Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 76

HOW IS TROPICAL STORM BARRY TREATING ME?

We Are An ENDANGERED SPECIES and How To Go Down Fighting!

If you are reading this, then obviously you are a reader.

The ranks of book readers 
are shrinking.

A recent study revealed 
that33% of high school graduates 
plan neverto read another book ... ever.
That same study revealed42% of college graduatesplan never to read another book either.

I know what you're thinking.
But You and I 
are of another generation.
We reflect the thinking of the Past not the Future.

In this Digital, 
Multi-Task Era,
our world is designed for shallow skimming rather than deep diving.

Think SHORT STORY
Perfect length for thisdistractible time.

Don't groan.
Think H. P. LOVECRAFT

His stories existed 
in a linked universe
with entities and tomescrossing over from onestory to another.

Readers did not have  to start from scratch with each story.
The surroundings 
were familiar although terrifying.
Or have a character common 
to all your stories.

Short stories bring more pressure, 
because like with poetry, 

each paragraph, sentence, and word 
is more important 
than they would be 
inside a large novel. 

 Short stories are precise 
with their delivery, 

they must capture 
the attention of the reader 
extraordinarily quickly, 

and

tell a full tale 
from beginning to end 
in roughly 
a half hour of reading.

Which is the perfect length
in today's world
with too much to do.


If you got anything useful
from this post,
consider
sharing it, will you?

:-)

INSECURITY is Good For You_IWSG post

 http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

INSECURITY 
doesn't feel GOOD.
Out of the discomfort of it,you may strive to growso that you do not feel it
as deeply.



Life is a balancing act.

Our dreams always seem to be in
danger of toppling us over

when Life insists on tugging
on the tight-rope.


INSECURITY is that inner demonic voice that murmurs you are not good enough.

So you strive to grow in your ability to put prose on paper, 
to see beneath the masks that all people wear, 
to view life from a perspective that will make the commonplace the magic that it truly is.

Insecurity can spark growth. 
Insecurity can prompt our desire for self-improvement. 
It can jolt us into action and push us toward higher goals.  
Insecurity is only harmful when we compare our weakest link to someone's strongest link.

 It’s time to tell the truth
 so that everyone can relax a bit and know they’re not alone in wondering if they’re okay. 

  You’re not flawed or defective. 

You’re experiencing this thing we call Life. 
There will be times you’ll feel on top of the world and times you’ll doubt your worth. 

This is normal. 
It’s a part of our forward movement as we take stock of who we are, in transit to who we’re becoming. 

How is your journey  with INSECURITY coming along?

POWER can cause DRAIN BAMAGE!

Leaders lose mental capacities -most notably the ability
to read other people
the skill responsible for their rise to powerin the first place.

POWER can intoxicate, corrupt, even made Henry Kissinger believe he was sexually magnetic.

Science now says it can cause 
brain damage! 
 
The historian Henry Adams was being metaphorical, not medical, 
when he described power as “a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.”  Once we have power, we lose some of the capacities we needed to gain it in the first place. 
WORSE:
 Subordinates provide few reliable cues to the powerful. 

  Laughing when others laugh or tensing when others tense does more than ingratiate.
 It helps trigger the same feelings those others are experiencing 
and provides a window into where they are coming from. 
Powerful people stop simulating the experience of others leading to an “empathy deficit.”


Leaders need to stay grounded and to do that they need someone to hold up a mirror occasionally.
 For Winston Churchill, the person who filled that role was his wife, Clementine, who had the courage to write:


“My Darling Winston. I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; 
you are not as kind as you used to be.”  

Written on the day Hitler entered Paris, torn up, then sent anyway, 
the letter was not a complaint but an alert: 
Someone had confided to her, she wrote, 
that Churchill had been acting “so contemptuous” toward subordinates in meetings that 
“no ideas, good or bad, will be forthcoming”—with the attendant danger that “you won’t get the best results.” 

HUBRIS SYNDROME

A disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, 
held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader.
Its 14 clinical features include: 
Manifest contempt for others, loss of contact with reality, restless or reckless actions, and displays of incompetence. 

Do you see any of those symptoms in the current leaders on the world stage? 
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS?

Is Your Novel a STILL LIFE or a LIVING PORTRAIT?

WHAT MAKES A NOVEL  COME ALIVE?


1.) Memorable characters
More than plot, riveting, absorbing characters draw us in.
I read and re-read the Spenser mysteries for the quick wit and snappy dialogue 
between Spenser, Hawk, and Susan.
Raymond Chandler made Philip Marlowe a person you wanted to listen to no matter how confusing the mystery.
“From 30 feet away 
she looked like a lot of class. 
From 10 feet away  she looked like something  made up to be seen 
from 30 feet away.”



2.) Original Plot
Take the movie, Mirage:
 Gregory Peck is caught in a building’s blackout, 
and rather than wait for the power to return and use the elevator, 
he makes his way down the stairs. 
He bumps into Diane Baker who greets him as a friend, but he does not know her. 
Alarmed, she flees into a sub-basement.
On the street, he finds the body of a man who supposedly jumped out of a window.  

He returns to try to find Diane only to discover there is no sub-basement.

Shaken, Gregory hires a private investigator to help him sort things out.  

He brings the detective to his office, only to find a blank wall.

It is an absorbing, riveting film because the plot is totally unique.  

And since it was made in 1966, there are no Matrix explanations ... only well-thought out ones.




3.) Do you like being a victim?
Neither does your reader.  

Most of us feel powerless in life more than we wish.  

We read to lose ourselves, to live vicariously adventures 

where the protagonists take control of their problems 

and after thrilling adventures triumph.



4.) Make them laugh.
Novels with serious themes like The Fault in Our Stars and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl 

use humor for good reason.

 Joss Whedon:

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough,  but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.” 
A good laugh is a great way to relieve non-stop tension to set up the reader for the next jolt.

Humor in dialogue also is a way to quickly, subtly convey character relationships.


WHAT ARE SOME GOOD WAYS  YOU BREATHE LIFE  INTO YOUR NOVEL?

GRADUAL may prove MORE deadly than ABRUPT

Last post I talked about Preppers attempting to secure themselves from 

sudden massive change whether political, natural, or terrorist.


Venezuela has taught us that when those in political power lose sight of the common man, 

things can become uncommonly terrible for those who face hunger, looting, and illness without treatment.



What happens when science becomes nightmare to you 

but common sense to another, younger generation?


Venezuela may have been only the beginning of the unravelingof the world as we knew it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

HOW CAN YOU PREPARE  FOR A  "BRAVE NEW WORLD?"

Are PREPPERS Crazy?

Who are Preppers anyway?


Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) 
who actively prepare for emergencies, including possible disruptions in social or political order, 
on scales from local to international. 
CRAZY, RIGHT?

  Take the CARRINGTON EVENT of 1859
That solar storm has been dubbed the Carrington Event, 
after British astronomer Richard Carrington, who witnessed the megaflare and 
was the first to realize the link between activity on the sun and geomagnetic disturbances on Earth.
 During the Carrington Event, northern lights were reported as far south as Cuba and Honolulu.
The flares were so powerful that 
people in the northeastern U.S. could read newspaper print just from the light of the aurora.
 Satellite communications—also essential to many daily activities—would be at risk from solar storms.


Every time you purchase a gallon of gas with your credit card, that's a satellite transaction.  
No bank would be able to ascertain your saved money with the EMP from the sun wiping clean their data.
OVERNIGHT YOU WOULD BECOME PENNILESS
The big fear is what might happen to the electrical grid, 
since power surges caused by solar particles could blow out giant transformers. 
Such transformers can take a long time to replace, especially if thousands are destroyed at once.

THE RULE OF THREE
You can live THREE DAYS  without water
You can live THREE WEEKS  without food
THREE DAYS is how long  goods will stay on store shelves with no chance of being restocked. 

In THREE DAYS
addicts will
be out of their drugs
with NO
means to get more.
How much water do you have on hand?
How much food?
Do you have flashlights?  Batteries?

Mark Twain wrote:
“A person with a new idea is a crank  until the idea succeeds.”    Remember the crime and violenceandGovernment ineptnessin New Orleans after Katrina?

Do Blog Tours Still Work & How To Do One

Have you wondered if Blog Tours  are things that have become passe?
A good blog tour is a fine way to build your brand 

and establish some credentials with your target audience. 

If you can get on blogs and websites that actual READERS follow, 

then it is a great way of overcoming the "unknown author" problem. 

Blog tours generally don't equate to a huge uptick in immediate sales. 

 Rather, they raise awareness of you and your brand with the audience. 

Someone may not be looking to buy your book that very second, 

but the next time they go to buy a book they will be more likely to think of you.


THERE IS NO MAGIC PATH TO SUCCESS 
All we can do is knock on as many doors as possible.  Blog Tours are an excellent way to do that.
But each post must be different, must be entertaining, and must be aligned with the theme and motif of the blog you are visiting.
There must be some worthwhile reward for each visitor to each post.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LY15Y0W/
Take my own DON'T BUY MY BOOK! Blog Tour ...
I didn't just start my guest with the cover image ...

I created images selected from https://pixabay.com/

to highlight themes and characters from my book such as


 or
And I created what I hoped was a unique name for my Blog Tour with its own image:



I hope this helps any of you who are thinking of doing a Book Blog Tour!

And keep an eye out for AWEN RISING by O. J. Barre coming out soon.

How to be A FATHER

  Hobbes is still trying to come to grips  with finding out  about his furry brothers  and fatherhood

1) LIONS
You may already know that a male lion that recently became head of his pride 
will usually kill all the cubs sired by the previous leader.
My own step-father tried to kill me twice jealous of the love my mother had for me so I can emphasize.
 Once the mama brings home her kill, the male lion is always the first one to eat.
 If it’s a rough hunting season, an alpha lion will let his wives and children starve first.



2) GRIZZLY BEARS 
Hibbs is not much happier finding out about Grizzly fathers!
It’s rare for any animal-kingdom father to eat his own young when he isn’t desperate for food, 
but the male grizzly bear will do just that. 
That means mama bears have to be extra good parents, 
not only making sure to feed their cubs and teach them how to survive on their own, 
but also ensuring their youngsters never happen to stray into their daddy’s bachelor pad.
My own mother tried her best with my biological father, 
but even so he tricked my babysitter into trusting me to him ...
And he abandoned me on the roughest street in Detroit.

STILL ...
It is not like they train boys how to be good fathers in high school.
And with so many absentee and abusing fathers in our culture, 
it is no wonder that young boys have a fragmented idea of what it means to be a father. 


SANDRA IS MY WIREMAN --

 Sandra's mantra to young girls is:
"Once you become a parent, the days of thinking just for yourself are over."

In Stephen King's DUMA KEY, the hero continually wrote:
Wireman always says ...   
Wireman's motto is ...   
Wireman laughs that ...
SPOILER ALERT! 
It is not until the end of King's novel that you find out that Wireman died before the hero recounts the adventure.
But Wireman became such an integral part of the hero's new life that his friend always stays in the present of the hero's thoughts.
So Sandra stays in the present of my thinking of life.


WHY DO I MENTION THAT?
Fathers, both good and bad, are like that, too.
They never fade in the past.  
Their words, their actions are like mental Muzac continually playing in their children's minds.
Fathers may wash their hands of their children either physically or emotionally ...
but those children never stop feeling the touch or lack of touch from those fathers.


THE ME GENERATION
Every generation seems to become more and more focused on the self, doesn't it?
Is it any wonder that the grown children of those parents do not know how to be responsible in their own parenting?


PETER PAN Males
How many men in your world are boy-men --
unwilling to accept discipline or restraint, forever in search of pleasure?
They rationalize finding sexual pleasure while denying the consequences of that sex.


SITUATIONAL ETHICS
Perhaps that is why so many choose not to believe in God, for that would predicate living life according to concrete rules. 
Yet, our God is what we worship in our deeds ...
and seeking consequence-free pleasure seems to be the new God of today.

MINI-ESSAYS
It is said that the Age of the Essay is over.  Not so.
Our blog posts are truly mini-essays.
Michel de Montaigne's essays are both personal and urbane.
He neither wanted nor expected people beyond his circle of friends to be too interested.
In his preface, he echoes our thoughts when we write our own posts:
 Reader, you have here an honest book … 
in writing it, I have proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private end.
 I have had no consideration at all either to your service or to my glory … 
Thus, reader, I myself am the matter of my book: 
there’s no reason that you should employ your leisure upon so frivolous and vain a subject. 
 Therefore farewell.

WHY DO I MENTION MONTAIGNE?
In writing about fathers, I am not judging anyone or proclaiming my thoughts are the gold standard of life.  :-)
I am merely reflecting in prose on my own views, born from my own life experiences much like the father of the essay.
The great and glorious masterpiece of any life is to have lived with purpose and love.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS  ON FATHERS?

Is America Falling Apart Around Our Ears?

“You can no longer see or identify yourself  solely as a member of a tribe,  but as a citizen of a nation of one people working toward a common purpose.”
― idowu koyenikan
Do you stand and stare at  a cultural/political landscape  that seems to have gone insane?
‘Why bother with a milkshake when  you could get some battery acid?’
Jo Brand's comment when speaking about the current trend of throwingmilkshakes at those whose political viewsdiffer from yours. 
We are at an unprecedented moment in America.

Though our nation has made great strides in fighting discrimination, 
the voices of our fragmented society are becoming more and more strident.

 In America today, every group feels under assault to some extent. 
Whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, men and women, 
Christians, Jews, and Muslims, straight people and gay people, liberals and conservatives – 
all feel their groups are being attacked, bullied, persecuted, discriminated against.

When everyone is screaming, no one is listening.
Now, Hollywood says the term X-MEN has become outdated since there are women in the group.
No longer should there be Men In Black ... but People in Black.
 Somewhere along the line, common sense has become not so common anymore.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?