So You Want to Write a Book

Jul 29th, 2008 by Addy | 0

The other night I was in a workshop with a lovely lady we’ll call Marie who was a cancer survivor. She began to tell different stories about her life - not just about her journey with cancer, but other parts of her world that captivated me and everyone else in the room. I said, “You should write a book!” Marie replied, “That’s what people tell me.” But it was clear Marie had no burning desire to go do that.


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An Interview With John Manhold About His New Book El Tigre

Jul 20th, 2008 by Addy | 0

El Tigre is John Manhold’s first immersion into the world of novels, but it his not his first book, he has something like 6 textbooks and a lexicon in four languages under his belt. I really enjoyed El Tigre. I don’t usually get very excited about Historical Fiction, or the ‘Wild West,’ El Tigre has an allure to it though. I love history, and this book is steeped in it, John Manhold artfully melds fact with fiction. One way of looking at it is, if you buy this book you get a great work of fiction, and you will walk away afterwards understanding some very complex historical issues.


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Use Self Confidence Books to Identify and Deal With Confidence Issues

Jul 16th, 2008 by Addy | 0

How can a book ever help you to enhance your self confidence and self esteeme Well, it can’t do so on its own, but it can certainly help you identify whether or not you have an issue with self confidence, and point out some ways in which you can deal with this issue. There are a great variety of self confidence books on the market today, as well as books on various other psychological issues that relate to confidence such as anxiety and depression.


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No Blind Aye in Team

Jul 13th, 2008 by Addy | 0

Several years back my boss’ boss walked into my office and declared me to be an outlaw-rebel-maverick. I thanked her, which was clearly not what she wanted. But what did she expect from an unbranded individual who frequently strayed from the herde

As I recall this particular issue called for me to give up on the idea of a PC on every desktop and just accept a couple of shared resources that would be placed in a public area. I kid you not. The powers that were, wanted to put two “personal” computers in a room for 30+ people to share. The absurdity of such a request was lost on these executives who held that a terminal view of mainframe processing was all the computing power that was needed (Pun totally intended).


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Opportuning

Jul 13th, 2008 by Addy | 0

Years ago we were running laps at the end of practice. As we started our fifth lap, Coach walked out to center court dribbling the mystical orb, as he always did. He watched for the leaders to approach the end of lap five and then, without a moment’s hesitation he would hurl the ball towards the basket behind him. The arc was so perfect in spite of the historical evidence we always believed, this time, he would make it. But the shot would always rim out or careen off the backboard, and our next five laps would begin.


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In Celebration of Teachers: A Dog Can Teach Us New Tricks

Jul 8th, 2008 by Addy | 0

I used to say that the number of good teachers that I’ve had, I could count on one hand. There was Miss Kirby from the second grade who taught me that reading opens a door to the world. There was Mr. Opland, our school band, chorus and music teacher who taught me to sing and play some of the world’s most beautiful music, even though I lacked the natural talent to be great. There was Miss Heath, my high school English teacher and drama coach who taught me about passion and gave me the will to try things outside my comfort zone. There was Mr. Morowitz, my journalism teacher who taught me that good writing could ease someone’s pain or inspire someone else to action. There was Eugene Lyons, my college theatre professor who taught me that remaining silent to injustice was unfair to myself. These were the teachers who truly inspired me and who made an indelible mark on my future.


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Book Review: Some Kind of Angel - a Sneetz and Muldoon Thriller by Melvin M. Harter

Jul 5th, 2008 by Addy | 0

It is that time of year where you want to stock up on some books to read while on your summer vacation. Some Kind Of Angel might be one to put on your list.

Melvin Harter is a retired doctor and Some Kind Of Angel is his debut into the wild world of books. In this book we get acquainted with his main characters Sneetz and Muldoon, and I suspect that we are going to see more of this duo in future books.


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Book Review: Unholy Domain by Dan Ronco

Jul 5th, 2008 by Addy | 0

There are a plethora of sci-fi books that have explored what the Earth would be like after the apocalypse, and generally the apocalypse in question is a nuclear war, or some sort of plague.

Unholy Domain takes this genre in a new and very thought provoking direction. One only has to spend a couple of minutes researching the history and growth of the Internet to realize how in the space of just a few years it was woven itself into the very fabric of our world. We have near instantaneous communication via email, we have access to enormous repositories of information, it has become a part of our day to day life. I could not live without it!


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Book Review: El Tigre by John H. Manhold

Jul 5th, 2008 by Addy | 0

There are two very different schools of thought about historical fiction. One school rationalizes that it is an easy genre to write, the plot already exists, all you have to do is put it in your own words. The second school says that this genre is very hard to work in, much of the story line is cast in stone, the author needs to weave his characters into the fabric of the historical facts.

I am a member of the latter group, I believe that good historical fiction is very difficult to write. John H. Manhold has done a magnificent job with El Tigre, combining fast action into a very well researched and historically accurate canvas.


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Micro-Blogging on Twitter

Jul 5th, 2008 by Addy | 0

There’s a hot new trend going on right now and it’s called micro-blogging. So what’s a micro-bloge And moreover, what’s Twittere Twitter is a micro-blogger platform that allows users to create entries that are only 140 characters in length. These entries are referred to as “tweets.”

Originally designed to keep friends and family up to date on what you’re doing, Twitter can also be a great place to share your latest book project, promotional ideas as well as interacting with fellow tweets (folks who twitter) and writers. And yes, you can have a blog and a Twitter page. I have both but I feed my blog into my Twitter site so that my Twitter page gets updated each time I add new content to my blog. There’s an easy application to add your blog feed to Twitter, it takes just minutes to do. Head on over to: Twitterfeed.


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