Here is a wonderful post from Kim at By Hook Or By Book!
https://cadburypom.wordpress.com If you haven’t been to her excellent blog, please visit her!
Month: April 2020
How Are You Doing With Your Work In Progress?
StandardHello to everyone! I hope that all of you are staying safe and healthy.
Since we all have to remain inside, I am hoping that everyone is doing well with their writing.
I am keeping a good pace with my first draft of book 3 of the Investigative Paranormal Society with about 1000 words a day. The initial draft should be done either at the end of the month or in the 1st week in May.
So, I ask all of you: how are you doing with your Work In Progress?
And remember, keep writing!
Gallows Hill can be found here in ebook.
Gallows Hill in paperback can be found here.
An interview about Gallows Hill can be found here.
Please follow the following links to find my novel:
Thank you!
The book trailer:
Maledicus:Investigative Paranormal Society Book I
My radio interview:
Quotation From Edward Gibbon On Responsibility
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“When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
Edward Gibbon (From The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire)
What Would The Greatest Generation Do?
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(https://commons.wikimedia.org)
My parents were in the generation that faced the twin horrors of The Great Depression and World War Two. They experienced economic hardships past anything that we are suffering today. They fought a war against two tyrannies in Japan and Germany. They fought in a war, that at the most conservative, estimate killed 56 million people. The Greatest Generation did not worry about being inconvenienced; they did not let fear stop them. They did what they had to do, and they sacrificed in ways that are almost incomprehensible to people today.
(https://www.goodfreephotos.com)
I shake my head when I see people protesting the lockdowns that are aimed at saving lives. They speak of inconvenience. Could these people have fought World War Two or lived through the hardships of the Great Depression? I think not. I know people are frustrated, but people gathering in crowds in protests, with no masks, are begging not only to be infected with Covid-19, but also they will spread it to others, including their loved ones, workers, and health care people. What can justify such selfishness?
We, as a society, need to learn from the sacrifices, the strength, and the courage of the Greatest Generation.
The Past Two (and more ) Weeks – School Then and Now, Part 4
StandardHere is another excellent post on reading from that extraordinary teacher–Jennie!
In Part 3, I jumped right into what children need most and what I do best, reading aloud. Setting up a YouTube channel gave them stories every day. It was also a constant. Then, we challenged children with art, scavenger hunts, plus math and science activities. We encouraged children to send us photos of what they were doing, and also how they responded to our challenges. They loved it. The pictures flowed, and that opened the door to writing back and forth with children.
Part 4
When there is a pandemic or a crisis of any kind, we all grab onto what is near and dear to us. Routine and familiar events and faces that we take for granted suddenly become incredibly important. For children this is magnified, and perhaps their one and only lifeline.
As a teacher, I know this all too well.
The constant I can give…
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A Writing Check-in!
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(Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com)
Hello to all the writers out there!
I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy.
I wanted to ask how your writing is progressing. Are you working on a first draft or editing or both? I have been getting about 1000 words a day on my current first draft; I have about 37,000 now. I hope to be finished with that initial draft at the end of the month or early next month. Then it will be a month of revisions!
Now, this will be a bit of shameless self-promotion, but if you are having difficulty finishing your first draft, then please check out my book–Get The Draft Done! in which I offer strategies for finishing your first draft.
So, I ask all of you: how is your writing progressing?
Gallows Hill can be found here in ebook.
Gallows Hill in paperback can be found here.
An interview about Gallows Hill can be found here.
Please follow the following links to find my novel:
Thank you!
The book trailer:
Maledicus:Investigative Paranormal Society Book I
My radio interview:
Quotations on Dictatorship
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“Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.”
Mario Vargas Llosa
(www.pixabay.com)
“Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited.”
John F. Kennedy
“Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.”
Jorge Luis Borges
Satin Bowerbirds~
StandardHere are more lovely photographs from Cindy Knoke!
Satin Bowerbirds are native to Australia. The birds pictured here are females. Males are dark black, but have the same startling blue eyes.
Bowerbirds are named after the elaborate stick structures called bowers that males build to attract a mate.
They use found objects, to decorate their bowers, the flashier and bluer, the better!
Females inspect the bowers, while the males dance near them, and females choose their mate based both on the dance and the bower.
Bowers are decorated with anything colorful the birds find, like pens, buttons, blue plastic, blue balloons, blue bottle caps, blue feathers etc. There have a definite preference for blue colors that match their eyes!
I am impressed with any guy who will not only build a house for his mate, but shop till he drops to decorate it, and dance for her too!
Wow!
I didn’t find any bowers in Australia, but here…
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Two More Reviews of Maledicus: The Investigative Paranormal Society, Book 1 by Charles F. French
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Sergio Butron
Gallows Hill can be found here in ebook.
Gallows Hill in paperback can be found here.
An interview about Gallows Hill can be found here.
Please follow the following links to find my novel:
Thank you!
The book trailer:
Maledicus:Investigative Paranormal Society Book I
My radio interview:
What Is The Best Opening To A Novel?
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I thought in this season of spring, the time of renewal and new beginnings, I would ask a simple, but difficult, question: what do you consider the best opening of a novel to be?
For me, the absolute best beginning is from Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way– in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
So, I ask all of you: what do you consider the best beginning of a novel to be?
charles french words reading and writing 