Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 247

Currently Reading

In her latest Over Coffee post, Sia McKye asks "How Can you be a writer if you're not a reader?"

When I ask this question, I hear the usual excuses:

(1) I'm too busy writing my own stuff.

(2) When I'm not busy writing my own stuff, I'm working a day job to pay for the bills while waiting for readers to discover my stuff.

(3) The dog ate it.

(4) Reality TV has lured me away from reading because it has a lot of symbolism in it about the human condition.

My "condition" is getting the shakes when I...

Fiction: the spiritual dimension

I enjoy reading fiction that is secular in every sense of the word. Yet, other than my "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" satire, the spiritual dimension is very prominent in my writing.

In my post Finding Your Sacred Ground, I write about tuning into places that bring one serenity and inspiration, and in being open to what the place has to say. One cannot love a mountain, lake or section of seashore without sensing its spiritual dimension and that there is more depth there than humans...

Keeping silent is hard to do

Anis Shivani's essay in The Huffington Post, "The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers" is causing more people to say, "aw, it's just sour grapes" rather than seriously looking at the state of American novels today.

En route to naming names, Shivani says (and this isn't new) that MFA writing programs are teaching students to imitate writers who are already in vogue and that big publishers are happy to facilitate that.

I said something like that ten years ago, but luckily my words did...

Setting the Tone of a Book

When I read the first two lines of Ivan Doig's This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind, I knew immediately I was starting a stark, unemotional journey into the past.

"Soon after daybreak on my sixth birthday, my mother's breathing wheezed more raggedly than ever, then quieted. And then stopped."

Here we have just the facts, simply and dramatically stated without evaluation. As Doig looks back on his 1940s childhood in White Sulphur Springs, Montana, he follows those initial lines with: ...

Recent Revelations

Lily Bart in "The House of Mirth," Dorian Gray in "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" are among the top ten best-dressed literary characters (according to flavorwire).

Silly and absurd status comments on Facebook get a lot more comments than serious status comments I really care about.

Mary Hart, who is leaving "Entertainment Tonight" after the upcoming season, only planned to stay with the show for three years--not 30.

In this summer's heat wave, I can o...

BookBuzzr interview and other cool stuff

You've probably noticed the little widget on the right-hand side of the screen: it's a preview of one of my books on BookBuzzr. Occasionally one gets featured or an author is asked about the story behind the story or presented with some interview questions to which s/he tries to respond without being libelous, profane or downright stupid. Click HERE to see if I was successful.

Selling Used Books on Amazon

Many of us have debated the notion that used book sales on Amazon help new book sales. I f...

The Great Mother Character in My Novels

Readers of both The Sun Singer and Garden of Heaven are introduced to a character named Binah who owns a retail shop with a sign over the door that says: BINAH'S BAKERY: Rolls and Other Conceptions.

Here is David Ward's initial impression of the bakery in Garden of Heaven:

Sweet chaos, long loaves of sourdough bread hustled into bushel baskets, peanut butter cookies stacked on trays like hoarded coins, well-creased Parker House rolls lined up on large squares of wax paper, pecan tarts and...

Goodbye, MySpace, it's been real

I found MySpace to be a friendly space and for some five years or so it was real. I made a lot of friends, learned a lot from readers and writers, and had many wonderful conversations.

But it's time to say "goodbye." Nothing bad happened. No flame wars, no account hacking, no more SPAM than anywhere else. Changing times is more to the point. Most of my friends there have already moved over to Facebook as have I. (You can find me on Facebook as Malcolm R. Campbell. I also have a Malcolm R...

Typo Sends Young Author on Bog Tour

Special Report from Jock Stewart

Quagmire City, MI, July 29, 2010--When Pamela Pumpernickel signed up with Giddy Author Promotions of Junction City, TX, for the Super-Whizbang Platinum PR Book Blitz, she never expected to be running from the Legend of Boggy Creek.

Quagmire City police reported a 911 call from a Mr. Fouke who "talked like he was from Arkansas" reporting that he was chasing a damsel in a short dress at Quaking Bog Park.

Police Detective Jim Thursday said that, "Fouke didn't talk n...

Writing as a spiritual ritual

"My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean." -- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

When I read this passage from Franny and Zooey as a high school student, a previously badly configured section of my brain booted up and I looked out the window at the yard and the children playing and the great wood behind the house and said,...