on this blog, with a series of posts, called * What Are Words? I also hang out with folks from many other countries and they speak English; but, I don’t speak their language… There are people in English-speaking countries who want [...]