Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 246

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Nancy Loner who won a copy of Garden of Heaven in the GoodReads Giveaway that ended today.  Many thanks to the 702 people who entered the contest.

Garden of Heaven is a magical saga where spirits talk, horses fly, fire restores wounded men and reality appears and reappears in multiple shapes, sizes and dimensions.

My protagonist, David Ward, was first introduced to readers in my 2004 novel The Sun Singer. In Garden of Heaven, we find him back in the Montana mountains where--d...

Beneath Sheltering Oaks We Gave Her Back to the Earth

On Friday morning, September 10, 2010, my wife, my wife's father and I carried a post-hole digger, a mattock and a spade beneath the water oaks and pin oaks in an old church cemetery two miles from the Floyd County, Georgia  farm (shown in the photograph) where the family has for years coaxed new life up out of the ground and returned the ashes of my wife's mother to the earth.

The morning was sunny and warm. We worked methodically because the chert soil where the Piedmont meets the Appalachia...

Vampires, MGM, French Toast and Nature's Gifts

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, I haven't just been whistling Dixie. Here's what's happening:

Malcolm's Round Table

Book Review: 'Evenings on Dark Island'

What do the rich and famous, a Florida swamp, an expensive upscale spa, a rat-faced dog, state-of-the-art galas, NASCAR, pot, an inner garden of rare hybrid plants and vampires have in common?

The standard answer is nothing.

But in Evenings on Dark Island authors Rhett DeVane and Larry Rock have turned the highly improbable into a hilarious and ta...

Midwest Book Review comments on 'Garden of Heaven'

Thank you, Midwest Book Review for reading Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey.

Review from the September edition of MBR's Reviewer's Bookwatch 

A journey is more than simply traveling. It allows much for introspection. "Garden of Heaven" tells of the travels of David Ward, a young man who is out to piece together his life after the Vietnam war and the failure of love. Traveling throughout the world across many continents, he gains an appreciation through the world in a tale that blends the...

Hero's Journey: Slaves to Structure Stifle The Story

One apt criticism of the heropath, or hero's journey, approach to mythology is that the structure (Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call, Supernatural Aid, Crossing the First Threshold, etc.) does not fit all hero-oriented myths. Readers of Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces were quick to point out that he illustrated the stages in the journey with multiple myths rather than carrying the structure lock, stock and barrel through one continuing example.

The problem with general th...

'Wild Child Anthology' Deadline Extended

Vanilla Heart Publishing has extended the deadline for submissions to its Wild Child Anthology of nature writing by and for kids and teens to January 15, 2011. Edited by Smoky Trudeau (Observations of an Earth Mage), the anthology will feature poems of 50 lines or less and prose from 150 to 1,500 words that focus on any aspect of nature from flowers to critters to habitats.

Submissions, by children and teens up to 17 years of age, should be submitted as .doc or .rtf format attachments along wi...

It's fun hearing from readers who know my place settings

I try to make the location settings and historical details in my novels as accurate as possible. Such facts not only increase the reality of a place in the readers' minds, but also help explain the feelings and motivations of the characters. Of course, some of the details are obscure because they refer to buildings, roads, people and events that are fading from people's memories and that were never part of the national consciousness.

Recent posts have included the 1960s-era highway signs in Im...

Impeach Earl Warren

When I was in high school, I was used to seeing IMPEACH EARL WARREN signs and billboards scattered across the landscape. In today's now society, most people will openly admit to having no clue that the former three-time governor of California served as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court between 1953 and 1969, much less why anyone might want to impeach him from whatever office he was serving in.

The signs have long since faded from the countryside along with most people's memories of the R...

Writing as a disease

"Saturn is the god of mutilated people, criminals and cripples, but also of artistic and creative people." -- Marie-Louise von Franz in "Alchemy: an Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology."

What do the post office and the bookstore have in common?
A look at the latest news about books and mail suggests that the answer is nobody is going to either place any more.

I have an alternative answer in mind: Post offices have a most-wanted list showing the worst and the ugliest of society's...

Housekeeping: uncluttered is boring

With out-of-town company arriving in several days, we're devoting scattered hours to housekeeping. Not routine stuff, but unique stuff, the stuff my mother and my wife's mother did every week, but when it came to us, we said to hell with it, so now it's all built up into a major task that includes washing windows and dusting blinds and brushing more of the cat hair off the chairs.

I've thrown out several leaf bags filled with clutter. Old catalogues, the envelopes Christmas cards came in, boxe...