Sherrie R. Cronin's Blog, page 53

Peace on Earth

Thank you Hippie Peace Freaks

Talk of love and brotherhood is about to begin in earnest as Christians the world over commemorate a gentle soul born in a manger and famous for uttering such lines as “just as you did for the least of these, you did for me” and “if someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other cheek also.” These are powerful words with pretty clear meanings.

Yet, many a battle has been started and fought by those who profess to follow these teachings. Plenty of other wars are fought by followers of other gentle faiths, whose prophets and leaders and books of wisdom offer similar, clear admonishments to love one another.

We almost all seem to agree that peace is best, that love is good. Yet …

Thank you That’s a Good Sign

A July 2011 article in History Today posted by Kathryn Hadley notes that research shows that “between 1870 and 2001, the frequency of wars between states increased steadily by 2% a year on average.”

According to Professors Mark Harrison from the University of Warwick and Nikolaus Wolf from Humboldt University Harrison this increase can be explained in part by the proliferation of borders. In other words, the number of countries has almost quadrupled since 1870, giving us more countries to fight each other and more borders to fight about.

The article also points out that there is no tendency for richer or poorer countries to fight more, but rather that the readiness to engage in war is spread uniformly across the global income distribution even though “increased prosperity and democracy should have lessened the incentives for rulers to go to war.”

Mark Harrison concluded that ‘the very things that should make politicians less likely to want war – productivity growth, democracy, and trading opportunities – have also made war cheaper. We have more wars, not because we want them, but because we can.”

Because we can. How can an entire species profess to love the concept of peace, and yet continue to fight more as time goes on? It looks like it is because every year we have more to fight over.

Filed under: peace Tagged: borders, cause of war, Christmas, Hippie Peace Freaks, how many wars, Humboldt University Harrison, Mark Harrison, Nikolaus Wolf, peace, that's a good sign, war

Weapons for peace

click to like Hippie Peace Freaks

I live in Texas where the very idea of gun laws cause heartburn. We like our guns. My father collected them and my co-workers discuss their firearms in the break room. In the novel x0 my telepathic hero Lola has a gun in her purse and has to consider whether her new powers will render her unable to use it. Guns show up in my next two novels as well.

In spite of the disposition of my home state, and the behaviors of my fictional characters, I am an advocate of reasonable gun regulations.

According to the blog of the Houston Chronicle a state gun law scorecard was released yesterday (Dec. 9) which showed that in the last year 21 states have created or expanded gun laws while 25 other states, including Texas, get F’s for failing to provide the most basic safety restrictions.

This didn’t surprise me, but it prompted me to learn more. Thanks to a website called Texas Gun Laws I found out that in Texas

There is no waiting period for purchasing a firearm
There is no state registration of guns
If you have a concealed handgun license you may carry as many hidden revolvers as you like
You can get a CHL now with four hours of instruction and a proficiency exam at a shooting range
You can keep a gun loaded and within reach in your car, and a school campus cannot prohibit you from doing so.
You may carry a gun while drinking but not while legally drunk
Machine guns, suppressors and other assault weapons are perfectly legal
There is no limit to the number of rounds the magazine for your gun may hold.
Background checks are required by federal law and Texas leads the nation in running them. No check is needed for sales between private citizens or at gun shows
Texas averages about ten major gun shows a month

click to like Word Porn

That’s a lot of firepower out there folks, in a lot of inexperienced hands. Additional changes have been proposed to allow concealed weapons to be carried into a bar and into places of worship, and to allow weapons to be holstered so that they are visible.

Accidents happen. Stupid things get done. Tempers flare, people show off, children get curious. Is this sort of world we really want? Not me. I like my heritage and my freedom, but I also like my peace of mind. The idea of a whole lot of barely trained people strutting around with assault weapons does not make me feel safer.

How does one fight the sort of paranoid movement that wants the most dangerous of guns readily available? Luckily there are other kinds of weapons in this world and other ways to fight.

 

 

Filed under: peace Tagged: assault weapons, books, gun control, gun laws, guns, Texas, weapons

Peace Signs

Hippie Peace Freaks

Funny how things come at you clumps. One day its cute kittens every place you look, the next day its information on vitamin supplements. Yesterday, I had a “peace” day. Signs were everywhere. And many of them were on Facebook.

One of the joys of creating a Facebook page for my collection of novels 46. Ascending has been the way it has given me reason to seek out other people’s pages and to share some of my favorite finds. I’m not sure what the exact etiquette is on sharing posts from the Facebook world on ones blog, so I will ask you to please drop by the wonderful page called Hippie Peace Freaks and kindly give them a like while you are there.

The Dalai Lama

There is no better place for peace signs than the Facebook page of the amazing Dalai Lama, who happily shares his wisdom with those of any faith (or none). Please consider liking his page as well. There may not be anyone more likable on the planet.

Pope Francis

I am also impressed with much about the new Pope Francis and share this from his Facebook page. He doesn’t have his staff working on powerful imagery to go with his thoughts (yet) but these are thoughts worth liking.

Peace One Day

Finally, a huge LIKE to the people who get out there and do something to promote world peace. Please visit the page for Peace One Day, where you can view this photo of a meditation flash mob at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany. A meditation flash mob may sound like an oxymoron, but these participants took off their shoes and meditated for an hour to promote mindfulness and peace in the world. Do such actions make a difference? Do photos of such actions make a difference?

I think we all change just a little when we start to see peace signs everywhere we look.

For more of my favorite signs of peace, please drop by my Facebook page Number 46. Ascending, and look around as well.

Filed under: peace Tagged: Dalai Lama, Facebook, Hippie Peace Freaks, Peace One Day, peace signs, Pope Francis, world peace, World Peace Day

What did I say wrong?

The process of writing a book about telepathy gave me plenty of opportunity to think about how we as humans provide comfort and support to each other. Or not. In my book I treat empathy as a sort of “baby telepathy” in which the truly empathic can feel the pain of another, as they live one step away from reading another’s thoughts.

In real life, we all know people who are kind of like this.Yet even these concerned, caring types don’t always say the right thing. In fact, sometimes they come out with awful responses, in spite of their obvious empathy, and they often expect to be excused because their heart was in the right place. It seems like it’s not always enough to have a caring open heart. Why? I think that even the most empathic people feel the need to express their own fear, anger, and sorrow or just to make observations or share what they know. Being empathetic doesn’t make you any less human.

I was delighted to come across an article in the Los Angeles Times called “How Not to Say the Wrong Thing” by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman. It describes an approach called “comfort in, dump out” that involves getting out a piece of paper and literally drawing rings around the name of a person having any kind of a crisis. Closer rings then get filled in with the names of those closest to the person: immediate family and best friends. Then, coworkers, friends and acquaintances, and distant family members all go in increasingly distant rings by name or in groups. Finally you put your self in the appropriate ring. Now, you only get to say comforting things to those inward from you. Period. Nothing more. Just comfort. You can rant and rave or share your fear or knowledge on the subject involved with those in rings further away than you.

This is brilliant. I really like these people.

I came across this article by way of one of my favorite blogs, called Otrazhenie. Please check out the blog article here. There is a lot of interesting embellishment, and the site is well worth a visit!

Filed under: empathy Tagged: communication, compassion, mind reading, telepathy, understanding

How to write like a wolf

I wasn’t such a big fan of personality tests when I was younger, but once I joined the workforce I was required to take the Myers Briggs test and it changed my life. I discovered that in spite of a cheerful tendency to smile a lot and a skill for using words well, I was in fact not Miss Congeniality like everyone else thought. I was very much an introvert. Well, that suddenly explained a lot.

INFJ

They say that a smart person understands others, but a wise person understands herself. The fact is, the more you understand yourself, the better you can make your approach to writing work well for you.

Recently a popular website came out with animals to represent all sixteen of the Myers Briggs types.They don’t all seem to fit perfectly, but they are sort of a fun way to look at it. You can check them out here. I happen to be a wolf, and now I try to write like one. What does that mean?

ENFJ

Clearly there is no right personality for an author, we come in all flavors. However, if you know you are an introvert like me, you can save time by not forcing yourself to make oodles of friends online, engaging in lots of chat about your writing. You know you always hated group projects in school, so you don’t need to turn your novel into one now. The effort to do so will just drain you.

However, if those exchanges fill you with energy, like my extroverted counterpart the dog, then you are a extrovert and would do well to benefit from this free flow of helpful ideas. Just consider getting your author friends to help you set and keep daily or weekly writing goals, lest the socializing fill your free time.

INFP

Are you a planner, or someone who prefers to take things as they come? I’m a solid planner here, so I don’t fight my need to work out exactly how I am going to write my books. As a start my fifth novel I have a pretty good idea of how fast I write and how long I want my book to be, and I literally put both word and chapter goals in my calendar to cover the six months or so during which the first draft will happen.

I once had a “wing it” style friend, more meerkat than wolf, tell me he could plan like that if he wanted to, but it would seem to him like working with a dull headache. How funny, I thought. To me it feels like working with a soft warm blanket around me. I do, however, wrestle with the unexpected. I fight my frustrations at life’s little emergencies while he struggles to make sure that his book moves along while he happily takes life as it comes. Both ways yield a novel in the end.

ISFJ

If you are someone who strongly favors their hunches as much as I do, you won’t want to chart out your plot that carefully. For all my planning about when and how much I am going to write, I use the loosest of outlines, with only a few key characters and a basic story line sketched out before I start. I trust my intuition to handle the rest, and it seems to do so just fine. Before I finish a book I know that several characters and plot developments will surprise me, and some of these surprises will become my favorite parts of the book.

Another author I know, more deer than wolf, defines every single occurrence in his stories in a detailed outline. He knows exactly what is going to happen before he starts writing the book. To me he seems highly suspicious of his intuition, but to him he is taking the time to give his story his very best effort. His plots are as imaginative and interesting  as any I’ve encountered, reminding me that there is no right way to be creative, only the way that works best for you.

INTJ

The final Myers Briggs criteria has to do with whether your mind or your heart steers your actions. Before I began to write full length books, I guessed that the feelers had an advantage. I was surprised to discover how much thought goes into a complex plot, and into ultimately producing a book.  I fall near the middle here, only slightly more led by my heart, only slightly more wolf than octopus. In this arena I think that any author needs to find others to compliment their own tendencies. I rely on three highly analytic beta readers (including my officially-an-octopus daughter) to ferret out the plot holes that are most likely to show up in my most emotional scenes.

I happen to be a wolf, and now I try to write like one. You? You need to write like the honeybee, or lion or otter that you truly are.

A peaceful place admidst the shouting

I’m learning to meld my blog world and my facebook world into one persona and it is a fun process. Here I think about empathy and telepathy and the implications for both on violence and war. Under what circumstances could you shoot another human  if you could feel their fear? Know their thoughts? Lola, hero of x0, needs answers to this question, and her issues fuel my speculation here.

Facebook is more of a sales tool, frankly, where I and 1.2 billion other people jump up and down and shout “Look at me.” Luckily, some of the people doing the shouting bother to yell interesting things that can be passed along, even on a blog that likes to reflect on world peace.

Please consider checking out a fun Facebook page called Hippie Peace Freaks where you can find gems like these and a lot of other fun as well.

Like Me?

We refer to it euphemistically as “social networking”, but let’s be more blunt. Facebook has changed the world. Granted it has moved from a universe inhabited by youth to the home of everyone’s great aunt, a storage facility for family photos and a world where pets have their own pages. That doesn’t change the fact that liking and friending are now key concepts for getting along in contemporary society.

It’s also part of modern marketing, and apparently I am well behind the times for not having realized this. Silly me, I was all caught up in the family photo thing.Well I’m proud to say I have now entered the year 2005 and made a Facebook page for my collection of books.You can find it here or by searching for Number 46. Ascending on Facebook.

As I understand it, the object of the game here is to get more and more people to like my page, and as they do they comment on or share things I post and it gets increasingly easier to get even more people (you know, actual strangers) to like me too. It sounds a little like playing Risk or Monopoly. If I get enough momentum going, I take over the world. And maybe after awhile one of these likers even buys a book.

Why wouldn’t you like somebody’s Facebook page? The biggest reason is that you rightly fear getting a deluge of stupid posts from them that clutter up your news feed. It has happened too often to me, and after a few days of junk I most emphatically do NOT like the product, person or page. So obviously this marketing approach requires ongoing thought and courtesy on the part of the poster, or a “now I actually hate you” button provided for the general masses.

In spite of these difficulties, I’d like you to like me. Fear not for your news feed. I am a delicate poster, aware of your sensibilities. I promise to be barely a flutter in your daily Facebook life, and if possible an enjoyable one at that.

So please. Like me. I’ll like you back.

Free books! Free paperbacks! Free t-shirts!

I feel like I’m writing advertising for a furniture store close-out, but in fact it is time for this author to act like a marketer. My first book, x0 could use more exposure and reviews. It’s not a book for everybody. Woven into a plot about two telepathic women are stories about Nigeria, facts about the oil business and an imagined website that explains to the reader how telepathy really works in the strange world of x0. Some people have really loved it and you might be one of them.

These reviews on Goodreads capture the novel well. Give them a look and if you think this is a story you might enjoy, please go to smashwords.com where you can download x0 in many formats all for free by using the code FT88E when you check out. It’s that simple.

Would you prefer a free paperback copy instead? I make these available to reviewers. Kindly drop me a line at lola.zeitman@gmail.com and let me know who your are, where you normally post your reviews, and where you want the book sent. If you do frequently review novels, your book will go out the next day.

Or come like my Facebook page Number 46. Ascending and talk to me there.

Finally, there are free t-shirts involved! I will send the new x0 shirt shown here (sizes S through XXL) as a thank you to anyone who posts a review of x0 at two of any of the following: Amazon, Goodreads, Library Thing, Smashwords, or your blog. I am looking for honest reviews, and trust that you are articulate and basically kind but cannot be influenced for the price of a free shirt. It will be my thanks you to you for reading the book, no matter how you feel about it. Once you have posted the reviews, contact me at gmail or on facebook and let me know your size and your address.

I hope to hear from you!

Happy 53rd Birthday Nigeria!

My novel x0 was supposed to take place in Saudi Arabia because I wanted my oil industry protagonist to develop a telepathic link with a Saudi woman. It was going to be a story of two outwardly different people who bonded over similar concerns for their younger sisters. Except that every time I started to write, it just didn’t feel right.

Meanwhile, I began a new job as a consultant for a company exploring for oil in the Niger Delta. There are many cool things about my current employer, but one of the best is that they are a very African centric company. I found myself sharing an office with three Nigerians, and learning about a country and a blend of cultures that was far more intriguing than I had ever imagined. I am endlessly curious about places far away from Texas anyway, and my patient office mates never stopped answering my questions.

This went on for months. Working late one evening, I had to shut out a conversation between a Nigerian geologist at a desk three feet away from me and his younger brother back home.  Apparently little brother had a big test in chemistry the next day and my co-worker was trying to both tutor and encourage him. I used to do that for my sister. “We are so much alike the world over,” I thought. And it clicked into place.

About eight months later I finished my first novel. It tells the story of an American woman who befriends a Nigerian telepath who is trying to help her younger sister. While writing the book I got to learn even more about Nigeria and how it was created by the British and “given independence”  October 1, 1960. These outsiders lumped together millions of people with strong tribal affinities of their own, but with no common language and a great deal of mistrust  of the customs and cultures of the other tribes with which they were forced to share a country. Not surprisingly, Nigeria has had its share of troubles and bloodshed as the individuals within its borders struggled with the structure that had been imposed on them.

The Nigerians I know are without exception resourceful and hopeful, and I see this in the country’s history as well. They are now fifty-three years into trying to make Nigeria as well-functioning and peaceful as most Nigerians would like it to be. I applaud them for how far they have come under difficult circumstances and I wish the country and its people the very best. Happy Birthday Nigeria.  As your national motto says, may “Unity and Faith, Peace and Progress” fill your future.

Homemade gravy and hand-built furniture

Traveling. Today we are in Worcester Massachusetts, the town where my husband was born. We’re mostly visiting family but a confluence of scheduling has left us with one night on our own.

“Italian food,” he insists. Worcester was settled in part by Italian immigrants and has long boasted restaurants that rival those in Chicago where we met. “Absolutely,” I agree. He’s heard of a new Italian restaurant located right on the banks of Worcester’s Lake Quinsigamond and we head over eagerly. What do we find? Buca di Beppo, a relatively good Italian chain restaurant that also has a place about five miles from where we live in Texas. We have to laugh. No way.

His phone is dumb and mine is smart but slow, but we have a laptop in the car so we go off in search of internet and a more interesting restaurant recommendation. As we drive, I think about my writing. That is not surprising, I do that a lot. Traditionally published novels are like chain restaurants, I think. Some are okay and some are great but they are seldom awful. You have a pretty good idea of what you are getting. Self-published novels are more like tiny mom-and-pop restaurants. Some are really bad and some are absolutely fantastic and there is no good way to tell the difference from a distance. Good or bad, the contents are always something of a surprise.

We stumble on a Panera Bread, one of my favorite chain restaurants because of its wonderful tradition of providing free WiFi to travelers everywhere. While my husband is booting up I order us beverages and it occurs to me to try the human approach. I mean, why not? “Know any good local Italian restaurants around here?” I ask. She knows several, including one called Piccolo’s that is run by the parents of a friend. Perfect.

Minutes later we walk into tiny Piccolo’s on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester. The menu is hand typed, and the Pollo Maria Teresa that catches my eye is described with honesty as being a pasta dish served with chicken and “some lobster”.  I smile at the lack of polish. It’s like homemade gravy or hand-built furniture. One makes either with love and with all the skill that one can.

Each one of my three self-published books has been created, edited and rewritten to the best of my ability at the time that I wrote them. Then, because I wanted the product to be better, each has been professionally edited with what I could afford. In my case that was a fine young editor named Joel Handley, who used his journalism degree, sharp mind and experience with one previous book to fix my dashes and semi-colons, address my frequently used words, clean up odd phrases and even make a few general plot and character suggestions. I have learned that Joel provides excellent copy-editing, some good line editing and even a bit of development editing along the way. However, he is no hardened expert from the world of publishing. At my request, he worked with a light touch. Therefore, my three books probably don’t have the polish provided by industry experts who, by the way, generally charge ten times as much. My books are like homemade gravy and hand-built furniture. They make no pretense to be otherwise, even though I hope that they can be enjoyed by those who also appreciate chain restaurants.

The Pollo Maria Teresa arrives and it is wonderful. I smile as I enjoy some of my “some lobster” and I think that it is good to take a chance.