Mark Rubinstein's Blog, page 27
May 11, 2014
The Arrangement: Wonder Woman at One-Hundred and One
Emma is one-hundred one years old.
She’s never visited a psychiatrist and has few significant medical issues.
I met her by pure happenstance while consulting at the Assisted Living section of a continuing care community where she was spending the afternoon as a volunteer serving tea and pastries to the residents, all of whom were her junior by at least a decade. Other residents sometimes called her Wonder Woman.
Over the last seven years, we’ve talked frequently over a cup of coffee. 
Emma, simpl...
The Arrangement: Wonder Woman at One-Undred and One
Emma is one-hundred one years old.
She’s never visited a psychiatrist and has few significant medical issues.
I met her by pure happenstance while consulting at the Assisted Living section of a continuing care community where she was spending the afternoon as a volunteer serving tea and pastries to the residents, all of whom were her junior by at least a decade. Other residents sometimes called her Wonder Woman.
Over the last seven years, we’ve talked frequently over a cup of coffee.
Emma, simpl...
May 5, 2014
Field of Prey: A Talk with John Sandford
We know him as John Sandford, but that’s his nom de plume. As journalist John Camp, he won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for his five-part series about an American farm family faced with an agricultural crisis. He eventually turned to writing thriller novels, and his twenty-fourth Prey novel, Field of Prey, featuring Lucas Davenport, will be available everywhere on May 5th, 2014. Lucas and his team must use all possible resources to try capturing an elusive killer or killers who claim at least twen...
May 2, 2014
Strolling My Way To A Novel
Recently, I read an article http://tinyurl.com/qfyr7sq describing a study that confirmed something I’m quite 
certain I knew intuitively.
A Stanford University study indicated that walking on a treadmill at “an easy, self-selected pace” while facing a blank wall, helped generate sixty percent more innovative ideas when the subjects were tested psychologically for creative thinking. These results were reported to have applied to almost every student tested.
The article also said “Walking markedly...
April 28, 2014
Fast and Furious: Novels, the Media and our Changing World
I’ve been reading a great deal of fiction (crime, literary and other genres) and observing as much as possible, not only about books, but about entertainment in various media. 
It seems there’s more and more blending of crime novels with horror, the occult, with paranormal events, romance, and science fiction. The genres are coalescing.
It appears to coincide with the proliferation of computer generated imagery in action-packed thriller and fast-moving action movies. We’ve
all watched scenes in...
April 26, 2014
Show Me The Money
I was asked to evaluate psychiatrically, Mr. Smith, a Workers Compensation claimant. While working in construction, he struck his head, sustaining a brief loss of consciousness. At a nearby hospital, he was examined, x-rayed, had an MRI and follow up examinations. No abnormalities were noted.
A year later, he hadn’t returned to work. When I was asked me to examine him, he presented as a befuddled 28 year old man whose father drove him to my office. During the examination, he stared off into sp...
April 24, 2014
The Foot Soldier Is a Finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction
The Foot Soldier has been named as afinalist in the 2014 Benjamin Franklin Awards competition, in the Popular Fiction category.
A single 2014 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award winner will be chosen from the finalists in your category and announced during a ceremony to be held Wednesday evening, May 28, 2014 at the New York University Kimmel Center’s Rosenthal Pavilion in New York City. There were more than 1500 entries and The Foot Soldier is one of the finalists in the category ofPopular Fiction....
The Foot Soldier is a Finalist for the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction
The Foot Soldier has been named as one of three (or four) finalists in the 2014 Benjamin Franklin Awards competition, in the following category: Popular Fiction.
PLEASE READ TO THE END OF THIS EMAIL FOR IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THIS HONOR + NEXT STEPS.
A single 2014 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award winner will be chosen from the finalists in your category and announced during a ceremony to be held Wednesday evening, May 28, 2014 at the New York University Kimmel Center’s Rosenthal Pavilion in Ne...
April 23, 2014
The End Is Not The Means
I read an article http://tinyurl.com/lx5nt4g in which the novelist, Kristopher Jansma, explored the issue of finding the proper ending for a novel. He was plagued by the question of leaving the ending ambiguous, or of tying things up in a neat knot—one that would leave the reader “satisfied.”
The article referenced Aristotle, and Rowling, and quoted Chekhov
and Vonnegut, saying among other things, “a novel aims not to represent just a slice of life, but the whole of it. We need more than just...
April 21, 2014
Please Help Our Returning Veterans
Our veterans are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with very little support from the VA which has suffered from financial cutbacks. “The Foot Soldier” is now ranked #10,000 on Amazon. Please help move it up to #5,000 by downloading it on Kindle for 99 cents. It’s also available as a paperback for $3.49. This 50 page novella is a story or right versus wrong and has a 4.8 star rating on Amazon. All author’s proceeds are being donated to www.DAV.org to help with rehabilitation services fo...
