My “heropath” magical adventure novel “The Sun Singer” is set in a fictionalized version of Glacier National Park, Montana, a land of shining mountains often called the backbone of the world.
Within the novel’s reality, the mountains making up the crown of the continent are pristine because–you see–when a writer delves into fantasy and magical realism, the worlds he creates do not contain such pervasive pollutants as Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Oxides, Carbon Dioxide or Mercury.
When I wrote articles about Glacier National Park in the 1980s, it was already listed as one of American's most threatened national parks.
To celebrate the third anniversary of “The Sun Singer,” I am donating 100% of the royalties from every E-BOOK copy of “The Sun Singer” purchased after June 1.
Each $6 E-BOOK purchased represents a $3 donation to the NCPA!
The E-BOOK is available directly from iUnivese.
Airborne pollutants can lead to lung and heart damage and premature death, respiratory illnesses and asthma attacks, global warming and increased food chain toxins, and Impeded child development.
I don’t know how to fix the problem.
Together, perhaps we can do better than we have so that, insofar as Glacier National Park is concerned, it will once again be what naturalist John Muir thought it was when he wrote:
“Give a month at least to this precious reserve. The time will not be taken from the sum of your life. Instead of shortening, it will indefinitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal.”
Friday, May 25, 2007
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Truths and rationalisations
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." --Cyril Connolly
Born in to a wealthy family, Connolly (1903-1974), served as a reviewer, literary magazine editor, and wrote a successful novel called "The Rock Pool." Greater things were expected of him and he used a fair amount of space in his autobiography explaining why he never wrote his masterpiece.
If I look at the quotation at the beginning of this post in a vacuum, then I might say, yes, this is the kind of thing I might say, or anyone else who also sees life and literature through a relatively skewed mirror.
But when I attach the quote to Connolly's career, I think--that regardless of anything else he said--one who doesn't write what s/he (or the public) expect can always claim, rather after the fact, that they were being true to themselves. Needless to say, one who is born into a wealthy family might also have the option of looking at their work as more or less an extended hobby, one that might have faired well in the public arena if the public had better taste.
When it comes to this quote, I see both sides of the coin, truth and rationalisation.
I know myself well enough to say that while I like reading a lot of commercial fiction, the literary fiction I read sings (to me) in a more understandable voice. I know when I read it that I will seldom talk to anyone else about it because they "don't read books like that."
If I could write commercial mainstream fiction, I'd like to think that I would turn out a popular book often enough to pay the bills, and then spend the rest of my time writing books that probably won't.
Would I get hooked on the dollars from the megabooks I wrote? I don't think so. The work in progress is more my cup of tea, the muse I hear, the truth I know. For better or worse, it's the way I write even though people are likely to say of it: "I don't read books like that."
It will be up to somebody else, I suppose, to say whether my fiction is literary and/or stylistic and/or eccentric and that I was writing it for myself rather than the public or whether I couldn't write at all and simply claimed later that I was being true to myself.
Born in to a wealthy family, Connolly (1903-1974), served as a reviewer, literary magazine editor, and wrote a successful novel called "The Rock Pool." Greater things were expected of him and he used a fair amount of space in his autobiography explaining why he never wrote his masterpiece.
If I look at the quotation at the beginning of this post in a vacuum, then I might say, yes, this is the kind of thing I might say, or anyone else who also sees life and literature through a relatively skewed mirror.
But when I attach the quote to Connolly's career, I think--that regardless of anything else he said--one who doesn't write what s/he (or the public) expect can always claim, rather after the fact, that they were being true to themselves. Needless to say, one who is born into a wealthy family might also have the option of looking at their work as more or less an extended hobby, one that might have faired well in the public arena if the public had better taste.
When it comes to this quote, I see both sides of the coin, truth and rationalisation.
I know myself well enough to say that while I like reading a lot of commercial fiction, the literary fiction I read sings (to me) in a more understandable voice. I know when I read it that I will seldom talk to anyone else about it because they "don't read books like that."
If I could write commercial mainstream fiction, I'd like to think that I would turn out a popular book often enough to pay the bills, and then spend the rest of my time writing books that probably won't.
Would I get hooked on the dollars from the megabooks I wrote? I don't think so. The work in progress is more my cup of tea, the muse I hear, the truth I know. For better or worse, it's the way I write even though people are likely to say of it: "I don't read books like that."
It will be up to somebody else, I suppose, to say whether my fiction is literary and/or stylistic and/or eccentric and that I was writing it for myself rather than the public or whether I couldn't write at all and simply claimed later that I was being true to myself.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Dying without regrets
PC-translations tagged me to answer the following question: If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
As writers, we contemplate this a lot when characters in our stories and novels die. There's quite a lot of angst in literature about people who die with telling one person a secret, that they're forgiven, that they love them, that they're sorry for doing one thing or another.
It makes great fiction.
In my personal reality, the answer to this question is nothing. I tend to tell people what I want to share with them. If I haven't done so, for whatever reason, up to now, then dying is not some kind of magical event that makes it vital for me to say something I did not wish to say up to that point. As a "we-create-our-reality" kind of person, I do not think death surprises anyone--at deeper levels of mind, at least--so, in reality, people don't die having left things unsaid that they would have otherwise said.
That's my outside the box view of it at any rate.
To keep this game going, I'm tagging Nora, Unplugged and Karen (within my MySpace friends grou) to answer this question and then select three other bloggers on which to bestow this great honour. You can find my MySpace profile and friends list here.
As writers, we contemplate this a lot when characters in our stories and novels die. There's quite a lot of angst in literature about people who die with telling one person a secret, that they're forgiven, that they love them, that they're sorry for doing one thing or another.
It makes great fiction.
In my personal reality, the answer to this question is nothing. I tend to tell people what I want to share with them. If I haven't done so, for whatever reason, up to now, then dying is not some kind of magical event that makes it vital for me to say something I did not wish to say up to that point. As a "we-create-our-reality" kind of person, I do not think death surprises anyone--at deeper levels of mind, at least--so, in reality, people don't die having left things unsaid that they would have otherwise said.
That's my outside the box view of it at any rate.
To keep this game going, I'm tagging Nora, Unplugged and Karen (within my MySpace friends grou) to answer this question and then select three other bloggers on which to bestow this great honour. You can find my MySpace profile and friends list here.
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