On October 3, 2012, I moved to WordPress where I already have several other blogs. I began Sun Singer's Travels here in 2004 when the first edition of my novel The Sun Singer was published. I've had fun posting in blogger, but need to consolidate my blogs into one place and, with the introduction of Book Bits writing links, I also need better control over the formatting of images in each post.
You can now find the blog here.
Thanks for reading my posts on this blog for the last eight years.
Malcolm
Wednesday, October 03, 2012
BOOK BITS Links: Real Tom Sawyer, Calvin Trilling, 'Midnight in Peking'
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| Tom Sawyer - LOC Photo |
- News: Humorist Calvin Trillin wins Thurber Prize - "A collection of humorist Calvin Trillin's writings called "Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff" has won the Thurber Prize for American Humor." Associated Press
- News: New book battles tiger mom syndrome with laughs, by Leanne Italie – “One mom lured her daughter to bed — at age 8 — with a trail of chocolate chips up her townhouse stairs. Another found herself on the floor of a plane screaming ‘Save the Jelly Bellys!’ They spilled as she fed them to her preschooler to fend off in-flight earache meltdowns." “Shitty Mom” is the unofficial companion to last year’s “Go the (Bleep) to Sleep.” - Associated Press
- News: B&N Removing Marshall Title - "Barnes & Noble has told any of its stores that have stocked Penny Marshall’s My Mother Was Nuts to remove the book from shelves. B&N has a corporate policy to not carry physical copies of books acquired by Amazon Publishing in its stores." Publishers Weekly
- Feature: The Adventures of the Real Tom Sawyer, by Robert Graysmith - "Mark Twain prowled the rough-and-tumble streets of 1860s San Francisco with a hard-drinking, larger-than-life fireman." Smithsonian
- Review: ‘Midnight in Peking’ by Paul French, reviewed by Janice Harayda - "Midnight in Peking tells such good story that you wish could believe all of it. The book seems at first to be a straightforward history of a sadistic crime: On a frigid January day in 1937, someone murdered a 19-year-old Englishwoman and left her mutilated body, clad in a tartan skirt and a platinum-and-diamond watch, at the foot of a Peking watchtower. A ghastly detail stood out: The body had no heart, which had disappeared along with several of its other internal organs." One-Minute Book Reviews
- Viewpoint: 11 Things Not to Do Before Your Book Launch, by M. J. Rose - "Sometimes what you mustn't do is just as just as important as what you must do." The Huffington Post
- Feature: Gems from the Internet Archives, courtesy of the University of Florida - "Today’s find was a collection of several hundred books from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s scanned and uploaded to the archive courtesy of the George A. Smathers Libraries of the University of Florida, with the help of Lyrasis and the Sloan Foundation. I’ve had to accept that I will never manage to read everything I’ve discovered so far, let alone what remains to be found, so I can only offer the following as possibilities for others to try. The Neglected Books Page
- Review: Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer, Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman - "J. R. Moehringer’s SUTTON is a fictionalized account of the life of the legendary thief told through his own words as he travels around New York City immediately after his release from prison. The fictional Sutton is met at the prison walls by a newspaper reporter and photographer. While the Christmas meeting did in fact take place, the actual newspaper account was not memorable. Moehringer takes the premise of the interview to a higher level, mixing fact and legend to create a vivid portrait of a master criminal recounting his life in poignant detail to the two newsmen." Bookreporter
- How To: Purposes for Connecting Words into Story, by Beth Hill - "Word choice makes stories unique. A dozen stories about a boy running off to war, each with perfect grammar and punctuation, will sound and feel different. Not only because of plot events and characters, but because of the words used to tell the story." The Editor's Blog
- Interview: Visit With Malcolm R. Campbell author of “Moonlight and Ghosts," with Charmaine Gordon - "While the story unfolded without specific plan (as always), three things helped pull it together: (a) a nod to James Joyce, (b) personal knowledge of Tallahassee and North Florida, and, (c) my work in a developmental center years ago."
- Bestseller List (September 27, Hardcover Fiction):Winter of the World, Ken Follett; Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn; Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon; A Wanted Man, Lee Child; This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz; The Time Keeper, Mitch Albom; NW, Zadie Smith; Where'd You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple; A Dance With Dragons, George R.R. Martin; The Yellow Bird, Kevin Powers. NPR
Book Bits is compiled two to three times a week by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of contemporary fantasy and satire, including the 2013 Pushcart Prize nominated "Jock Talks...Politics""Moonlight and Ghosts" is my new Kindle short story, released by Vanilla Heart Publishing in September.
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Teaser Tuesday: 'Alexander's Lighthouse'
Teaser Excerpt: "The crowd screamed and trampled each other in the wild panic to escape the wrath of the Roman killing machine. The Free Egypt agitators also fled, discarding weapons in an attempt to blend in with the civilians."
Publisher's Description: In 92 AD, the imperial city of Rome rules Western civilization, but the city of Alexandria Egypt is the unchallenged pinnacle of Western intellectual achievement. Its prestigious Museum and Library are magnets that draw the world’s most important philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, physicians and geographers. Alexandria also draws a young man named Marco from Corinth, who joins a small team of brilliant engineers working on secret projects. Titus, the Roman Prefect of Egypt, knew Marco’s father so he sponsors the young man, who then promptly falls in love with Titus’ daughter Paula. Populated by native Egyptians, colonized by Greeks, settled by Jewish immigrants, and ruled by the Romans, the huge city of Alexandria is a cultural melting pot that frequently boils over.
Teaser Tuesdays: Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
- Grab your current read
- Open to a random page
- Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
- BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
- Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Malcolm
Monday, October 01, 2012
BOOK BITS Links: Rowling, Kindle Paperwhite, Tom Angleberger
- News: Tracking Amazon: Riordan Topples Rowling, "The Casual Vacancy has been knocked off its perch atop Amazon's bestseller list, falling to #2 behind Rick Riordan's The Mark of Athena. Riordan's book, which comes out October 2, has a 3.5 million-copy first printing in the U.S., while The Casual Vacancy has a 2 million-copy run." Publishers Weekly
- News Wrap-Up: Jeffrey Eugenides Discusses Gender Disparity, MacAdam/Cage For Sale, and More, by Evan Smoth Rakoff - Gender in fiction, Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy" and MacAdam/Cage up for sale made the news this past week. Poets & Writers
- Interview: Benjamin Wood ("The Bellwether Revivals") with Brad Listi on Podcast - "Monologue topics: heat, Austerlitz, industrial warfare, no sleep, Terence McKenna, shamans, hills, mountains, getting ripped to pieces." Other People
- Feature: Joan Didion, Diane Keaton bring ’60s alive, by Kyle Minor - "The actress narrates an essential new audiobook of "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," which has only deepened with time" Salon
- News: The Kindle Paperwhite Is Evidently Amazing, by Adam Clark Estes - "When the press embargo for the Kindle Paperwhite lifted on Sunday night, practically everyone in the tech blogosphere seemed to sing its praises in unison. The new e-reader, now at the bottom end of Amazon's lineup of devices, just got a pretty noticeable facelift with a new front-lit screen, a thinner profile and faster performance." Atlantic
- How To: Avoid the self-publishing calamity. Please learn from my mistakes! by Lenore Skomal - "17,500 readers uploaded my Kindle version of Bluff, my debut novel, thanks to the free giveaway promotion KDP Select offers those who wish to sign up. That was the count halfway through day three of the promotion. I wish I could have enjoyed that number. But I couldn’t. I was too busy panicking about the fact that so many people had downloaded an unreadable version of my book." Novel Publicity & Co.
- Review: Children’s Books: The Secret of the Fortune Wookie by Tom Angleberger, reviewed by Ian Buchsbaum - "Breaking the rule that says the first of a trilogy is the best, the third book the popular Origami Yoda series has come out, and I thought that this was the best one yet!" January Magazine
- Book Fair: Utah Humanities Book Festival, Salt Lake City, October 1-31 - "This festival is a bit unusual in that it has events all through the month and all over the state. The link above will take you to a page where you click on your area and it displays the list of events and their particular locations. The variety of author readings, talks, presentations, and signings is enormous. Regardless of your interest you’ll find something here." - from BiblioBuffet
- How To: Loaded Language, by Mark Nichol - "If your parents brought you up vigilantly, chances are that you were admonished to use your words carefully. As far as writing is concerned, that instruction is one of the most valuable lessons you learned." DailyWritingTips
- News: Eric Hobsbawm obituary, by Eric Hobsbawm obituary - "If Eric Hobsbawm had died 25 years ago, the obituaries would have described him as Britain's most distinguished Marxist historian and would have left it more or less there. Yet by the time of his death at the age of 95, Hobsbawm had a achieved a unique position in the country's intellectual life." The Guardian
- Odd News: More than any other book, “'Fifty Shades of Grey' was left behind at Travelodge U.K. properties, according to the hotel chain’s annual survey of books left behind." Of the 21,786 books found in the chain's rooms, 7,000 were the popular E. L. James' novel. - Publishing Poynters
BOOK BITS is compiled my Malcolm R. Campbell, author of contemporary fantasy and satire, including the paranormal short story "Moonlight and Ghosts" available at Smashwords and on Kindle.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
BOOK BITS: Writing Links - Godfather Films, English language weirdness, 'The Black Count'
- News: Books bloggers are harming literature, warns Booker prize head judge, by Alison Flood - "Peter Stothard, chair of this year's Booker prize judges, says the mass of online opinion about books could kill off literary criticism." The Guardian
- News: Judge: Paramount Won't Lose Right to Make More 'Godfather' Films, by Eriq Gardner - "A federal judge in New York on Thursday dismissed attempts by the estate of The Godfather author Mario Puzo to cancel a decades-old contract that gave Paramount film rights to his most famous book about a mafia family." The Hollywood Reporter
- How To: 5 Characters Every Writer Needs to Master, by Ken Myers - "As a writer you know you have the creative ability to write however you want. You are the artist. To challenge your writing and to keep your readers interested, there are five characters all writers should consider including in their stories." Wordplay
- How To: (Most) Characters Can’t Read Minds, by Beth Hill - "You may be writing paranormals and so, yes, you might have a mind-reading character or two in your fiction. But if you’re not and if you don’t, then it’s likely your characters are no better at reading the minds and emotions of other characters than any of us are at reading the 3-dimensional people in our lives." The Editor's Blog
- Feature: More on the Weirdness of the English Language, by Smoky Zeidel - "Vernaculata, Goddess of the Vernacular of the Peasantry, is at it again, keeping me awake at night pondering the weirdness of the English language. And it is weird; weird enough to make the savviest of editors (that would be me) tear her hair out at times, trying to figure out what is—and what isn’t—a word." Smoky Talks
- Feature: Your Secret Story, by Theodora Goss - "A secret story is a story you tell about yourself, as you’re going through your daily life. We probably all had secret stories when we were children. I know I did. I was in disguise as an ordinary student, but I had actually come from fairyland, or the future, or somewhere else, and I was just observing the people around me."
- Feature: Writers Be-Wary: Distribution and Control of Creative Material - "authors will wish to retain control over their contributions and may find aggregators’ “Terms of Use” unaccommodating. It is a fair question, What does an author give up in exchange for granting a license for the privilege of having her content aggregated with others and accessible to the searching public?" Legal Corner for Authors
- Review: The real-life Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Reiss' review of "The Black Count" by John T. Slania - "he Count of Monte Cristo is a classic tale of betrayal and revenge, penned by the renowned 19th-century author Alexandre Dumas. But it turns out the novel is not merely fiction; key plot developments were based on the true-life experiences of the author’s father." BookPage
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| A haunting short story for your Kindle |
Friday, September 28, 2012
New Release: 'Moonlight and Ghosts'
Publisher's Description: On a moonlit night, Randy's intuition is drawing him back to an abandoned psychiatric hospital where he once worked. He and his friend, Alice, have heard the ghost hunters' claims the building is haunted, filled with strange lights, apparitions and the voices of former patients calling for help. The Forgotten point Randy and Alice to a crime in progress... and there's not much time to save the victim.
Many years ago, I worked as a unit manager at a center for the developmentally disabled. Unfortunately, my finances wouldn't allow me to stay in such a low paying position for long. When I left, I felt rather guilty about it because I had developed a strong enough rapport with the residents to help them learn daily living skills and, in some cases, become capable of going into sheltered workshops.
In Moonlight and Ghosts, I turned my memories and guilt into a ghost story, complete with an abandoned psychiatric hospital and a crime in progress that the main character needs to figure out.
This is my first release since Sarabande came out during the summer of 2011. It's fun having something new to talk about!
Malcolm
Thursday, September 27, 2012
BOOK BITS: Writing Links - Rowling, Penguin, Pew News Study
Here are today's links:
- News: Pew Study: Television Top Source of Local News, by Merrill Knox - "Local television had its best showing in suburbs near large cities, where 75 percent of respondents said they watched a local newscast at least once per week. Small towns and rural areas both had 72 percent and urban areas had 65 percent. " TVSPY
- News: Failed to Deliver Your Book? Penguin Wants its Advance Back, by Dennis Abrams - "The Smoking Gun reports that the Penguin Group has filed lawsuits against several well-known writers, claiming that they 'failed to deliver books for which they received hefty contractual advances.”' Publishing Perspectives
- Viewpoint: Should we Rethink Pseudonyms? by Rachelle Gardner - "They have a long history in literature and the arts, and even nowadays on the Internet, many people choose to comment on blogs or maintain their Twitter presence under a pseudonym." Books & Such
- Review: JK Rowling review: 'The Casual Vacancy' breaks Harry Potter's spell, by Allison Pearson – “In 'The Casual Vacancy', JK Rowling bewilders her fans with an uneven, often harrowing book.” The Telegraph
- Lists: 6 Goofs I Made That Killed My Blog — and Helped Launch My Writing Career, by Carol Tice - "I poured my heart and soul into launching my first blog, and despite my best efforts and intentions, it flopped." Make a Living Writing
- Viewpoint: Amendment I by Nicki Leone - "What is truly amazing about the First Amendment is that it assumes—has faith, really—that we are rational and responsible enough to live in a world where anyone can say what they think. It becomes the responsibility of the individual, not the government, to evaluate, to weigh the evidence, and to come to their own conclusions about what they read and what they hear." BiblioBuffet
- How To: Writing Scripts and Speeches, by Erika Enigk - "Today, we’re going to tackle two of the scariest things you may ever be asked to do: writing and delivering a speech. To help your next presentation go well, check out these quick and dirty tips for writing scripts and speeches." Grammar Girl
- Interview: Book details child's view of Cambodia killing fields, by Nick Olivari - "A seven-year old child is torn from a secure and happy life when the Khmer Rouge come to power in Cambodia in 1975 and send her privileged family into the misery of hard labor as the new regime destroys the established order. ‘In the Shadow of the Banyan’ is the first novel of Vaddey Ratner, 41. While the book is powerful as told through the eyes of seven-year-old Raami, Ratner's own story is more so." Reuters
- New Title: Moonlight and Ghosts, a short story by Malcolm R. Campbell - “On a moonlit night, Randy's intuition is drawing him back to an abandoned psychiatric hospital where he once worked. He and his friend, Alice, have heard the ghost hunters' claims the building is haunted, filled with strange lights, apparitions and the voices of former patients calling for help. The Forgotten point Randy and Alice to a crime in progress... and there's not much time to save the victim.” Vanilla Heart Publishing on Amazon
"Book Bits" is compiled by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of contemporary fantasy and satire. Visit my website. Follow me on Twitter.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Sharing the News and Wisdom
“Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Now, this may sound like pseudoscience, but it appears that when we share information, the universe of that information suddenly becomes larger not only for others but for ourselves as well. It's certainly true with secrets. Most of us find that out the hard way. It takes us longer to learn that telling everything else we know doesn't decrease our wealth, knowledge, spirituality or sense of self, it expands it.
Sometimes I despair, though, when I see how much of today's social media, "news" and conversation is tied up with sharing information that harms or degrades others in some way. Topless pictures of royalty, tell-all books, shocking stories about love affairs, and lies about political candidates of both major parties often dominate out consciousness. To what end?
But news that helps others, makes them smile, gives them ideas for their hobbies and careers, and brings transformational moments, now that is what I'd like to see a few more headlines and Tweets about. Telling what's good seems to bring us even more good to tell. It's infinite wealth.
Today's Writing Links
Now, this may sound like pseudoscience, but it appears that when we share information, the universe of that information suddenly becomes larger not only for others but for ourselves as well. It's certainly true with secrets. Most of us find that out the hard way. It takes us longer to learn that telling everything else we know doesn't decrease our wealth, knowledge, spirituality or sense of self, it expands it.
Sometimes I despair, though, when I see how much of today's social media, "news" and conversation is tied up with sharing information that harms or degrades others in some way. Topless pictures of royalty, tell-all books, shocking stories about love affairs, and lies about political candidates of both major parties often dominate out consciousness. To what end?
But news that helps others, makes them smile, gives them ideas for their hobbies and careers, and brings transformational moments, now that is what I'd like to see a few more headlines and Tweets about. Telling what's good seems to bring us even more good to tell. It's infinite wealth.
Today's Writing Links
News: Banned Books Week Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary - “The following year [1982] a coalition of organizations concerned with the freedoms of speech and of the press declared a Banned Books Week. Now ASJA's First Amendment Committee is proud to support the thirtieth anniversary of Banned Books Week.” American Society of Authors and Journalists - Feature: Does Social Media Sell Books? by Meghan Ward - “The $64,000 question when it comes to social media is: Does it sell books? Many authors have written blog posts attempting to answer this question, and the consensus seems to be that yes, done right, social media does sell books, but in modest quantities.” Writerland
- Contest: William Van Dyke Short Story Prize at Ruminate Magazine, entry fee $15, prize $1000, 5500 words or less, deadline Oct 26, 2012
- Satire: Robin Redbreast Banned from Alton Butts Elementary in Time for Banned Books Week, by Jock Stewart – “The Albino County Board of Education announced here today that Robin Redbreast has been banned from the Alton Butts Elementary School library prior to the Banned Books Week deadline of September 30.” Morning Satirical News
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