Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 85

THE NEW THOUGHT POLICE

There are times when I feel  as if I've stumbled into  an episode of BLACK MIRROR.


I watch the governor of Virginia say his new proposed legislation will allow 

a baby to be fully delivered, and then the mother and doctor can discuss ending the child's life!

All the while the two women beside him nod sagely in agreement. 



Once out of the mother's body, the child has become this nation's newest citizen and

 has the legal right to be protected against silly nuisances like ... murder.

 I have become belatedly cognizant of Sensitivity Readers.

Welcome to the 21st century and  "sensitivity readers,"  people hired by writers and publishers, especially of young-adult titles,
 to vet manuscripts to make sure things are, ah, politically correct, "authentic," and, especially, inoffensive.
Is there any sane reason why a small group of experts 
should be able to claim that it alone can validate a manuscript 
as authentic and real for potential protesters who will claim that 
this or that book must be pulled from shelves, heavily rewritten, or just not published at all?
How many Sensitivity Readers will a book have to go through?
A black critic won't know what a Native American critic might find offensive 
or a Latino critic 
or an Asian critic 
or a Polish critic 
or a Russian critic 
or a Samoan critic.
You get the point
 Take Laura Moriarity.
Her book, American Heart, takes place in a dystopian America 

where Muslims are rounded up and sent to detainment camps.

The narrator is a white girl and even though the publisher and Moriarity worked with sensitivity readers 

and the book received a coveted and rare starred review from Kirkus, 

an intense, immediate online uproar about the book's basic premise erupted. 


The original review, written by a Muslim woman, called it "suspenseful, thought-provoking and touching." 

An online mob, which presumably had not yet read the unpublished book, 

saw it differently, as an intolerable "white savior narrative" and worse.

 Kirkus took down the review and replaced it with a contrite statement from its editor in chief, Claiborne Smith, 

who noted that the review, which was written by a Muslim woman, was being re-evaluated. 


When the revised version was posted, it was more critical, and had been stripped of its star.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525707794
 Take Amélie Wen Zhao’s Blood Heir

There was a nasty, vicious Twitter "Pile-On" for this poor author.
Her fantasy series, a loose retelling of Anastasia  
with a diverse cast of characters and a hefty dose of blood magic, 
sold at auction in a high six-figure deal with Delacorte. 

A series of tweets, without accompanying evidence,  accused the author of alleged screenshotting-with-intentof authors who disliked her book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38205707-blood-heir A smattering of one-star reviews cropped up on Miss Zhao’s page.


Miss Zhao put a slave auction scene in her book,  in which a black character was killed.
Then, the poor woman was called racist.
.On January 30th Miss Zhao  called for her own book to be canceled.
We now live in the Tyranny of the Touchy,where accusation aloneis enough to convict.
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HM8ZS5Q
In my own book set in 1946 New Orleans, I described the deplorable attitude of many whites towards blacks.

Yet, I also included Orson Welles impassioned advocating for equal rights for blacks 

when it was very unpopular to do so.

I so wish he had finished his film, "The Story of Jazz."  

He'd signed contracts from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. 

Armstrong was cast as himself, Ellington was to have supervised the score.

But Mr. Welles, the genius that he was, was barely able to create in his own time, 

much less have been allowed to create in ours ...  

where Mel Brooks classic movies would be still-born before even reaching the screen.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE?

THE BEST WAY

To get People NOT to LISTEN
Is to talk about YOURSELF




1.) People want to hear about something that will help THEM not you.
Write a post on how to connect to a larger segment of the internet and readers will flock to your blog.
Write a novel that speaks to THEIR dreams, hurts, insecurities, and yearnings  ... and people will buy your book ... if they hear of it.
Your horn will sound louder when someone else toots it than when you do!

2.) INSTAGRAM
People aren't on Instagram to find books but to connect to like-minded, fun people.

3.) FACEBOOK
2007 -- oh, those were the days! 
You posted something to your personal page or your Fan/Author page, 
and everyone who was your Friend or Follower saw it. 
Since then, however, Facebook has recognized the error of allowing us to speak to our friends for free, 
and now, of my Fans, only 3-10% see any given post on the Author page 
that they have chosen to follow for the express purpose of reading my posts. 
 If I pay $20, I could bump that number up to 30%. 
I would have better luck randomly  mailing postcards to strangers!



4.) PUSHING
SOCIAL MEDIA pushes ...
And NO ONE LIKES TO BE PUSHED into liking a movie, liking a candidate, or BUYING A BOOK.

5.) PULLING
 I want a book to tug me into wanting to read it.
Remember what I said of others sounding louder than you tooting your own horn?  
If I see an evocative cover and read a fascinating hook, I am pulled to read that book.

6.) FISHING
What if, as you fished, dozens of fish leapt out of the lake and kept slapping you in the face?
That's what it feels like to me when I go to Tweetdeck ... 
dozens of authors leaping out at me to
shill their books like barkers in front of a carnival show.
How about you?

WHAT TO DO?
1.) CHILL AND BEGIN TO WRITE YOUR NEXT BOOK
I just started on my next book: 
WITHOUT MERCY OR NAME
It is focusing me on the one thing I can control:
Writing the best, most entertaining book I can.

2.) BE KIND TO YOUR FELLOW BLOGGERS WITHOUT REGARD TO WHETHER THEY CAN HELP YOU OR NOT.
People who are smart enough to write a book are smart enough to see when you try to leverage them.
Besides, none of us have enough true friends, right?
3.) REMEMBER FEW FAMOUS WRITERS KNOW WHAT MADE THEM BESTSELLERS.
And the few I read who said they did were wrong about why I liked them!  :-)
4.) HAVE FUN in your writing.
It will color the tone of your work and splash over into the minds of your readers.

OH, AND BUY MY BOOK!

JUST KIDDING!
But I won't whine if you do,and I might if you don't!

A surreal adventure

C. Lee McKenzie has done me 
the great good service of doing the first review 
of RAZOR VALENTINE
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N75DRKC
What did she say?

In Razor Valentine you enter 1947 during Carnival where the natural laws don’t exist and where death is a dark and dangerous beauty.


In this world, unlikely people struggle to live and love. Death is always imminent and confusion is queen.

Many characters return from previous stories to weave their way into this newest surreal adventure. 


And there are some new, but extraordinary characters based on real life celebrities of the 40s. Yeomans captures their essence in this bizarre tale.

Cesar Romero on board the USS Cavalier_1943On October 12, 1942, he voluntarily enlisted in theU.S. Coast Guard and saw action in the Pacific Theater of Action.participating in the invasions ofTinian and Saipan.
 Movie Still from 1941
Caesar Romero comes to life as the suave, sophisticated actor he actually was on the Hollywood screen decades ago. 
(Major James Stewart in 1943)
You can almost hear Jimmy Stewart drawl his way through the story, and the author pays him the respect he earned in real life during the war years.

As always, a lot of fresh and often humorous images lace the story and Yeomans does an elegant dance with the English language. Something I always appreciate.  (4 out of 5 Stars) 
Thank you so much. Lee!http://www.cleemckenziebooks.com/blog/

FIRST 28_ IWSG & WEP Post

http://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/
We insecure writers have to stick together. 
I know insecure: my latest book is thick with cyber-cobwebs!
It's cheap, ah, inexpensive, with 13 interior pictures and everything!  :-)
The IWSG helps all of us to persevere.  

 So I am shouting out the WEP February writing challenge in which the IWSG is participating.
HOW?
Letting you guys see my own WEP post a bit early to whet your interest to join in.
 So meet Hazy:

FIRST TWENTY-EIGHT {995 words}
High School is a spork.  
 It's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork. In the end, it’s only an exercise in keeping your temper while what you want slips away.

Most people call me Hazy as if it were original with them.  Mother never has, not even in her worst “Dirty Thirties.”  
 What are those?  I wish I didn’t know myself.  I’ll tell you later.

Mother always calls me “Hon.” Unless she’s sizzling furious, then she calls me …

“Hazel Lee Hunnicutt!”

Jeez, the feces just kamikazed into the fan … again.

I eased into the front room to face the lioness without one chair or whip.  Not that it would have mattered.  
 When the caveman looked up at the lightning in the skies and thought MOTHER Nature, he must have had a mother like mine.


But the only home I’ve ever known is Mother.  I would deal with it. 

She was in this alone, too.  I bet I came with no book of instructions. 
Father left the day I was born.  He must have used up all his cojones with the sperm deposit that sparked me.

Mother was shaking her cell phone in a fist. 

“I’ve just had to beg … beg! …  Dean Reynolds of Laughton Academy to accept you back!”

What she said in one of her “Dirty Thirties” and decided not to say was: 
“After I had to sell my wedding ring to pay for your tuition!”

That stung.  I didn’t know that when I smarted off to the school counselor. 

Her voice sank to that whisper I dreaded.  “What did you say to the counselor?”

“S-She asked me what I made at my last school.”

Mother groaned, “Oh, God.”

 “I told her: ‘mostly mistakes and inappropriate comments.’”

She lunged at me.  I didn’t move.



You see, I’m a freak … not in body but in mind.  I see ahead in time 30 seconds.  Think that’s cool?
It sucks.

Time isn’t a river.   
It flows into a thousand tributaries all shaped by the erratic decisions of unfocused minds.  I see 30 variations of the same springboard moment.

No cell phones for me: I hear 30 different replies.  There’s no way for me to know which one to answer.

I know what I must look like.  I’m keeping track of what’s happening, what’s likely to happen, deciding what isn’t likely to happen, all in a window of a few seconds. 

I stiffened as Mother’s knuckles rapped the top of my head.  “Oh, Hon, I know you put up a wall of snark to keep sane.”

She sighed, “But tomorrow is my first day teaching at the university.  I have to impress my Dean just as much as you need to impress yours.”

 She said, “People make up their minds about us after the first 28 days of interaction …”

(Mother’s a psychologist so she uses words like that with a straight face.)

“We have under a month to win over those who could make life … hard for us.  You understand?”

“No Do-Over’s.”

Mother patted my cheek, murmuring, 
“This is it for us, Hon.  I spent the last penny of … our savings on your school uniform.  I could only afford the one. Take care of it.  Play it safe, hear?”

“I will.” 

I swear at the time I meant it.

The next day I trudged into school with all the joy of going to my execution.   
No matter the high school, your status depends on who you’re able to persecute. 
 I was usually the first rung on everyone’s ladder.

Walking into a crowded hallway was true hell what with thirty different views of each moment to  navigate through. 
 Oh, God, let me not walk into anybody important or worse into …

 “Crazy Hazy!”

God must hate me.

The Elite Petites from junior high: Beverly and her two cohorts, Stacy and Ciss.   
What sneezing was to surgeons, Beverly Philips was to me: not life-threatening but extremely annoying.   Beware girls in threes.  They were all so tanned they looked like 3 Rotisserie chickens in pleated skirts.

Beverly gave me a glare that would have cowed lesser girls … much lesser … like 3rdgraders. 
 “Oh, Hazy, what an almost adequate uniform your mother could barely afford.”

“Bev, can you die of constipation? I ask because I’m worried about how full of shit you are.”

 In a “Dirty Thirty,” I saw her lunge, ripping my jacket.  I twisted aside, thumping into a tall man.  I looked up.
Dean Reynolds.  He undressed me with a disapproving eye-caress.  Obviously, I wasn’t his type.  I was so disappointed.

“Honeycutt, you’re late for Gym.  A bad start.”

In another “Dirty Thirty,” I heard Bev say, 
“That’s right, Old Man.  You better back me up.  In my locker I have copies of your trophy photos of our intimate consultation as you called it.  I bet your wife would just love to receive those in the mail.”

Even Bev wasn’t stupid enough to choose to say it.  What she did say as she started to unlock her locker was to me: 

“I’ll see you in Gym class.  Too bad your uniform won’t survive it.”

I lost it, starting for her throat.  I pulled up short, “seeing” Dean Reynolds expelling me for attacking a fellow student … just like Bev planned.

Bev winked, confident that she would get rid of me yet.  The eddies of students rushing to classes swirled about me.  What to do?

 I smiled wide. 

 I’d seen the combination to Bev’s locker in that last “Dirty Thirty.”  I let the hall go empty.  I walked to Bev’s locker. 

With the photographs in my inside jacket pocket, I turned to go see the Nurse.   
Female trouble I would say.  It would be … for Bev and the Dean … after I did a little Show and Tell for Mother when she picked me up.
Twenty-eight days to make a lasting impression?  I’d do it in the next twenty-eight minutes.


Want more of Hazy?  
 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N75DRKC$2.99 Kindle; $7.97 Paperback   In the lagniappe short story at the end of RAZOR VALENTINE is a 6,000 word adventure from her sophomore year: 
One by one the girls of Laughton Academy are disappearing without a trace 
and Hazy’s mother fears her daughter will be next.   
The bad news: her mother is right.

Let LEONARDO da VINCI Teach You How to Write

No, not mirror writing ... unless you're left handed.

Why did Leonardo Da Vinci write in backward or mirror image style?

I never believed that Leonardo's writing had anything to do with secrets or mystery writing.

He was such a creative, innovative person, he wrote the way he did because it was easier and possibly less "messy".

Leonardo was left handed.

If you have ever watched a left handed person write you will see that in order to be able to read what they have written,

as they write it, they "curl" their hand around what they have written. This allows them to see what they are writing.

So I believe Leonardo simply devised the Backward Writing because it worked for him.


Truly a practical and ingenious way to write his thoughts quickly and without mess. 

And obviously, he had no problem reading what he had written.

That's it. No big secret and deep dark mystery.

Just a good example of how Leonardo was someone who could "think outside the box". 


As you must think outside the box if you are to write something original.


You see, even if the original novel you write does not sell, you have not sold out the most valuable thing you have ... yourself.

What made this illegitimate son of a peasant girl and a notary become one of the most famous artists, inventors and scientists who ever lived?

His energy was limitless when it came to asking questions and searching for answers, and

he was the master of observation which led to more questions and discoveries.

He had an insatiable desire to learn as much as he could about everything he observed, and he took meticulous notes.

He even described himself as a "disciple of experience" which meant he learned from experiencing, experimenting and observing everything he came in contact with.

So must you be a disciple of experience if you would write "true" fiction even if it is a tale of utter fantasy. 

If the reader believes your protagonist, then she/he will flow seamlessly into the adventure no matter how fantastic ... if the logic of the heart rings true.

THE DA VINCI METHOD OF WRITING AWESOMELY:
1.) Curiosità.

Curiosità is an "insatiably curious approach to life and unrelenting quest for continuous learning". Great minds have one characteristic in common: they continuously ask questions throughout their lives.

Leonardo's endless quest for truth and beauty clearly demonstrates this.

What makes great minds different is the quality of their questions. You can increase your ability to solve problems by increasing your ability to ask good questions.

Like da Vinci, you should cultivate an open mind that allows you to broaden your universe and increase your ability to explore it.

2.) STEPS TO BECOMING A DA VINCI

 KEEP A JOURNAL -


Bring a journal wherever you go and use it often. Write your ideas and thoughts there. Try to write several statements a day that start with "I wonder why/how..."

   KEEP FOCUSED -


Observe according to a theme. Choose a theme and observe things according to the theme for a day.

 For example, let's say you choose "communication". For the entire day, observe every type and instance of communication you come across. You can then record your observations in your journal.

  OPEN THE WINDOW OF YOUR MIND -Stream of consciousness exercise. Pick a question and write the thoughts and associations that occur to you as they are. Don't edit them. The important thing is to keep writing. This is also referred to as freewriting .

3.) Dimostrazione. Dimostrazione is "a commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes". Wisdom comes from experience and the principle of Dimostrazione helps you get the most out of your experience. Here are some ways to apply Dimostrazione:   THREE POINTS FOR YOUR INNER COMPASS -First, make a strong argument against your belief.  
Next, take a distant view of your belief (for example, as if you live in a different culture) and review it. 
Finally, find friends who can give you different perspectives.
   ANALYZE YOUR SIREN -



Analyze the advertisements that affect you.

Look at the advertisements in your favorite magazine and analyze the strategy and tactics they use. Find the advertisements that affect you most and find out why.

  FIND YOUR AUNTIE OR ANTI-MODEL -
List the names of some people whose mistakes you want to avoid. Learn from them so that you won't encounter the same pitfalls.

4.) Sensazione.

Sensazione is "the continual refinement of the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven experience".
According to da Vinci, we can best practice Dimostrazione through our senses, particularly sight.
That's why one of Leonardo's mottoes is saper vedere (knowing how to see) upon which he built his work in arts and science.Here are some ways to apply Sensazione:









Write detailed description of an experience. For instance, describe your experience of watching a sunrise in your journal.











Learn how to describe a smell .











Learn to draw .  Even if it is badly.











Listen to different sounds around you.
Learn to listen to different intensity of sounds from the softest (e.g. your breathing) to the loudest (e.g. traffic).












Live in the moment. Practice mindfulness.
5.) Cryptic.


Cryptic is "a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty".

An essential characteristic of da Vinci's genius is his ability to handle a sense of mystery. Here are two ways to apply Cryptic:










Befriend ambiguity.
Not knowing something does not make it ambiguous! It is when you DO know something but its meaning is indeterminate.











Ask yourself questions that relate two opposites.
For example, ask yourself how your happiest and saddest moments are related.  You will be surprised at your findings.











Practice the Socratic method.
The goal with the Socratic method is to examine possibilities, and that is done by asking questions, not by giving answers.


Socrates was known (and criticized) for asking questions to which he didn't have answers.


The key to using the Socratic method is to be humble.

Don't assume that you or anyone knows anything for sure. Question every premise.

6.) SO YOU QUESTION ALL OF THE ABOVE -

How will this improve your writing?

Imagine your heroine can't remember when she hasn't been able to ...

A.) Taste colors
B.) Not laugh when exposed to lies.

Harmless right?

No, she begins to have indigestion and hysterical laughter in front of forgeries in the art museum.

She begins to earn a living until ...

the intelligence agencies the world over hunt her for her skill at detecting lies and

the terrorist organizations the world over want her dead.

Then, an old crone said she once traded the heroine those deadly gifts in return for her earliest memory.

Does the heroine want to un-do the trade?

Learn more about
Leonardo

LEONARDO da VINCI's fable, THE SWAN

As if being a genius in painting and sculpture was not enough,

Leonardo da Vinci was an author!  And a good one, too.  For our mutual jealousy and envy of genius,

here is his   

THE SWAN:

The swan arched his supple neck towards the water and gazed at his reflection for a long time.


He understood the reason for his weariness and for the cold that gripped his body, making him tremble as though it were winter.

 With absolute certainty, he knew that his hour had come and that he must prepare for death.

His feathers were still as white as they had been on the first day of his life. Seasons and years had passed without a blemish appearing on his snowy plumage. He could go now, and his life would end in beauty.

Straightening his beautiful neck, he swam slowly and majestically beneath a willow, where he had been accustomed to rest in the hot weather.

It was already evening, and the sunset was touching the water of the lake with crimson and violet.

And in the great silence that was falling all around, the swan began to sing.

Never before had he found notes so full of love for all of nature, for the beauty of the heavens, the water and the earth.

His sweet song rang through the air, scarcely tinged with melancholy , until, softly, softly, it faded with the last traces of light on the horizon.

"It is the swan," said the fishes, the birds, and all of the beasts of the woodland and meadow.

Touched to the heart, they said:

"The swan is dying."

MARDI GRAS ... MAGIC ... MURDER

Mardi gras in 1947

Mardi gras present day

MARDI GRAS … MAGIC … MURDER

In 1947 New Orleans
THREE KINGS DAYmarks the start of the official Carnival Season

   Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte,  Our Lady of Holy Death, 
is stalking the French Quarter killing apparently at random.
  What does the psychotic actress, Irene Dupré, know of this entity and what lies behind the murders?  
 She remains silent,  only smiling.

Santa Muerte’s strange acolyte lurks in the shadows watching, waiting. 
Waiting for what?

Frank Capra is filming a historical fantasy in the city with Jimmy Stewart, Cesar Romero, and the enigmatic Irene Dupré.

Former O.S.S. operative, now the film’s Prop Master, known only as Lucas, 
finds himself in the middle of the mystery with more questions than answers. 

His lost love back from the dead,  Ingrid Durtz, 
and his best friend, Mitchell Mack, are at a loss on how to stay alive, much less catch a supernatural killer.

Then, there is Lucas’ former O.S.S. team mate, Father Darael, whose gift of a Seraph Blade is literally a two-edged blessing.

You see, Darael is a  Seraphim Provocateur. 
And whose side is he really on, the Celestial or the Fallen?

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N75DRKC
Kindle: $2.99
  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1795380225
Paperback: only $7.97

The 13 interior images and 
eerie wraparound cover are worth it!
 Buy your copy now.
You won't regret this Mardi Gras trip.

ARE YOU HOLDING YOU BACK?

What do you see when you look in the mirror?



Do you let others define you?  Do you allow circumstances to confine you?



"If there is no enemy within, there can be no unbeatable enemy without."
- Wolf Howl


Life hits hard.  

It can hit harder than we can.  But it is not about being hit hard.  It is about how hard we can get hit and keep on going.

Pain can take our breath away.  It usually is temporary or at least ebbs.  

But if we quit because of the pain, it will last forever.

You may look around you and think others have things so much easier.

Yet nothing that grieves us can be called little:

 by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a beloved doll and a king's loss of a cherished crown are events of the same pain.

FEAR is a part of all our lives.  It can paralyze us or haunt us.  What can dissipate fear?

FOCUS.  If you focus on the task at hand, one section at a time, you can dial down the fear.

But Focus gains its strength from our DREAM.  

Not your DREAMS.

Yet those are important, too.

People ask me many times through the course of the day, "How are you?"

I tell them, "I'm pretending I'm dreaming."

There is a reason for that answer:

Most people work hard for a living.  They have tough lives. Structured lives.

They work all day, have dinner, put the kids to bed, go to fitful sleep, and get back to the grind early the next morning.

Everything else in life except for DREAMS has rules.

The only place you're truly free is when you fall asleep and dream.  

If you live life as if it were a dream, you free yourself to be creative, imaginative, and give the day all the wonderful things that are inside you.

But I am talking about your life's DREAM, the image at which your heart is aimed.

How strong is that DREAM?  Do you want it more than being thought cool?

Do you want your dream more than to party, to troll Facebook, to sleep?

That depends on the WHY of your dream.

What is the WHY of your life?

Do you want to succeed to have a sports car in your garage, money in the bank?

Do you want to see a smile on your child's face?

Yet, next September when Wall Street crashes, what will happen to your happiness?  

When your child leaves the nest, will your happiness leave with him?


That depends on your WHO.
WHO do you believe you are?  WHO do you want to become?



Are you who you want to be? Do you even know who that person is?

Not WHAT you want to be but WHO you want to be.

What is the meaning of your life?
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, was sent to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife, where he and she were soon separated.

 His wife Tilly was transferred from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belson camp, where she died. 

Frankl's mother Elsa was killed by the Nazis in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

His brother Walter died working in a mining operation that was part of Auschwitz. Apart from himself, the only survivor of the Holocaust among Frankl's immediate relatives was his sister Stella. 

She had escaped from Austria by emigrating to Australia.  

Viktor speaks of that time:

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. 

The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles.

The man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: 

The salvation of Man is through love and in love. 

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, 

be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. 

In a position of utter desolation, when Man cannot express himself in positive action, 

when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way –

in such a position Man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. 

 Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

He also said:

 "If we take man as he is we make him worse. If we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be."

I believe in the passions of others. It is the greatest act you can do for someone: to have faith in them and who they are.

I will leave you with what he said of happiness and success:

 “Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.

 For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, 

and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself 

or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. 

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. 

I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. 

Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—

success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”


 What do you think?

The SECRET to BOOK SALES

“Not all marketing people 
are writers, 
but all writers must learn 
to be marketers.”
- Joanne Kraft


Book sales: 
The Holy Grail of all writers.


Secret: 
You can't control what will 
catch on with readers, 
but you can control your content.


Make your story the most
riveting, touching, 
and self-affirming prose
you can.



Writing is the business of creating books 
and selling them to readers.


If we only do the one 
without trying our best 
to do the other,
we are rowing 
with only one oar.
We tend to go in circles when we do that!

Donna Reed ruined me 
by what to expect  when entering a book store!



Why do I say that?


Don't let your failed expectations 
keep you from persisting
in your dream.


Success as an author is found in endurance. 


Writing is a marathon not a sprint.


Do something to market your book(s)  each day
FOR THREE YEARS.


Yeah, three years.


Not getting the sales you want?
Non-persistence may be the culprit.


Vary your methods to keep them fresh
BUT IN THE 
EYES OF POTENTIAL READERS.


And, no, 
that does not mean 
YELL and TELL
 on Twitter!


Aren't you tired of checking 
your Tweetdeck only to
be hammered by crass brags 
about books by their authors?


THEN HOW?


Like with exercise, how to
make marketing a habit and effective
is to 
MAKE IT FUN
MAKE IT DIFFERENT.

Have a Blog?


No, don't daily hawk your book!!


Mama, make the bad people stop
misunderstanding me.


Write posts that are helpful, 
funny, and personal.


You have a side-bar.
Post your new books on it.

 You have blogging neighbors

Visit them.


No! 

Don't talk about your book!


Mama, the bad people are at it again!


Talk about them.


If they have problems, hurts, concerns,
talk about them.

 Hurting people usually need
 a listening, caring ear 
more than they need 
an answer to their problem ...


to feel understood and appreciated.

Do the same with Facebook.


Only a few will visit your blog in gratitude
and notice your books in the sidebar.


But if, at their own accord, they
DECIDE TO BUY ONE OF YOUR BOOKS,


they will more likely finish it
and LIKE IT.
Maybe even review it!

 And if they don't?


You will have made a friend.


How cool is that?


What do you do
about your
book marketing? 

THE NEED FOR A GURU

You see the need all your life -- though you may not recognize it until high school or later ... or never.

But it is there.

It seems so many are hungry for the security of walking in the footprints 
of someone who declares confidently that they know THE way.
Being an adult in the world in which we find ourselves is a scary proposition.

Take the Marie Kondo phenomenon.
From Jennifer Gardner to hordes of Netflix watchers, 
new disciples are taking up her challenge to tidy up, much to the delight of thrift stores and Container Stores.

Last month, it was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

whose fact-challenged resume and fact challenged solutions to enormous problems seemed not to matter to her supporters.




For Ms. Kondo, the focus is unironic and extremely personal.

 It calls for inwardness and quiet contemplation, 

two things that are rarely celebrated in our too-performative world. 



We’ve been looking in the wrong places for meaning and happiness. 
 We keep looking ahead for answers, when maybe we should be looking inward.

Only answers we carve out ourselves through effort and thought will endure the test of time.

Perhaps that is why so many get so violent when your view of life seeks to intrude into theirswith something so mild as a question.


Inside they feel insubstantial,and they fear their inner corein danger of being blown away.

What really matters is what’s inside us. 
Our character and hearts.
 It’s the core of who we are that others appreciate most. 
Our unique personality, honesty and authenticity.
 And perhaps our sense of humor.


“The privilege of a lifetime is  to become who you truly are.”  ― C.G. Jung