Late May Self-Promotion Party!

                                                     (Photo by Oleg Magni on Pexels.com)

Hello everyone! It’s near the end of May, the weather is turning warmer, and it’s time for a self-promotion party!

Be proud of your writing!

Share your book(s) with the world!

Be your own best publicist!

To help as many as possible see your work, reblog, like, and follow others.

Available on Amazon

Get The Draft Done! is available here: Amazon.com

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:

ebook

Print book

My radio interview:

interview

Available on Amazon

Available on Amazon

With Which Authors Would You Choose To Share A Meal?

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This idea of meeting with a few authors over a meal and having a conversation with them is something I have discussed before, and it was fun to consider. I have, therefore, decided to cover this scenario again.  I was thinking about with whom I would like to dine and with whom I would enjoy having a conversation, among authors, both living and dead. Obviously, for the sake of this idea, if an author is dead, he/she will be resuscitated for the meal and conversation.

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I consider myself an author of speculative fiction, which can encompass many genres, but one of my areas in writing, in teaching, and in study is Gothic/Horror.  Three of my novels, Maledicus: The Investigative Paranormal Society Book 1, Gallows Hill: The Investigative Paranormal Society Book 2, and Evil Lives After, The Investigative Paranormal Society, Book 3 are all of the Horror and Gothic genres. I have already written the first draft of two other horror novels. Horror and Gothic have interested me since I was a youngster, and it will the rest of my life.

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I would like, therefore, to have a meal with 3 masters of this field: Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker. I think this would be an enlightening, provoking, stimulating, and lively conversation. I would raise a glass with them and toast to their enduring brilliance.

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My question, then, to all of you is this: with what three authors would you like to have a meal and conversation?

 

 

What Is One Of Your Favorite Books–Revisited?

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I am a teacher, a writer, and a lover of books. I cannot remember a time when I could not read, and the simple act of reading a book is one of the best pleasures in life.  So, I was thinking today about a book, one of my all time favorites: The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, that I have used in classes at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. This novel is brilliant, funny, witty, Gothic, romantic, and deeply engaging.  Can you tell I love it?

Here is a quotation from the back cover of the paperback:

“Wondrous . . . masterful . . . The Shadow Of The Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.”

— Entertainment Weekly, Editor’s Choice

I love to ask this question of readers: What is one of your favorite books? (If you wish, offer more than one.)

 

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What Are You Currently Reading?

Hello to everyone!

Here is a quick question for you–what book or books are you currently reading?

To answer my own question, I am reading:

Bruno, Chief Of Police by Martin Walker

Swan Peak by James Lee Burke

The Siberian Dilemma by Martin Cruz Smith

and Culture: The Story of Us From Cave Art to K-Pop by Martin Puchner.

It is an odd coincidence that three of the four books are written by authors with the first name of Martin.

So, I ask you–what are you reading?

An April Self-Promotion Party

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It’s Spring, and weather has become warmer, plants are beginning to grow, and trees and starting to bud.

This is also a good time to do some unashamed self-promotion!

Tell us about your book(s)!

Leave links and images.

Shout to the world about your work!

You are writers–be proud of what you create.

So as many as possible can see your work, please like, tweet, and reblog this post!

Available on Amazon

Get The Draft Done! is available here: Amazon.com

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:

ebook

Print book

Thank you!

My radio interview:

interview

Available on Amazon

Available on Amazon

Quotations On The Need For Questioning

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“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

                                                                              Socrates

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“He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.”

                                                                     Elie Wiesel

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“Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.”                                                                                                     Salman Rushdie

“One of the most important lessons we should teach is to always ask questions.”                                                                                                                                     Charles F. French

Welcome Another Member of The U.L.S., The Underground Library Society

I am honored to welcome Cap Parlier as the newest member of the U.L.S., The Underground Library Society!

In an earlier First Year Class at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, The U.L.S. — The Underground Library Society — was created. It is in the spirit of the Book People from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In that novel, all books have been banned, and a few people “become” books by memorizing them, in the hope that, one day, books will be permitted to exist again. Those who join write a post about a book they would become if such a time was happening.

Please enjoy reading Cap Parlier’s entry.

In these tumultuous times, I struggled with what book to choose as my inaugural submittal for membership in the Underground Library Society (ULS)—a spiritual tribute to Ray Douglas Bradbury’s seminal dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). So many books, known and peripheral, qualify in my mind and reading experience. Yet, there is one book that persistently floods my conscious thought for selection for this purpose.

Eric Arthur Blair wrote his last novel toward the end of his life and in ill health. That book would become his magnum opus, published in 1949. Like the centerpiece basis of ULS, the book is a profoundly dystopian novel offering a very dim view of humanity’s future [if we were (are) not careful]. Blair had survived the Spanish Civil War, witnessed the Great Purge in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and watched the violent oppression of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. He had plenty of real examples for his imagination to consider. Blair’s nom de plume, adopted when he began writing while serving as a member of the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (Myanmar), was George Orwell.

My choice to join the Book People and ULS is Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. The book represents a prescient glimpse of what might be when we embrace authoritarian governance. The central character, Winston Smith, works in the Ministry of Truth in Airstrip One, a province of Oceania, one of three super-states, including Eurasia and Eastasia. The three super-states remain in an environment of perpetual war, and the Party and its leader Big Brother must control all information and thought to keep the populace focused on the objectives of the State. Winston joins the resistance under the Party’s threat of execution and obliteration. Yet, the massive billboard on the Ministry of Truth building succinctly consolidates the essence of the Party’s oppression.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The story revolves around the resistance and their clandestine absorption of scraps of knowledge they can collect. They recognize the truth and the oppression of Big Brother. In telling the story of Winston Smith and Oceania, Orwell created highly descriptive terms three-quarters of a century ago that surprisingly apply to contemporary life—Big Brother, Newspeak, Thought Police, Memory Hole, Doublethink, and Thoughtcrime. Censorship in its myriad forms is the cornerstone of the Party’s domination of Oceania. So many elements of the Party, Big Brother, and Oceania display the traits of dictatorship and other authoritarian governmental systems. We do not know how Oceania reached its state of oppression, but we see what it has become.

There is no indication that Orwell knew of Lord Woodhouselee’s 1787 lecture “The Fall of The Athenian Republic,” but Nineteen Eighty-Four portrays the citizens of Oceania on the full circle of the Tytler Cycle back to bondage. Further, the Party’s doublethink dicta sought to interdict the collective thoughts required to break the bondage. Big Brother sought servitude. Winston and his brethren wanted freedom.

Orwell brings the world of Oceania, the Party, and Big Brother into vivid clarity. We see through Winston Smith the nightmarish, terrifying domain of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell’s tome should instruct us today and most definitely should serve as the negative metric we use when we decide who we are going to vote for, i.e., who not to vote for. If we vote diligently for candidates who will do their part to protect our rights and freedom, we can maintain the republic and avoid Oceania or anything even remotely resembling that dismal state.

In the related and relevant category of ‘whoda thunkit,’ today (March 2023), multiple nations, including the United States of America, face the forces of authoritarianism in its Medusan forms. The suppression of books, the restriction on schools of what can be taught to our children, the denial of history, the mantra accusation of ‘Fake News,’ the direct invasion of a woman’s fundamental right to privacy in controlling her biological functions, ad infinitum ad nauseum, these are the phrase an authoritarian regime (or at least wannabe authoritarian people). Yes, indeed! Nineteen Eighty-Four is the most appropriate book for all of us to read and re-read to understand the signs and characteristics of authoritarian governance in any of its myriad forms. We may not be wise enough and sufficiently perceptive to halt our decent back into bondage. Yet, 74 years ago, George Orwell gave us a  clear vision of what can happen if We, the People, do not protect our individual rights and freedoms. They are too precious to lose. Whenever we prepare to vote, we should remember Nineteen Eighty-Four. Most importantly, the Book People must preserve the words of George Orwell and permanently remember them.

Cap Parlier

Again, thank you to Cap Parlier for joining the group!

Quotations on Freedom Of The Press

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“Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose”

                                                                 George Orwell

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“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

                                                                Thomas Jefferson

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“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

                                                                Benjamin Franklin

“Let us never forget that those who oppress freedom by attacking the freedom of the press are neither patriots nor lovers of democracy.”

                                                                Charles F. French

March 2023 Self-Promotion Party!

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Hello to everyone! We are now in Spring, and I thought it would be a good time to share what you have been writing and what you have written. I want once again to offer an opportunity for all writers who follow this blog to share information on their books. It can be very difficult to generate publicity for our writing, so I thought this little effort might help. All books may be mentioned, and there is no restriction on genre. This includes poetry and non-fiction.

To participate, simply give your name, your book, information about it, and where to purchase it in the comments section. Then please be willing to reblog and/or tweet this post. The more people that see it, the more publicity we can generate for everyone’s books.

Thank you for participating!

Keep on writing!

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Celebrate and promote your writing! Shout it out to the world! Let everyone know about your work!

Don’t be shy. Be your own best promoter and publicist!

Feel free to promote a new or an older book!

I hope this idea is successful, and I hope many people share information on their books!

Available on Amazon

Get The Draft Done! is available here: Amazon.com

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:

ebook

Print book

Thank you!

My radio interview:

interview

Available on Amazon

Available on Amazon

Libraries of the Lehigh Valley, PA: Trexler Library of Muhlenberg College

The next entry in my series on libraries in the Lehigh Valley, PA is Trexler Library of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA. We, in this area, are extremely fortunate to have not only several city public libraries, but also we have small town libraries and those in six private colleges and universities, and in an extension campus of Penn State University, and two community colleges. This section of Pennsylvania is truly blessed with an abundance of knowledge and resources from these numerous institutions.

This building has a fascinating design, with three floors that descend. The top floor is the area with the checkout desks, information areas, talking sections, and the valuable writing center. Down the next two floors are the stacks with books, and these are quiet areas.

Not only does this building hold many volumes of books, music, and films, but it also has a rare books room, in which displays of unusual and often unseen items are put on display.

I was delighted to find that Trexler Library has in its collection several example of cuneiform tablets, dating probably from circa 2500-3000 B.C. as well as several ancient parchments. Here are some examples:

I also want to mention that I am proud that two of my novels, Maledicus, The Investigative Paranormal Society, Book 1 and Gallows Hill, The Investigative Paranormal Society, Book 2 are in the library’s collection! 

Lastly, I apologize for the blurred photographs. Clearly, photography is not one of my talents.