Kern Carter's Blog, page 21
November 5, 2022
November 4, 2022
What My Stutter Was Trying to Tell Me
Behind the Scenes of Behind the Scenes: Surviving the Film Industry, Part 1.
November 3, 2022
What your readers want for the holidays
TOP SELLING HOLIDAY BOOKS
Books make such great gifts, so it’s no wonder 25% of Canadians gift friends and families with what they hope will be a good read. The most popular genre of book being gifted over the holidays is fiction. About 66% of gift-givers bought those. When we break it down further, we see that fantasy and general fiction are the two top gifted genres followed by comics and graphic novels.
Why should you care about this?
Because the holidays are when book sales soar. Sales of books jump by 53% during this time of year. If you have a book out, particularly in the genres I just mentioned, then start pushing it out there.
Give people a reason to purchase your story as a gift. Maybe your plot has some kind of twist. Maybe your book is a love story that touches readers’ hearts. Whatever your hook is, this is the time of year to pull it out.
CRY
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[image error]What your readers want for the holidays was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
November 2, 2022
What mask are you wearing?
Illustration by author (Agnes)The prompt said we wear many masks. The prompt asked which one are you wearing now?
Fear.
Fear is my mask. It clings like a second skin and keeps things in. It’s a strange material because the inside of it is so clearly fear, but it doesn’t always appear so from the other side.
You might see my mask and think I’m confident; you might see my mask and think I’m hard to read; or you might see my mask for what it is. I can only tell you how it feels.
It can feel soft, like the duvet you love to crawl under, feels safe and familiar and smells like lavender. This fear is the comfort zone. It can keep you from things, but it does so by luring in with pillows and candy.
It can feel hard like armor. A metal barrier that doesn’t let anything through. This fear may appear like a thing you chose and believe in. Its survival instinct solidified. It’s a fear that can feel necessary, like it keeps us from harm.
It can feel sticky like walking through a cobweb and spending the rest of your walk trying to brush it off, feeling you almost got it all but not shaking the feeling it’s still on you. It’s a fear you think you’ve worked through, but it keeps pulling you in.
It’s a chameleon of a mask, every time you think you’ve figured it out, it’s different again. It makes it that much harder to pull it off. Trust me, I’ve been trying. I can see the things it keeps me from, I can see how it distorts my voice, I can mostly see how it blurs my vision. It’s hard to pull it off because you actually can’t. Not completely. A human without fear is a psychopath. So you test the seams, you stretch the fabric, you pull off different bits at different times to see what it’s like.
You tell people about it. Talking about fears is a little like telling people about your dreams; they don’t always make sense outside of your own head. There are some which are shared by many and some that feel like they’re shared by none. Because it’s hard, you don’t actually show all of it to one person. It’s more like selfies from different angles sent to different friends. This is my mask, sort of. This is what it covers, partly.
The prompt said we wear many masks. The prompt asked which one are you wearing now?
Fear.
It’s a barrier I can both embrace and hate. I wasn’t sure if I was going to publish this one. Unsurprisingly, I was a little scared to do so, but here we are.
Written in response to What Mask Are You Wearing Now?
[image error]What mask are you wearing? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
November 1, 2022
Call For Submissions — When We Cry
There’s a reason this publication is called CRY. Crying is the only action that demonstrates nearly all emotions. You can cry when you’re happy, sad, angry, scared or frustrated. So when we curate content through CRY Magazine, we’re hoping the pieces connect with one or all emotions.
For this week’s writing prompt, tell us the last time you cried. What was the occasion? Was it a happy cry? Sad? We want to know the full story.
Same rules as always:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.[image error]Call For Submissions — When We Cry was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
2006
I can hear Rihanna’s S.O.S. playing inside Expression Studio, the dance school I have been attending for the last couple of years.
