Posted on 7/5/2012
A farmer and teacher, he lived in Valdosta, Georgia.
Excerpts:
"........George and Laura Brownell were married on May 19, 1942, and had six children. Mr. Eager was a war hero, having served the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Portland during fierce battles, including the worst night battle of the Pacific at Guadalcanal in November 1942.
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By: Claudette Young,
on 7/5/2012
Flash Fiction Prompt
Each day a lovely little website referred to as Flashy Fiction offers a writing prompt to a photo. Today’s prompt was a two-fer because it’s been combined with Friday’s prompt.
I had to do one for today. The opportunity was too good and the prompt too right-up-my-alley. So, this is what I wrote for the photo above. I hope you enjoy it. And please, stop by to see all the offerings on Flashy Fiction. You’ll be glad you did.
The Light of Meaning
Within me grows a tension I cannot place. What could cause this sensation of impending destiny, which perches like a vulture just out of visual range? Does my breath come short and quick because of unexpected claustrophobia at the looks of this canyon before me?
My friends don’t seem to notice how silence surrounds this place, how the scent of dust carries with it a hint of the ancient. Their shouts fall short of my space, leaving me in a personal bell jar inside these striped red walls.
Illusions of undulating Dune’s Shai-Hulud flash across my mind. I wonder if this was how Paul felt the first time he waited for that beast to rise from the desert floor. Would there be such a ritual for me to perform for the coming secret to reveal itself? And how do I know there is a secret?
Footsteps echo. Shock sweeps through me. I recognize them as my own, though I don’t recall moving into the inner recesses of a side chamber. Dim illumination draws me forward, faster as hesitation drops away. I must know this thing that would be.
Twists and turns, dried water channels of exquisite sandstone, bring me, at last, to the chamber. I burst forth from the passage, panting in excitement and terror. Finally, I see what has haunted my vague dreams for longer than memory reaches. It waits; one glorious beam of pure light.
Within that circle of illumination is the future I’ve tried to escape from and now run to in a sprint of desperation. Could my heart beat any harder and remain caged within my body? Could my responding body contain so much light?
A jerk, like that of a tether drawn forward suddenly, pulls me into the beam of sunlight that squeezes through a tiny overhead opening. My head arches back. My chest swells and rises, as if I’m a mere marionette and someone has yanked my string upward. My mind is filled with music, sweet and gentle, as it ebbs and surges through the channels of my soul.
Home comes calling. I have been away longer than I can imagine right now. My mind registers the knowledge of a previous, though, different life elsewhere; a knowledge that explains so much that has confused me during this life.
The music and light fill me with the purpose I’ve been seeking. All is clear now. I have come this far to learn that only one act of mine is necessary for my life to have meaning for this world; to learn that with that act, I have completed my purpose here and can go home again.
Is there any better bliss than such sure knowledge?
By: Justine Larbalestier,
on 7/5/2012
@DaniArostegui asked “Can you write a post on the research process for your novels? How much research do you do for a given book?”
The book I’m writing at the moment, Sekrit Project, was inspired by a non-fiction book. So one of the first things I did was work my way through the articles and books listed in the bibliography. Each of which led to other books and articles and so on. Footnotes and bibliographies will lead you in many wonderful and unexpected directions.
When I’m writing a book set during a different historical period as I am with my 1930s New York City novel I immerse myself in the music, literature, movies, radio, fashion, food (via cookbooks and restaurant reviews) and art and photography—from postcards to news photography to high art photography to people’s snapshots—of the period. Fortunately these days there’s a great deal of that kind of archival material available online. Though I do find it very helpful to spend time with the actual physical material. So I spend time in archives reading letters, official documents, reports, newspapers and magazines and other material.
Magazines and newspaper and books looked so different back then. You don’t fully appreciate that until you’re touching them and turning the pages.1 For instance, I was surprised that so many books in the early 1930s had advertisements in them. I stupidly thought that was a more recent innovation.
For historicals I find the Oxford English Dictionary absolutely indispensable. I am constantly looking up words to make sure a) they were in use in the 1930s and b) that they meant then what they mean now. There’s also Ben Schmidt’s wonderful blog, Prochronism that looks at anachronisms on shows like Mad Men and Downton Abbey. In which he points out, to take a recent example, that the cliche of “the defining moment” only dates back to 1983.
Schmidt makes great use of Google books’ n-gram viewer, which may be my favourite tool for this kind of research. Here’s the historical graph of the usage of the words “vampires” “zombies” and “unicorns” over the last two hundred years:
The blue line is vampires, the red zombies and the green unicorns. Click on image to go way bigger
Depending on your historical period you should also talk to living people about it. Some of their memories can be wonderfully evocative and useful to your story.
For Team Human the research was considerably less full on. Sarah Rees Brennan and I re-read classic vampire novels such as Dracula as well as catching up on the vampire novels we’d missed over the last few decades. Sarah had me reading L. J. Smith; I put her on to Tanith Lee’s Sabella. All the other research was mostly searching online to see how short the days are in Maine in autumn and stuff like that.
I never wait until I’ve done all the research before I begin writing. That way leads to never writing a sentence. You can never do all the research it’s simply not possible. Much better
By: Leila Roy,
on 7/5/2012
From Catch and Release:
Never scratch a zit, kids; it only makes it worse. Boy howdy. No fucking kidding.
Oh, I'm way lucky. I didn't have an embarrassing acne flare-up. Nope, lucky me, I got flesh-eating bacteria—MSRA, the next-gen superbug. It ate my eye and part of my cheekbone. It left behind a mess of bumpy pink scars that twists the corner of my mouth up on one side like I'm a half-finished Joker. But I'm lucky, so I live.
When Polly was in the hospital, she didn't hang out with anyone—not her boyfriend, who dumped her via letter, and not any of her friends, none of whom visited—but the only other person to contract the bacteria and live. Like Polly, Odd Estes didn't escape unscathed: the bacteria took a good part of his left leg. They never talk about any of it, though. They talk about fishing.
A few months after they're released—months that she's spent camped out in front of the television, alternately watching ladies' daytime programming and monster movies—Odd shows up at her house and asks her if she wants to go fishing. She packs stuff for a day trip, and off they go.
But instead of turning around at the end of the day, they just keeping driving.
And driving.
And driving.
Reading Polly's running commentary will hurt anyone with a modicum of empathy—she hates her new face just as much as she hates strangers for reacting to it—and to make it hurt even more, her voice is immediately believable, and rings clear and true. There's no disconnect: in reading Catch & Release, you're reading Polly's words, not Blythe Woolston's. At least, that's how it feels.
As easy as it is to understand her prickliness, it's also easy to feel for Odd—who, to be fair, can be massively, amazingly obnoxious—who is often on the receiving end of her biting sarcasm. Because of her "disinclination to enter fully into a meaningful exchange"* she doesn't know why Odd's on this trip, and because she's so wrapped up in her own pain and anger, she doesn't much care, either. And, to be honest, I was so wrapped up in her voice that I didn't really think about his motivations and mindset until I was a good two-thirds of the way through the book.
So, on one hand, reading this book was a little like repeatedly punching myself in the face for two hours. I found it that painful. Polly is angry and hurting and angry some more and hurting some more. But, on the other hand, the last few pages—in which you finally get to hear what Odd thinks—made all of that pain worthwhile, and then going back and reading the first few pages and seeing all of the little details that show how much the roadtrip has chang
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By: Catherine Nichols,
on 7/5/2012
By: Beckyb,
on 7/5/2012
Kim Cash Tate really hit the nail on the head in her latest novel, Hope Springs. In a simple and yet clear way, she shows that change is NEVER easy - and I think many can relate to that - but change in the church can often be even more challenging. I appreciate the way she tackles this topic and delicately points out just exactly how hard the politics of church can be. I love the characters in her novel - they are well-developed and you are drawn into the storyline almost immediately.
Here is what the publisher says about the book:
In a small community where everyone is holding tight to something, the biggest challenge may be learning to let go. Hope Springs, North Carolina, is the epitome of small town life-a place filled with quiet streets, a place where there's not a lot of change. Until three women suddenly find themselves planted there for a season. Janelle hasn't gone back to Hope Springs for family reunions since losing her husband. But when she arrives for Christmas and learns that her grandmother is gravely ill, she decides to extend the stay. It isn't long before she runs into her first love, and feelings that have been dormant for more than a decade are reawakened. Becca is finally on the trajectory she's longed for. Having been in the ministry trenches for years, she's been recruited as the newest speaker of a large Christian women's conference. But her husband feels called to become the pastor of his late father's church in Hope Springs. And Stephanie has the ideal life-married to a doctor in St. Louis with absolutely nothing she has to do. When her cousin Janelle volunteers to stay in Hope Springs and care for their grandmother, she feels strangely compelled to do the same. It's a decision that will forever change her. As these women come together, they soon recognize that healing is needed in their hearts, their families, and their churches. God's plan for them in Hope Springs-is bigger than they ever imagined. Thomas Nelson 2012.
And about the author:
Kim Cash Tate is the author of Cherished, Faithful, Heavenly Places, and the memoir More Christian than African American. A former practicing attorney, she is also the founder of Colored in Christ Ministries. She and Her husband have two children. Connect with Kim: Twitter @KimCashTate and Facebook.
Do not miss this wonderful novel - it would be a super summer beach read!
*I was sent a copy by the publisher for review purposes.
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 7/5/2012
In Buzz Bissinger’s case, the view from his childhood apartment on Central Park West provided a window on a changing New York City. Just as he loved the boyhood ritual of going to the park with his parents on Sundays, so he later loved the ritual of sitting with his dad in front of the living room window overlooking the park.Mr. Bissinger’s father died in 2001, his mother four months later, and when the rent zoomed from $2,700 a month to $7,000 to $10,000, he and his sister were forced to let go of their treasured home. Looking back now, he says he realized he never felt closer to his family than when they were sitting in the living room, looking out the picture window at the panorama of those 843 acres below.
Reading all this takes me back to a Central Park day I shared with my friend Rahna Reiko Rizzuto. In celebration of the book, then, in celebration of Andrew, Buzz, Brooks, and Reiko, and in celebration of warm summer days, I share (again) that poem here.“I thought we would last forever,” he writes. “In a way I cannot quite explain, I felt a sense of immortality because Central Park was immortal, that everything would always stay the same.”
UnassailableFrom where we stood, on the castle rockOf Central Park, Harlem was as near asTwenty years ago. EverythingBetween then and us was green.The pond turtles were stacked up like stonesOn stones. The trees were a day awayFrom shucking their own shells.The red wing of a black bird was like a handThat had been dealt, and we were the splendorSight we had given ourselves.Afterward, it was Amsterdam to Broadway,Columbus Circle down to the sweetRemembered squalor of Times Square,And on every corner: Song.The high hollows of the Peruvians,The mesquite of a jazz trombone,The Mennonites in hairnets and black sneakers.I wondered later whether we had becomeThe engine of concatenation,Two women made radical
With unappeasable want,1 Comments on Central Park: An Anthology, A Poem, A Hot Day's Celebration, last added: 7/5/2012Display Comments Add a Comment
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/5/2012
Axel Alonso and Tom Brevoort gave a fairly wide-reaching interview to Comic Book Resources on the topic of the “Marvel Now” relaunch. It jumps around a bit, but does get some more information out into the public and comes straight from the horses mouth. Let’s parse it a little.
The price of Marvel’s comics will also be unaffected by the Marvel NOW! initiative “My understanding is that price points will remain what they are,” Alonso said. “There shouldn’t be any unpleasant surprises on that front.”
So it looks like the $3.99 books and $2.99 books will stay the same. So much for the whispered hopes that Marvel would take advantage of relaunch publicity to lower everything back to $2.99. I would guess that Uncanny Avengers will be a $3.99 title. Other launches? Time will tell.
There’s a great deal of time spent talking about AVX as the end of a cycle that started with Avengers Disassembled and House of M. Or, to put it another way, the Bendis Avengers Era. And a lot of the cross-over material, particularly Secret Invasion, was Bendis-driven in that time period. They also talk about Uncanny Avengers being a natural outgrowth of AVX and wanting to put the X-Men more firmly in the Marvel universe.
My reading on that is they’re going to make a concerted effort to move as many of the roughly 175K AVX readers into Uncanny Avengers as the first act post-cross-over. There is probably a discussion to be had about whether the X-Men are better off in their own corner of the world or out in the open. It seems like there have been different philosophies on this over the years. Certainly, the X-Men have had periods where their cross-overs were within their own titles.
Not everything is getting relaunched.
A large number of titles will be part of the Marvel NOW! initiative, but that doesn’t mean that every book Marvel publishes will be restarted with a new #1 issue. “Anything that has a story hook tied into this initiative will be branded Marvel NOW!” Alonso explained. “So there will be a lot of new #1 issues including ‘Thor’ #1, an ‘Iron Man’ #1, and a ‘Captain America’ #1, but there might be some other titles, like ‘Daredevil’ for instance, which won’t go through a creative change or have a new #1. Mark Waid is doing a fantastic job on that book and his run is still very new. So we have no interest in interrupting that book. Of course, if Mark and Steve Wacker come up with a great hook that legitimizes things the book would become part of the Marvel NOW! line up.”
This also tells us that the relaunches _will_ be getting new #1 issues. Not to say Captain America didn’t just get relaunched. Good to hear Marvel’s best book, Daredevil, isn’t getting touched. Still, if ever there was a quality title that would benefit from a big publicity event, Daredevil would be it at Marvel. Such an under-appr
By: Claudette Young,
on 7/5/2012
Flash Fiction Prompt
Each day a lovely little website referred to as Flashy Fiction offers a writing prompt to a photo. Today’s prompt was a two-fer because it’s been combined with Friday’s prompt.
I had to do one for today. The opportunity was too good and the prompt too right-up-my-alley. So, this is what I wrote for the photo above. I hope you enjoy it. And please, stop by to see all the offerings on Flashy Fiction. You’ll be glad you did.
The Light of Meaning
Within me grows a tension I cannot place. What could cause this sensation of impending destiny, which perches like a vulture just out of visual range? Does my breath come short and quick because of unexpected claustrophobia at the looks of this canyon before me?
My friends don’t seem to notice how silence surrounds this place, how the scent of dust carries with it a hint of the ancient. Their shouts fall short of my space, leaving me in a personal bell jar inside these striped red walls.
Illusions of undulating Dune’s Shai-Hulud flash across my mind. I wonder if this was how Paul felt the first time he waited for that beast to rise from the desert floor. Would there be such a ritual for me to perform for the coming secret to reveal itself? And how do I know there is a secret?
Footsteps echo. Shock sweeps through me. I recognize them as my own, though I don’t recall moving into the inner recesses of a side chamber. Dim illumination draws me forward, faster as hesitation drops away. I must know this thing that would be.
Twists and turns, dried water channels of exquisite sandstone, bring me, at last, to the chamber. I burst forth from the passage, panting in excitement and terror. Finally, I see what has haunted my vague dreams for longer than memory reaches. It waits; one glorious beam of pure light.
Within that circle of illumination is the future I’ve tried to escape from and now run to in a sprint of desperation. Could my heart beat any harder and remain caged within my body? Could my responding body contain so much light?
A jerk, like that of a tether drawn forward suddenly, pulls me into the beam of sunlight that squeezes through a tiny overhead opening. My head arches back. My chest swells and rises, as if I’m a mere marionette and someone has yanked my string upward. My mind is filled with music, sweet and gentle, as it ebbs and surges through the channels of my soul.
Home comes calling. I have been away longer than I can imagine right now. My mind registers the knowledge of a previous, though, different life elsewhere; a knowledge that explains so much that has confused me during this life.
The music and light fill me with the purpose I’ve been seeking. All is clear now. I have come this far to learn that only one act of mine is necessary for my life to have meaning for this world; to learn that with that act, I have completed my purpose here and can go home again.
Is there any better bliss than such sure knowledge?
By: Hazel Mitchell,
on 7/5/2012
By: Aline Pereira,
on 7/5/2012
New on the PaperTigers website, an extensive annotated reading list of picture books on the theme of water, as varied as water itself: A Ripple in the Pool: Multicultural Picture Books with Water at their Heart.
This list of multicultural children’s books that center on water in some way is by no means exhaustive, but it does offer rich pickings for anyone looking for variety. Indeed, as I was putting it together, I found that the only limit was time and there are bound to be what readers will consider glaring omissions.
Our blue planet provides us with endless experiences of water – and these are reflected in the variety of stories and non-fiction resources available. Magic and folklore mingle with contemporary adventures. Joyous books of children playing in the sea or in the rain flow alongside stories that recount water’s terrible power for destruction. Tales of too much water or too little jolt readers out of complacency and awaken awareness of the finite nature of water. These books together take readers on a journey of exploration and discovery around the world.
What a wonderful assortment of books they are. Many of them have been featured on the PaperTigers website over the last few months and I have so enjoyed putting this list together (not to mention all the book covers, above!). If you have any others that you would add to the list, do let us know…
By: Genevieve Petrillo,
on 7/5/2012
As you know, I’ve been haunted and harangued by the mechanical hamster, which I’m pretty sure has been trying to kill me. Well…
Look who killed the mechanical hamster. I guess I showed him. Now I can move on with my life.
Mom is moving on with her life, too. She looked at the rejected Highlights Fiction Contest story and did a little work on it first thing this morning. She will stare at her computer and talk to herself a lot about it. Soon it will be back in the mail heading someplace fun, and maybe will be Book #2.
Mom said, “I’m having a conflict with the conflict in this story.” and “I hate conflict.” and “I’m going to put in a fresh battery and put this thing back together.”
Uh-oh.
This week, Mom will work on two stories at the same time. Her Highlights reject and her new story for 12×12. Both need conflict, both need a stronger story arc, and one of them needs an ending!
Mom has her work cut out for her. So do I. I plan to get the battery out of the mailman, next. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to kill me.
By: Susan Thomsen,
on 7/5/2012
Some years back I spent a grand Fourth of July sitting in a long line for free Shakespeare in the Park in NYC. To get into the play, you had to line up early and wait until 6 or so when the Delacorte Theater handed out evening's allotment of tickets. I forgot what we saw, though I remember loving the play; maybe it was "Much Ado About Nothing" or "Twelfth Night." Several people in our group had brought along bags of fresh cherries, which arrive in plenitude in the city's Korean delis around the first of July. We snacked, shot the breeze, and let time drift by until the ticket guy appeared. I'll always associate the happy feeling of friends, Shakespeare, and cherries with the Fourth.
On the Fourth this year I finished reading the history play "Henry IV, Part 1," and also stumbled across Oxford's Emma Smith's free online lecture about Falstaff, the play's most interesting character. Smith even compares the "fat-kidneyed rascal" to Homer Simpson! Both are funny because they're countercultural, she says. The talk is part of the "Approaching Shakespeare" series of podcasts, which can be found here.
Emma Smith figures in Me and Shakespeare: Adventures with the Bard, by Herman Gollob, a Texas-born book editor (Doubleday, 2002). Seeing Ralph Fiennes in a Broadway production of "Hamlet" changed Gollob's life, and he began to study Shakepeare on his own. Part memoir and part guide, Gollob's book is full of good recommendations (particularly for books and films) for people who want to deepen their appreciation of the Bard. Gollob's adventures include a three-week summer course at Oxford taught by...Emma Smith.
A local company is performing an outdoor "Romeo and Juliet" soon, and that will probably be my next brush with Shakespeare. The Washington State cherries have hit the stores, too.
Links:
Shakespeare in the Park (now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary)
"Shakespeare After All: The Later Plays," with Marjorie Garber. A free video series from the Harvard Extension School. I haven't seen this yet, but it sounds great.
Shakepeare on the Sound. The Bard in the 'burbs.
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By: Jill,
on 7/5/2012
Hey ya'll. I'm having some technical difficulties and haven't been able to blog about the Quote of the Day or the Reading Challenge. I haven't forgotten those who've entered the contest. I'll get back to blogging as soon as I sort out these issues. Happy Reading!
P.S. I'm finally getting around to reading Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt, this year's Newbery Award Winner. Loving it so far!
P.P.S. What are you reading? 
By: Susanne Gervay,
on 7/5/2012
The whirlwind of the SCBWI Conference is winding up with:-
visits to publishers HarperCollins and Walker Books
sight seeing beautiful Sydney
dinner at Chiswick Woollahra celebrity chef’s restaurant with author Michael Parker
a visit to Pinerolo in the stunning Blue Mountains
lunching with WA illustrator Shannon Melville who is on a CAL fellowship at Pinerolo
a wander through Varuna, the writer’s retreat in Blue Mountains.
By: aquafortis,
on 7/5/2012
Our occasional co-blogger CitySmartGirl tipped us off to a fascinating NY Times article on reimagining the covers of some literary classics to make them more appealing to teen readers. The reception, as you might imagine, has been mixed. The... Read the rest of this post
By: Mel. O,
on 7/5/2012
The shrewd Slytherin House has won the very first Pottermore House Cup!
We will be congratulating the winner in further detail, here on the Pottermore Insider tomorrow but in the meantime, good luck to all and enjoy the ceremony!
By: meggin,
on 7/5/2012
It’s been a crazy week! Between the wildfires in the west, the storms in the northeast, and Tom and Katie, it’s starting to look like the Mayans might have been right about 2012.
But the Mayans didn’t count on brave firefighters, power company workers, and Katie’s crack legal team. So we shouldn’t pack our bags to run off with John Cusack quite yet.
I have to pack a bag, but only to leave for my two week long book tour (click on the link to see if I’ll be visiting somewhere near you, and if I am, stop by to see me!) for my new book, Size 12 and Ready to Rock which will be out on TUESDAY (YAY!!!). So I’m going to make this quick.
But look what was found in the vaults of the Cartwright Records building as they were remodeling to make way for the new Cartwright Televsion division:
Click here to view the embedded video.
I know! Heather Wells thought she’d never have to see that thing again, especially now that she’s quit the music business to work in residence life in a New York City college dorm and solve murders there.
But now, thanks to the Internet, this video is EVERYWHERE, mocking her!
Personally I think Heather is being too modest, and this video is hilarious (special thanks to the ultra amazing Brady Hall and his team, everyone at Avon/HarperMorrow, also my own home team of Laura, Louis, and HWSNBNITB, and especially Janey, whose idea it was). Please do me a favor and forward this video to everyone you know, before Heather takes out a cease-and-desist.
I get so many emails and Facebook messages and Tweets asking for more books about amateur sleuth Heather (way more than any other series, except possibly The Mediator), that I couldn’t resist signing up to write a few more books about her.
Heather isn’t just popular in the US. She’s popular all over the world. Here are a few of her international covers. I would like it noted that I’m not sure what is going on in most of these covers. Heather never loses weight. She is a victim of vanity sizing. Nor is she a prostitute. She solves crimes. But like Heather, I go with the flow:
As to WHY I think readers connect with Heather, I speculate a bit here on Huffington Post.
But who really knows? How can you not love someone who’s been beat up a little by life, but keeps getting back up again . . . and of course, who then catches murders?
Of course, tastes vary. I’ve got a friend who’s become a little anti-princess since she became a mom, and is trying to raise her daughter to be princess-free. I’ve blogged about my feelings on this subject before (I believe in princess power), so Barbara Chai at The Wall Street Journal asked my thoughts on the new Pixar-Di
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By: Dan Wickett,
on 7/5/2012
Another more collectible of Robert Coover's works, "The Convention" is a short story that can also be found within In Bed One Night and Other Brief
Encounters (Burnind Deck, 1983), it was pubilshed earlier in two versions in 1982 from Lord John Press.
There is the "standard" edition, with a red cover, that is signed and numbered out of 300 copies. Then there is a more limited edition, with a blue cover and a slipcase, that is signed and numbered out of 50 copies. Aside from the covers and the addition of an ISBN in the blue version,there are no differences.
The story, like many of those from that particular collection, is written with no punctuation and so might take a line or three to pick up on the rhythm of the story, which begins:
now Tom's in an elevator in a great hotel there's a convention the elevator is full of men ther'e's comradeship a hunger for women imporant things going on cigars good jokes on every floor men rush noisily from room to room dark suits clean chins Tom goes among them
On the page is has more the appearance of a prose poem (see last photo), but again, once you read that far, I believe you've picked up the rhythm of the piece and can pretty easily determine where the punctuation would be on the fly.
As the drinking continues through this short story, the pace gets a bit more rushed, some confusion sneaks in, and the name tags on those attending the convention veer to the jokey: E.Z. Laye, R.U. Pistoff, Kenny Nokkerup and it goes on. I believe that Coover has written a parody of the standard business convention, where the convention isn't the important aspect, but instead the drinking, the anonymous sex, and there are always issues with the elevators. The books themselves are approximately 2x3" in size, creating a bit of an issue when it comes to standard shelving.
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By: Sherry Soule,
on 7/5/2012
By: Matt Phelan,
on 7/5/2012
Posted on 7/5/2012
She lived in Weathersfield, Vermont.
Synopsis of "Child of the Silent Night":
"The story of Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind child to be taught to communicate with the outside world, some fifty years before Helen Keller."
Reader review:
"When I was a child this was one of my favorite books. The Helen Keller story always sickened me, the bratty kid left to terrorize her family. But I could relate to Laura. She was quiet and reflective and curious. Her story is much more gentle and Mrs. Hunter made it a pleasure to read. Mrs. Hunter is a fantastic historian and worked very hard to reconstruct Laura's life and make it accessible to children. The older I've become the more I appreciate Child of the Silent Night and the impression it had on my childhood."
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By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 7/5/2012
We’re proud to announce… AW YEAH COMICS! Starting in September, we’ll be publishing a monthly comic starring our mascots Action Cat and Adventure Bug! You’ll see a wide cast of crazy characters. The book will be all ages fun, available only at the store, or at conventions. We will do mail order. The writers and artists will be different each issue, featuring new & established creators! Wait until you see who we have lined up.
Awright! A new monthly comics from the Tiny Titans team.
Good luck to mom on her book! 
Reblogged this on Life Seeds.
Thanks for the reblog, Seeds. It was totally unexpected.
Sneaky little devil, you.
Claudsy this is great! You have to write more on this. I want to know what happens next, who the narrator is, where home is. I love fantasy. (And flashy fiction)
Ah, Veronica, you did my heart good this morning. Firstly, thank you for your enthusiastic response to this wee story. Secondly, I have no idea where the story goes next or even if there is more.
I’m certainly glad that you’d like to see more of it, though. That tells me that I did something right.
I agree with Veronica!! You did an excellent job of this!! I appreciate the shout out for FF it gets to be quite lonely over there…I’m so glad that my prompt could inspire this time. I think Short stories are a little harder to commit to for peeps. More time consuming to read and to write…maybe that’s why it is typically kind of slow around there. Just thinking out loud! So glad to read you, this looks beautiful on your blog!!
Hannah! It’s been a while since you’ve been by, but then I know the kinds of schedules we both keep. I’m terrible at keeping up with the doings of others.
I’m so glad that you liked my little effort on this one. When images are stark and vibrant, I tend to get immediate internal responses. That’s how this one is. I had the idea, the character, the ending before I blinked.
To be honest, I mentally overlook the need to stop by FF each day and see what’s on the docket. I’m not used to doing Flash Fiction each day yet. Not much of an excuse, I know, but if I put it on my editorial calendar, I might get to FF more frequently. Besides, I need the practice. I’m going to begin subbing new stories soon to print journals. Having immediate feedback is always such a great way to know if you’re hitting the mark.
Tell the gang I’m going to make it a point to do one piece a day to prompts there. It may only be a scene but I’ll have something. That’s how I’ll put it on my calendar, beginning Monday. I’m gone for the next two days, so…
Have a great weekend, my young friend. See you again soon.