Malcolm R. Campbell's Blog, page 254

Glacier National Park Donation

Vanilla Heart Publishing, the publisher of the new second edition of my novel The Sun Singer, announced this morning that it will donate a portion of the book's sales during March, April and May to the Glacier National Park Centennial.

Originally published in 2004, the primary action of this mythic adventure story is set within Glacier National Park's Swiftcurrent Valley. Settings include Many Glacier Hotel (where I worked as a bellman in 1963 and 1964), Swiftcurrent Lake, Lake Josephine, and ...

Is brevity the soul of it?

"A suitably programmed computer can read a novel in a few minutes and record the list of all the words contained in the text, in order of frequency. "That way I can have an already completed reading at hand," Lotaria says, "with an incalculable saving of time. What is the reading of a text, in fact, except the recording of certain thematic recurrences, certain insistencies of forms and meanings? An electronic reading supplies me with a list of the frequencies, which I have only to glance at t...

Read-an-Ebook Week March 7 - 13

The 2010 edition of "The Sun Singer" and "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" are available in multiple e-book formats at 25% off at Smashwords between March 7th and March 13th.

This lowers the $5.99 retail price to $4.49!

"We're pleased to sponsor Read an E-Book Week for the second year," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. "Working in collaboration with Read an E-Book Week and other participating retailers and publishers, the initiative will introduce tens of thousands of new...

Mailbox Monday: 'Wave of Terror'

Theodore Odrach emigrated to Canada in 1953 where he lived in a Ukrainian neighborhood in Toronto while working in a print shop during the day and writing novels and short stories in his native language in the evenings. He died of a stroke in 1964; his novel "Wave of Terror" that begins with the Red Army's 1939 invasion of Belarus was published posthumously in Ukrainian in 1972.

With his daughter Erma's translation, Odrach's novel based on his first-hand knowledge of Stalin's policy of torture...

I'm bored with snobbish writers

When I was in school, a English professor threw me out of his class when I told him he was wrong for bashing journalism. He saw it as pond scum; I saw it as viable work. He saw li-tri-chure--prounced just like that--as diamonds, while journalism and commercial fiction were relegated to the Rhinestone department of the five and dime.

In a recent post, River Jordan said, "my love for story, my love for reading, is more than a foundation. It's really my snob repellent and yes, I use it on myself ...

Looking for Water in the Promised Land

If there is an orchardist's ode in central Washington, it's a liquid poem in praise of water. Look past the Columbia River, look past the greasewood and bunchgrass and there you will find my father's father standing astride obscure footnotes that name the names of those who first proposed the irrigation system that changed the face of the desert.

My grandfather on my fathers side, called F. T. for his first name Frank and middle name Thomas, was born in a log cabin on an Iowa farm in 1870. T...

Junction City is on I-666

This evening, I'll be reading excerpts from my novel "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" at the Jefferson, Georgia Public Library at 6:30 p.m.

Among other things, I'll explain that Jock Stewart, my protagonist, has to be a hard-boiled, ass-kicking reporter in order to survive in a town like Junction City. It's to be expected, I think, for a town on Interstate 666.

The town is so bad that gangsters are afraid to go out after dark.

If you're in Jefferson today--or anywhere in Jackson County...

The Sun Singer - Kindle Edition

The new, second edition of my novel "The Sun Singer" is now available on Kindle for $5.99 with the print edition to follow soon. The e-book version is available in an Adobe Format (PDF) at OmniLit.

Product Description

When Robert Adams sees the statue of the Sun Singer in a lonely meadow he hears the song of the sun and receives the gift of prophecy. He excels as the Soothsayer of West Wood Street until a psychic dream graphically foretells the death of his best friend's sister, Julianne.

Diana Gabaldon and other Friday musings

As I read Diana Gabaldon's "Echo in the Bone"--the latest in her popular Outlander Series--I continue to be amazed at her winning combination of highly-fluid writing and great detail. I feel almost like I'm immersed in the North Carolina world of Jamie and Claire Fraser during the Revolutionary War.

Her success can be measured not only in readers but, I think, also by the fact that her novels are much longer that today's norm. Amazon's statistics aren't hooked up on "Echo in the Bone," so I ca...

FakeAlert SpyPro

When this trojan-type malware invaded my computer two days ago, it was obvious at the outset that the sudden messages about viruses on my computer were bogus. These rogue virus cleaners show up on various sites and start cleaning, or pretending to clean, one's computer. Usually, they can be canceled and one can move on.

Not this time. This particular malware is called FakeAlert Spypro and its focus is claiming you have a virus problem when the only virus on the computer is it. It generates a g...