June 2012
25 posts
A new home for Caroline Miller Write Away
Hello, friends!
I’m in the process of tweaking a new website.. but a new version of Caroline Miller Write Away is ready to go.
Beginning Monday, June 2, you’ll be able to see new content at a new address:
http://booksbycarolinemiller.com/blog/
Take a look! Tell me what you think.
Nothing further will appear on this site.
I’m focusing my Internet presence with a new look and...
June 28, 2012
IN MY HUMBLE OPINION
According to book promoters, now is the time for all good men and women to go to a book fair. The sun is shining, the weekend stretches ahead like a desert highway under a clear blue sky. Monday seems eons away. Yet as a writer, I’ve never participated in a book fair and never plan to.
Why? First, I refuse to buy my books so that I can turn around and sell them to the public....
June 27, 2012
THE GENETIC CODE – ANOTHER TALE OF MYSTERY
Shakespeare got it right, again. Our fate lies not in our stars but in ourselves.The new book by Jonathan Haidt, “The Righteous Mind,” discusses the latest findings in brain research. Genes, it appears, contribute to every aspect of our personalities and several genes make the difference between liberal and conservative thinkers. (“Why You Vote the Way...
June 26, 2012
SECRET ROOMS
The other day, I shared an article with a friend who is interested in lucid dreaming: the ability to take over our dreams and create adventures while we are asleep. According to recent research, people who manage lucid dreaming best are those who play video games. (“5 Mind-Bending Facts About Dreams” by Jennie Bryner, “Yahoo News,” 4/28/12)
I’ve managed lucid dreams a few times...
June 25, 2012
THINK LIBERAL
I came across three articles with advice that seemed to move in opposite directions, recently. Two were reprints on Facebook. The first was about the trend among college students to view education as a pragmatic means to an end: good paying jobs. The second article centered on the academics who bemoaned this drift. College, they argued, was intended to expose young minds to ideas...
June 22, 2012
SEVEN REASONS WHY I DON’T READ WRITERS’ DIGEST
A friend who reads my blog posts advised me recently that my scribblings would make a great memoir. She sent me an article from WritersDigest.com: “Seven Tips for Turning Your Blog into a Book.”
Frankly, I haven’t read “Writers’ Digest” in years because, at the time, much of the information struck me as vacuous — a little razzle-dazzle like the...
June 21, 2012
WHEN LUCK HAPPENS
A caring friend recently sent me a website that offered tutorials on how to market my books. The first in the series was how to raise one’s ranking for Amazon book sales. All of the tutorials came with a price tag, naturally.
I’ve seen this type of promotion too many times to sit quietly any longer. And frankly, focusing on one’s standing on Amazon is getting the cart before the...
June 20, 2012
HISTORY, THE GRAVEDIGGER’S FRIEND
There’s a new work out on Helen Keller, written by Rosie Sultan. It’s a fictional biography, “Helen in Love,” which speculates on the nature of real characters, Helen and Peter Fagan, the young man who served as her secretary for a time. Sultan admits nothing is known about the pair, except that they were close. At Helen’s behest, all correspondence between the...
June 19, 2012
ANOTHER ETHICAL DILEMMA
April 10 of this year I wrote a blog post about the ethics of piggybacking my work on to the sites of other authors. Some would call it marketing. Others would call it opportunism.
My virtual book tour has given me a new set of questions. Followers have begun to drop into my Twitter page. I didn’t know these people, but they’ve reached out to me, and so I click the box...
June 18, 2012
AN ORDINARY DAY THAT SURPRISES
I finished my work early yesterday and as it was a sunny afternoon, I walked to one of my neighborhood bookstores. The stroll was pleasant but long, so midway I stopped to rest on a stone bench near a curbing. A large, gray cat leapt up to join me and rubbed its fur against my arm, innocent of the knowledge that I am allergic to cat dander. I offered no protest and...
June 15, 2012
A WORD ABOUT BOOK BLOGGERS
Like the number of ice cream flavors that exist, book bloggers write for any number of reasons. Obviously, they enjoy reading but many are writers and use their blogs to develop an audience. They differ, too, in ages, ranging from retirees to frenzied mothers or students diverting themselves from their studies.
(courtesy: fanpop.com)
Book bloggers receive free...
June 14, 2012
A STITCH IN TIME
I thought, when I retired, I could throw away my alarm clock. But as I get older, time plays a larger and larger role in my life. When I was young, my birthday or Christmas seemed slow to come around. Now I’ve hardly blown out one set of candles on the cake when it’s time to blow out another.
The trouble with time is that it only flows in one direction – forward. Memory offers a...
Anonymous asked: How can you misread something so blatantly? Obviously I was writing about a select, upper-crust group of over-indulged children, not about the national record on childcare or a real preoccupation with children's welfare.
Anonymous asked: Any chance for that coffee meet this weekend? S. Stoner
ashleen68 asked: Hi! I jut saw your letter in the Reed 'zine, and thought I'd get in touch. I was at Wilson '64-'68 and then at Reed for a while .... I've since changed my name from Lin to Ashleen; now I live in Tucson and write non-fiction about Wicca and novels about witches. I look forward to following your blog.
Anonymous asked: "Punctuation behaving like traffic cops." Can't say, Caroline, why that phrasing stuck out at me, …I've more reflecting on why it did, but I like it. Was that your phrasing entirely? … Your facebook friend Darrell Barker
June 13, 2012
A LITTLE LUNCH TIME MATHEMATICS
I had lunch with a friend yesterday and during the course of our conversation, he observed that, “The earth has seven billion people on it and in 10 years the projection is for nine billion.” He is a man who works with numbers, so he uttered his observation with awe. As for me, the difference had little consequence, unless it represented a difference in the balance...
June 12, 2012
A LITTLE BIT OF GOOD AND EVIL
“…atheists are among the most disliked groups in the U.S.” according to Robert Putnam and David Campbell who compiled their studies into a new book, “American Grace. Polls show that the general attitude among churchgoers is that atheists commit most crimes. The general opinion of believers is that non-believers “don’t fear God… [and] do not have the same moral...
June 11, 2012
BEFORE THERE WERE COMPUTERS, THERE WERE LIBRARIANS
I mentioned a book on Friday in my blog that was published in 1872 by Samuel Butler. The novel was one a philosophy teacher often referred to during my undergraduate days. For some reason, I never forgot the weird plot about treating the sick as criminals. Friday, I wanted to reference the book but had forgotten the author’s name and had no idea...
June 8, 2012
A CALVINIST POINT OF VIEW
One of my favorite short stories is Edgar Allen Poe’s,“Masque of the Red Death.” The plot centers around a medieval prince and his courtiers who retreat to a walled castle, hoping to protect themselves from a plague that is raging across the land. “Magic Mountain” andCamus’ “The Plague” also center around images of decay and disease. In fact, countless writers of history...
June 7, 2012
A REASON TO HOPE
Louis H. Lapham published an article in “Harper’s” recently that cut through the current campaign rhetoric and brought a little common sense to all us hand-wringers. If we listen to political candidates or to the media, America is on its last legs. Our democracy is mortally wounded and lies on a gurney without hope of resuscitation. Much of the decay we attribute to...
June 6, 2012
ON PARTING
Yesterday my neighbor of almost twenty years moved away. She was a paranoid schizophrenic who often fought taking her medications. Sometimes, during a fearful spell, she’d call to ask me to sit with her. I watched, sometimes for hours, while she wept, or laughed or ranted about being spied upon by the FBI. Once I had to call for an ambulance because I was afraid she would hurt herself....
June 5, 2012
ANY STRANGER WILL HELP
Not long ago, I read one of those lost dog stories that ends happily. As a plot, the narrative wasn’t remarkable except that it was true. What gave the account its cachet was that it happened in New York, a city famous as the home of the lonely crowd. I don’t agree with that label, by the way. My experience in New York was one of meeting many helpful people. Still, the myth...
June 4, 2012
CABBAGES THAT WANNA BE ROSES
Technology seems to be advancing ahead of the words necessary to describe the resulting changes. One area has kept pace, however: the publishing industry.
Laser printing has made publishing highly affordable. Self-publishing houses are thriving and thousands of books are being written that in the past wouldn’t have found a publisher. But these companies don’t call...
June 1, 2012
THE ART OF IMPERFECTION
I sat down with my grilled cheese sandwich yesterday to read the winning essay from a women’s magazine contest. The woman wrote about her husband’s troubled return from Iraq. Certainly, her subject touched countless numbers of families and the opening paragraph was gripping. I expected to be with the story, heart and soul, to the last line. But I wasn’t. A paragraph later,...
May 2012
25 posts
May 31, 2012
TECHNOLOGY TO DREAD
“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Recovering from Identity Theft” by attorney Mari Frank is a far, far greater horror story than Mary Shelly’s “Frankenstein.” Given today’s technology crooks can invade your private records as easily as sneezing. Did you know there’s research software that can deduce your social security number with as little information as your birth date and...
May 30, 2012
BUILD A BETTER MOUSE TRAP
If I had another life, it might be fun to run a virtual book tour company, putting writers and readers together. The one I used to advertise my novel, “Gothic Spring,” could certainly use come a little competition. Here’s how I would start:
To begin with, an organizer needs to vet his bloggers. They should have a significant number of followers, have been bloggers for...
May 29 2012
VIRTUAL TOURS COST REAL MONEY
To help fellow writers decide on the efficacy of virtual books tours, I’ll share my recent experience. First, I considered three packagers and chose the one with the most polished presentation. Second, I contacted two of their previous clients. Both admitted the tours did little to increase book sales. Still, I decided to go forward. I wrote a check to the company in...
May 25, 2012
A BLOGGER’S DOUBTS
A few friends, both virtual and real, have begun to write blogs recently. I’d like to imagine I inspired them, but I know the passion to communicate is part of the human DNA. The number of bloggers in the world is enough to make me shudder. I joined one site where the fiction writers section numbered nearly 3,000. Other sections were in included — biography, non-fiction...
May 24, 2012
YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO WATER BUT…
I’m forgoing my usual introspective thoughts today to offer a reminder. “Marie Eau-Claire” (Pts. 1 & 2) — currently free and available on line at http://TheColoredLens.com — will soon disappear into the ether.
I send this reminder because I can think of no greater way to thank my friends, virtual and real, for being my friends than by putting a...
May 23, 2012
VIRTUAL WARS (continued from Tuesday, May 22, 2012)
Background
Many of us know that the Internet began as an American project after WWII when our government needed a system that would allow message authentication between various parts of the military. Vint Cerf and his team together with the help of Robert Kahn, a computer scientist, put together what’s called a domain – a long list of code with...
May 22, 2012
THE GREATEST WAR FACING US MAY BE THE VIRTUAL ONE
Yesterday I talked about the power of one to effect change in the world. It may have sounded a little pie-in-the-sky but there is more method than madness in my proposal. Today, I’m going to refer to the importance of one to affect upcoming changes in the Internet. A discussion of the internet may not, strictly speaking, be about literature...
May 21, 2012
PROPOSAL FOR A QUIET REVOLUTION
So much of what we hear on the news or read in the paper is about a world in chaos. There’s a reason for this, of course. It’s called “marketing.”
Most living creatures are designed to respond to fear because survival may depend upon it. But we humans make too great a habit of scaring each other and ourselves. The media are masters of manipulation. “If it bleeds...
May 18, 2012
THE ART OF VERBAL GYMNASTICS
I admit, I half admire what I am about to hold up for sport. The ability to play with language, to stretch it like taffy into a gossamer thread, is a game worthy of the Olympics for there is always the real danger the thread will break and like London Bridge come falling down. James Wolcott has shown himself to be a master of the game, using punctuation as a...
May 17, 2012
HUMOR IS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
A friend recently sent me a short story he’d written which is about to appear in the literary magazine, “Drash.” The publicationfocuses on Jewish and/or Pacific Northwest themed material. His tale is about a boy who uses ventriloquism to convince his Jewish parents that the live fish in their bathtub can talk. Why there’s a fish in the bathtub and how the...
May 16, 21012
BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES
A friend sent me an article from the local newspaper, which speculated that anger was the proper fuel for art. To support his theory, the writer, David Stabler gave three examples of artists famous for their flashes of visionary fire though it alienated those around them: Adrienne Rich, a poet, Steve Jobs, the technology genius and Mark Rothko, the...
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Persistence pays off! I’ve just received a glowing notice from the online Midwest Book Review for Gothic Spring.
I couldn’t be more tickled about this. Truly, the Midwest Book Review is the gold standard for authors trying to reach an audience.
”Those with the knowledge that no one else has always rise a bit of suspicion. “Gothic Spring” follows...
May 15, 2012
OUT OF THE FIRE AND INTO CIVILIZATION
I might be a fool, but I’ve always sided with John Locke rather than Thomas Hobbes on the question of whether man is basically good or bad. I believe human nature is good because we need each other to survive and that necessitates cooperation and compromise. Whether that understanding comes ultimately from experience or is divinely inspired, I don’t know...
May 15, 2012
OUT OF THE FIRE AND INTO CIVILIZATION
I might be a fool, but I’ve always sided with John Locke rather than Thomas Hobbes on the question of whether man is basically good or bad. I believe human nature is good because we need each other to survive and that necessitates cooperation and compromise. Whether that understanding comes ultimately from experience or is divinely inspired, I don’t know but...
May 14, 2012
INTO THE VIRTUAL ARENA…
Last week I received a positive review of my novel “Gothic Spring” and forwarded it to my publisher, expecting to be congratulated. Instead, I received a cautious reply, reminding me that not all reviews will be so glowing. So much depends upon a reviewer’s personal likes and dislikes. The remark I suppose, was intended as a kindly reminder because today marks the...
May 11, 2012
WHEN WORDS FAIL
Samuel Beckett, the author of “Waiting for Godot,” felt that language was too confining to express thought:
“It is to be hoped the time will come, thank God, in some circles it already has, when language is best used when it is most efficiently abused… To drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping...
Wonderful review
Elizabeth Silver just published a strong, knowing review of Gothic Spring:
A maiden aunt, a new Vicar with a book and secrets, and a curious, precocious young lady. Gothic Spring will grab you from page one….the setting, the time period, the charming, small town, and the storyline are very alluring. The storyline was focused on Victorine and her...
May 10, 2012
MAURICE SENDAK — THANK YOU
On Tuesday, Maurice Sendak died from a stroke at the age of 83. I wrote a blog about him earlier after reading an article that reported he was unhappy and found life meaningless. Understandably, he was depressed, having lost his partner of many years, but that had been a while earlier and still he was unable to recover. Life for him had become flat and dull. Well,...
May 9, 2012
WHILE ROME BURNED
I almost didn’t read the article. There’s too much violence in the world already. I didn’t want to know details. But the title caught my eye: “The Warrior Class: A golden age for the freelance soldier.” Freelance solider? I’d heard the words mercenary, privateer and even soldier of fortune before. But “freelance soldier,” smacked too much as a term of business like freelance...
May 8, 2012
FLAME OR FIZZLE?
If a popularity poll were taken among my friends, real and virtual, Charles Koch, of the infamous Koch brothers, would fall to the bottom of the list. That’s why an article about his daughter, Elizabeth Koch, caught my eye. In it, she describes herself as an optimist and so, with her father’s money, she’s opened a new publishing house called, Black Balloon. Her plan is to pioneer...
May 7, 2012
BRAVE NEW WORLD… FOR SOME OLD FASHIONED PUBLISHERS
A friend recently recommended a publisher she thought might be interested in my upcoming novel, “Trompe l’Oeil.” I’ve already signed a contract but out of curiosity, I reviewed the guidelines. The first sentence produced a belly laugh:
“Every proposal that reaches us is reviewed by at least one member of the editorial staff.”
I...
May 4, 2012
THE SECRET ROOM OF INVENTION
I’m about to launch a virtual tour for my book, “Gothic Spring.” I’m not exactly sure what a virtual tour is except book reviewers ask questions of an author and record the response on their blog site. It’s a chance to let readers know the book is in print and to peak their interest. The tour will take place between May 14 – 25 and in preparation, I’m sitting before...
May 3, 2012
WHEN I GROW TOO OLD TO DREAM I’LL STILL HAVE BILL TO REMEMBER
The April edition of the “AARP Bulletin” featured the journalist Bill Moyers. He and I are contemporaries but it always seems to me that I’ve been following his career since I was in diapers. He’s a fixture in the landscape of America. When he retired a year ago from his weekly television show, “Bill Moyers Journal,” I felt abandoned,...
May 2, 2012
ONCE UPON A TIME
The last time I visited my mother, I spent a lot of time searching for her glasses. She’s legally blind, so the glasses don’t provide much benefit; but she was upset when she couldn’t find them. I rummaged in the obvious places then moved on to her microwave. Nothing there. Finally, I looked under her bed where she stashes two boxes of memorabilia. Pawing through one of them, I...
May 1, 2012
FINDING THE RIGHT WORD
Schadenfreude is a German word that means: to take joy from another’s adversity. Unlike jealousy which is a dark emotion reserved for those who make us feel small, shadenfreude speaks to the delight we feel when justice falls on the mighty who are corrupt or arrogant. Two examples would be Bernie Madoff, the stock swindler, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the...
