Super excited to say the final stages of the global distribution of The Seedhave now been accomplished!!! As well as Lulu.com POD and ebook, and Amazon Kindle and Apple iStore, The Seedis now available at Amazon POD and Nook. Details are:
More details on the novel can be found on the The Seed page above if you’ve not read about it before and you’re curious to check out my first novel. :)
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun ‘dystopia’ (defined as ‘an imaginary place or condition in which everything is as bad as possible’) first turns up in print in 1952, and ‘dystopian’ (in the word’s most common sense, namely ‘of or pertaining to a dystopia’) not until a decade later. But the first citation for the word ‘dystopian’ in the sense of ‘one who advocates or describes a dystopia’ comes from a speech made in the House of Commons by the Victorian philosopher, John Stuart Mill in 1868. ‘Dystopian’, then, was a Victorian coinage. But recently the noun ‘dystopia’ has been traced back to 1747 where it is spelled ‘dustopia’ but is used in clear contrast…
That’s right folks, The Paperbook Blog is seeking guest posters to share with us your favourite books, authors, book stores and all else booky.
Do you love to read? Do you love to write? Do you love to write about reading or read about writing?
Then this could be the guest post for you!
I would like all posts to revolve around Penguin books, (or Penguin published authors, or even your local book store that sells these little gems!), bringing the reviews back to where I started from. They can be Penguins of any genre, but preferably Penguin Classics, simply because they are my absolute favourite. There are hundreds of these guys to choose from, and the beauty is, they’re only $10 each! Make friends with a Penguin, you’ll be glad you did.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my personality type lately. I’ve had the unhappy realization that even in a virtual world, I’m still an introvert. It may be easier to project myself as an extrovert, as someone who thrives on being with large groups of people, but it ain’t the truth about me. My favorite face-to-face social events tend to be one-on-one encounters, such as a long lunch with one close friend. My limit is a dinner party of four, where I am one of the four. At the young age of 55, I started to finally embrace the introvert that is me after I read Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. For the first time in my life, I felt that my introversion was more “normal” than my society wanted me to believe.
But then I reentered the blogosphere and now I have a wide circle of blogging acquaintances, many of whom have become friends that I’ve grown to care about deeply. I value each one of these new friendships, and yet I still experience that paralyzing feeling I get when I feel multiple demands for my attention. Like when I open my Gmail account and see 200 new blog posts all wanting and deserving my attention. These are not people speaking directly to me all at once, but the sensation is the same. I feel overwhelmed and then I shut down.
So yesterday morning, upon discovering that for some reason WordPress is not sending me the daily digests of the blogs I follow as I requested, I turned to my Facebook page. I started with Candace Johnson at Change It Up Editing and Writing Services who had shared Lauren Sapala’s blog post on making time to write. [That is an excellent post, by the way.] From there, I saw another post Lauren had written called Know Your Type, and Then Sit Down to Write. Well, there we go. I was familiar with Jung’s personality test (also referred to the Myers-Briggs test). [Disclaimer: what is online is an abridged version of the actual test, and there is some controversy about it. Still, it’s fun to take and can be very insightful.] And, true to my introverted self, I love taking tests. You can take the test here.
I’ve taken this test in the past and as I’ve matured, my scores have changed slightly. What has not changed is the first letter of the score: “I” for Introvert. This morning’s test revealed me to be an ISFJ: Introvert, Sensing, Feeling, Judging. To be more specific, I have strong preferences of introversion over extroversion by 89%; sensing over intuition by 12%; feeling over thinking by 38%; and judging over perceiving by 44%. Over the years, I seem to have become more sensing than intuitive, but my other “preferences” have changed little. So what’s an introvert like me to do?
I’m not about to retreat into the quiet cocoon of anonymity just because I get a little overwhelmed now and then. I just need to relearn and pay attention to my limits. I would never turn back the clock on my blogging, for the friends I’ve gained have enriched my life beyond my imagination. Not only has my growth as a writer accelerated in the last few months due to the support of my blogging friends, but so has my self-confidence in general. In my real physical world, I have a handful of friends that I feel comfortable enough with to be fully myself. It’s a stark, finite number that, while I enjoy solitude, still leaves me uneasy. Is it me that is incapable of having more than two good friends? Or is it my immediate physical world that is incapable of accepting me as I am?
In my real virtual world, the number seems infinite. I am friends with people I never would have met except for the blogosphere, people who live in the U.S. and Canada but also far-flung countries like Australia, Latvia, Italy, Egypt. For an introvert like myself, this is nothing short of amazing. For an introvert, this could only happen through writing.
The literary work of Ernest J. Gaines intersects history and culture with universal themes of self-respect, human dignity and personal integrity. His novels pay homage to ordinary black citizens who not only deserve respect in their everyday lives but crave it as a matter of order and sensibility. His obsession with the speech, cultural traditions, and mores specific to the Point Coupeé Plantation in Oscar, Louisiana, is notable in each of his seven works of fiction. When Gaines left the plantation in 1948, at age 15, to join his mother and stepfather in Vallejo, California, he had become so enamored with the land and its people that he was unable to extract himself psychologically and emotionally from the region of his birth.
While his experiences on the plantation helped shape him, the memories did not dissipate with his subsequent move to the West…
Here is the sixth installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not To Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy.
10. When on your first date, do not tell your date that you’ve just decided to join the Peace Corps to save the world. Your date may think they need to be saved or, at best, that you are already thinking of running away.
9. When on your first date, do not declare in advance that you are picking up the tab even if that’s what you want to do. Your date might be the kind of person who orders the most expensive cocktail, appetizer, salad, soup, bottle of wine, entrée, digestif, and dessert, followed by a carry out order.
8. When on your first date, do not talk about your ex, particularly if you have more than one. As with job interviews, such candidness may only lead to your date thinking of you as an ex as well.
7. When on your first date, do not talk about sexual activity, either yours, your date’s, or who ever happens to be running for mayor of your city. It’s not so much to respect the morals of your date that you would avoid talking about sex; rather, it’s because your date just might be the kind of person who will want to better your story and heaven help you if they know a lot about it.
6. When on your first date, don’t dress like you are going to go dumpster diving. First appearances mean a lot and you don’t want your first date to think you’re too poor to actually afford nice clothes. Then again, if dumpster diving is your first date, then ignore this caution.
5. When on your first date, do not talk politics or religion. This is the surest way to find out if you have anything to talk about at all which will be a damn sight better than coming to blows over some little point you are trying to make.
4. When on your first date, do not question your date as if the date were a job interview. You do not need to know your date’s KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities), nor do you need to know where your date expects to be in five years, nor do you need to know why your date thinks he or she is the best person for future dates. These are the types of questions your parents are supposed to ask.
3. When on your first date, do not drink alcohol at all, even if dirty gin martinis are your favorite beverage. While you may argue that a little of bit of alcohol can be relaxing for both you and your date, the bridge between relaxation and alcohol-induced coma is more narrow than one usually thinks and often comes crowded with the sharing of too many secrets that are best left unsaid, frequent and precarious trips to the bathroom, and undesired invitations to burping contests. None of these things is likely to leave a good impression on either of you.
2. When on your first date, do not suddenly change your plans and take your date to a family reunion of your one-hundred-plus relatives, most of whom haven’t agreed on anything since the Korean War. While you may think this is a perfect opportunity for your date to get to know you and your family at the same time, your date may think it’s the perfect opportunity to hook up with one of your cousins.
1. When on your first date, do not talk about how much you want a family of your own nor ask if your date wants a family, even if you do. Your date might get the wrong impression and start thinking of you as a couple rather than a casual acquaintance. It may get way too creepy.
A Girl Named Cord by Briana Vedsted will be published on Amazon.com on July 31, 2013 as both a paperback and an eBook.
Book description: Cord had to work hard to earn her living as a cow puncher, and she was getting along just fine until a wealthy rancher moves into the county and threatens the lives of her and her friends. Cord rises up to meet every challenge, but the death of friends, both old and new, plague her at every turn. And just when everything seems like it is going to go back to being peacefully normal, a secret comes to light, putting Cord and her future family in danger. Will Cord let go of her sorrow filled past and revengeful wishes long enough to save her loved ones and pull her life back out of the bottomless pit it seems to be stuck in?
“But let me tell you this: peace in the heart is much more comforting than blood in the sand.“
Marie at 1 Write Way 
