My favorite literary leading men

Okay, I meant to put this up before / around Valentine's Day, but it's still a fun post...so I wanted to go ahead with it anyway.

This is not an exhaustive list by any means, and I have kind of drawn a lot from the "classical" literary school, but I would love to hear your additions. But for the sake of simplicity, let's just make it a countdown, shall we?

8) Robin Hood.
Sense of social justice? Check. Giving to poor? Check. Looks good in tights? Check.

7) Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)
Obviously in desperate need of therapy, but who cares? There's something about a brooding man who needs to be helped. Maybe I'm in the one in desperate need of therapy.

6) Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
Forget Obama. Forget Romney. Forget Ron Paul. Atticus Finch is the guy we need in the White House.

5) Sydney Carton. (A Tale of Two Cities)
A far better thing that he does than has been done before? Self-sacrifice, unrequited love, it's all there.

4) Cyrnao (Cyrano de Bergerac)
Confession: the first time I read this (in high school) I cried. If you can write that like, I don't care about the nose!

3) Rhett Butler (Gone with the Wind)
I challenge you to find a more lovable rake.

2) Jay Gatsby (The Great Gatsby)
The tortured hero who has everything and nothing. And it didn't hurt that he was played by Robert Redford in the move version.

1) Mr. Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
Okay, you saw that one coming, didn't you?
I have to include this fan fic cartoon from "Hark! A Vagrant" --a delightful collection of cartoons by Kate Beaton. Check out her website here.

Rainy Days are Great for Writing

There's a saying that if you don't like the weather in North Carolina, don't worry, it will change in five minutes. I confess I've had my heating and air conditioning on in the same day. That's one reason that my allergies are driving me crazy, and everyone I know has/ has had/ just gotten over / is fighting off a cold.

Yesterday I didn't need a jacket. Today it is  a dreary, cold, rainy day.
And I love it.

I love writing on rainy days. I love looking out my home office window on to the golf course (it's all very Faulkner-esque) . I love the sound of rain. I love being in lounge pants all day. I love being in my fuzzy bathrobe. I love looking out at the bright holy bush, and how its red berries contrast to the gray sky. I enjoy watching the unusually fat squirrel hop along my back porch, probably examining the cockpit of my kayak and wondering if he could build a nest in there. I'm smelling the remnants of a winter berry scented candle, and something about this symphony of senses, coupled with a hot cup of coffee and glass of orange juice (vitamin C to thwart said cold season), there's something about it that just begs: "Tell me a story."

"Tell me a story."

I LOVE my readers! Valentine's Giveaway

To THANK all my readers for their support---these Kindle titles will be FREE during Valentine's Day (and the day before)--13th and 14th.

Remember you do NOT have to have a Kindle to read these. You can download a FREE Kindle app through Amazon to use on your computer, phone, etc.

 

Details: The books given away for FREE are: "Leaving the Comfort Cafe," "Ten Thousand New Year's Eves and the short "The Shangri-La Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You."

Book Preview from Newsweek

The Daily Beast gives this preview called "12 Titles for 2012."

Just as an FYI to some of the more voracious readers out there.

(Personally, while I love to read, I'm a slow reader. I know, I know,--how can you be a slow reader if you're a writer? Maybe it's a touch of ADHD, but when I get into a passage, it's too easy to forget what came before it. And for the record, I'm also a horrible Scrabble player. While my old journalism school buddy, K, is coming up with words like "loquacious" and "ineptitude," I 'm hitting the boards with words like "cat," "it" and "butts.")

Here's the link:
Book Preview: 12 for 2012

Ten Thousand New Year's Eves will be FREE this Sunday

Because Amazon has this way cool KDP promotional tool, my novel, Ten Thousand New Year's Eves, will be FREE this Sunday, January 22.

You can find out more about the novel by clicking on the yellow book cover on the left.

The wonder of black and white photography

I love black and white portraits.
I've been tempted to go back into my files and pull up some old photos I did way back when in Journalism School.

SIDEBAR:  Believe it or not, my concentration was in photojournalism, not in writing. I had already completed two writing internships, and figured it was time to try something new. It was an unbelievable amount of work, but I've never regretted the decision....even if black and white darkroom skills are become obsolete for all but the most artsy endeavors, it is still a useful skill to have. Kind of like researching in the old card catalogues in the library and pulling up microfilm. A pain? Sure. Do I love Google? If Google were a man, I 'd marry it. But still, "grunt" research work is always a good skill to have. Always.

Anyway, I came across these great portraits on Time magazine. I love the black and white work, and I love the portraits. There's a gritty, unrehearsed realness to black and white photography.

My favorite portraits in the works are those of George Clooney and Tilda Swinton. (or is it Swanton?)
Anyway, enjoy!

Coming of Age in America: Portraits

Time's Best Portraits of the Past Year

The first digital camera I ever saw...

I am definitely dating myself by doing this---but the first digital camera I ever saw was when I was in journalism school in the early 90s. It was a bulky contraption that actually took a 3.5 floppy disk (remember those? We were so fascinated with them because they were "hard" and so much smaller than those even older TRULY floppy disks that were like a small 45 rpm record...but I digress...)

The camera actually recorded the image on the disk. Then you could eject the disk in a similar way to the Macs at that time.

And it cost roughly $3,000 to $5,000.

Our professor said that newspapers everywhere would be turning toward digital cameras. That soon film would be obsolete. That we would no longer have to work in the black-and-white darkroom, our hands covered in chemicals (that I later wonder did God-only-knows-what to us), struggling to get the perfect contrast and "fix" the photo print before deadline.

And doing color in a darkroom? Forget that. Temperature of chemicals could easily cause the picture to tint red or yellow, and while spending too much time in a poorly ventilated darkroom is never a good idea (Disclaimer: our darkroom was well-ventilated at the journalism school, but one at an internship I had one summer was NOT), the worst that could happen for black and white development was maybe a bit of nausea, a feeling like you'd been on a bad carousel. But chemicals in color development were more corrosive.  Burning stuff. That's why the drug stores had a machine that regulated all the developing chemicals' temperature, etc.

Digital cameras? I remember thinking, that'll never happen. Like a newspaper (or even myself, for that matter) is ever going to pay $5k for a camera. Come on.

I think my last digital camera cost $40.

Anyway, this is a cool article that talks about the demise of film, the need for innovation, and the first huge, honking digital camera ever invented...and it also asks the question: can we be victims of our own innovation?
The First Digital Camera