Red Room Where the Writers Are

Review of America Libre, by Raul Ramos...

America Libre By Raul Ramos y Sanchez Grand Central Publishing ISBN: 978-0446507752 Copyright August 2009 General Fiction Dramatic and thought-provoking, America Libre is an ambitious novel. The story is set in Los Angeles in the near future and begins with our protagonist, ex-army soldier Manolo Suarez, as he is desperately trying to find a job to support his wife and children. Early each ...

Little known story of Claudette Colvin featured...

The New York Times had a great story today about Claudette Colvin, a forgotten civil rights pioneer. Seem my earlier post for a great children's book about her by Phillip Hoose that just won the National Book Award. I don't mention the Colvin story in my book, Shadows of Youth, but she is part of the young "civil rights generation" that I show led the way forward in the fifties and ...

For younger readers a great book about...

For younger readers I highly recommend Philip Hoose's Twice Toward Justice, which recounts the story of Claudette Colvin, a Montgomery Alabama teen whose bus protest anticipated Rosa Parks' more famous attempt by several months.  The book can be found on Amazon here:http://www.amazon.com/Claudette-Colvin-Twice-Toward-Justice/dp/0374313229 

For younger readers a great book about...

For younger readers I highly recommend Philip Hoose's Twice Toward Justice, which recounts the story of Claudette Colvin, a Montgomery Alabama teen whose bus protest anticipated Rosa Parks' more famous attempt by several months.  The book can be found on Amazon here:http://www.amazon.com/Claudette-Colvin-Twice-Toward-Justice/dp/0374313229 

Giving thanks.

For Americans all over the world today is Thanksgiving, now I could be my usual snarky self and make some comments about some of the less wholesome aspects of the nature of this holiday, but I will be good because I do want to touch upon the basis, which is giving thanks. I often wish to participate in these group blogs, but wind up missing the deadline by a wide margin as life intrudes as it ...

Writers Friendship...

I'm gearing up again as editor of Writers Friendship. For more, please see  "on the nature of literary friendship." The series goes back many years and is now appearing online in a new format. General introduction to the series follows. Comments welcome! ---   Introduction “How about a short piece--an essay, a story, a couple anecdotes--on writers’ friendships? ” I asked a ...

Gratitude Blog

Since childhood, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. The main reason is that it’s not a religious holiday, which has a tendency to separate cultures and religions.  Thanksgiving, on the other hand, is a holiday that unites people and brings joy. It is a day that reminds us to give thanks for all the good in our lives. Being born into a family who survived the horrors of World ...

The Daily Sam: Counting Our Blessings

On the day before Thanksgiving we were robbed. During the night thieves gained access to our home and stole Kathi’s Stratocaster guitar, my keyboard, some amps and other musical equipment, our car, and Kathi’s son and my stepson Tony’s car, which was parked in front of our house. It was a disaster and we were all miserable. Some of what was stolen can’t be replaced. Our home was violated, ...

Booked for the Holidays

"I don't read books without pictures. Can we bring porn?"Can I bring a book that I wrote?Can I bring a used book I found at Starbucks?Can we bring husbands? Yes to all of the above real-life questions asked in anticipation of my holiday book swap party.If you are local and are reading this, you are probably already on the guest list--but if you are not and, even after reading this, ...

We Give Thanks

We give thanks for those who came before We give thanks for those yet to come  for those who have served in war and those who have served to make peace. We give thanks to the farmers the teachers  the iron workers the skydivers those in prison who have not abandoned hope those who bring us our daily newsthose who bring us into this world naked and bloody and those who follow us out. We ...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving, also known to many as "Turkey Day." In my Ioway-Otoe tribal language, "turkey" is either "wayin'xanje" (big-bird) or "tagrogro" (an onomatopoeic word which sounds much like the gobble of a turkey).

It is becoming the norm for some Native Americans to cast Thanksgiving Day, along with Columbus Day, as a day of sorrow, mourning, and regret. I have good family memories of ...

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’S SPEECH ON THE...

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH’S SPEECH   ON THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF OF HIS ADMINISTRATION   My fellow Americans, I speak to you today in a way I have never spoken to you before. You have heard my views from the perspective of a President’s son; the owner of the Texas Rangers; the Governor of Texas; a Presidential candidate; and the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. Always, my words ...

The Sound Comes and Goes

The music is always real.

Brain Research and Showing vs. Telling

  In nearly every creative writing class, the maxim is given: Show, don't tell. While telling is appropriate (a subject for another time), new brain research adds punch to the argument there is power in showing. A recent study found when a reader falls into the narrative dream of a story, the reader creates vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in the ...

BYE BYE BUY BOOKS?

    Books Are Bad for You by Michael Wolff  A few years ago, writing about the book business and how dumbed down and craven books had become—and pathetic, designed only to sell and then not selling—I wrote the line “books suck,” subjecting me to much middlebrow opprobrium. I’d like to revise that line: Books are evil.They’re pernicious. They represent themselves as being one ...

(In)Gratitude

When I was a kid, Thanksgiving meant tracing your spread-out fingers on construction paper to make a colorful turkey cut-out, and listening to prepackaged accounts of harmony among the early European settlers and the Native Americans who took pity on them, teaching them to grow corn, hunt deer and catch fish. At home, we cooked a turkey to cottony dryness, moistening the meat with slices from a ...

How Sun Country Airlines Saved Thanksgiving

So often we only read about the trials and tribulations of air travel at this time of year, and I want to share with you a letter I've written to Sun Country Airlines with some cheery news this Thanksgiving. Dear Sun Country Airlines, It has been many years since my husband and I last flew your airline.  We left Minnesota nearly a decade ago, but this year we decided to spend the ...

Real and Virtual Thanks

The thing about the virtual world is that it's easy to be happy, grateful, and wise.  Yes, we can sit here and type away, saying all sorts of altruistic and wonderful things.  the flip side is true, too--we can be horrifying and rude, and then log off.But mostly, when I read Facebook or Twitter, people are pretty much sanguine, thoughtful, brilliant, and full of hope and love.It's in the real ...

Give Thanks Today That You’re Not a...

 Most people view Thanksgiving Day as a family holiday - a time for families to be together. Yet infidelity has torn many families apart.    Anyone who is NOT a victim of infidelity has at least 13 reasons to give thanks.Faithful Mates are in Short Supply  Current infidelity statistics indicate that approximately 3 out of 4 men are cheating on their mates.Female infidelity has increased ...

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.  No matter where you are in the world, I hope you're happy, healthy, your belly is pleasantly full, and you're with people you love. 

The pains of thanksgiving

First of all, I must wish all our US friends and contacts a very happy Thanksgiving Day - hope it's all going swimmingly for you. Here at the other side of the water, however, I fear I have been overtaken by a determined wave of period pain (garrrgggghhh ....) so my day of pootling about and novel-writing has turned into a day of rolling around on the bed clutching a hot water bottle, groaning ...

Morbid blog tour: Leilah Wendell...

Leilah Wendell is America’s best-known necrophile and the world’s foremost researcher of personifications of and encounters with Death. Author of fourteen books, she was also proprietor of The Westgate Museum in New Orleans, the only gallery devoted exclusively to “Necromantic Art and Literature.”Leilah’s support and encouragement was crucial to Morbid Curiosity. Leilah reviewed ...

Residual residents

The frosted window had what looked like crushed ice stuck on it. I did not reach out to touch it. Had I tried, it would not brush roughly against my skin. It was encased inside another glass. This was at the top floor of Leopold Café. A friend was visiting and I decided to show ‘my Mumbai’ in the limited time we had. He was not new to the city, so my version would just be one more. We ...

gratitude blog (since you asked . ....

26 Nov. 2009 ( a poemette)  Glorious morning   Rising into day chilliness, needed frost  After endless heat   Today's gift, this  Island, insert of coolness  Totally soothing, needed  Unblocked my hurt brain, my paralyzed mind (& traumatized body) into true thankfulness for this   Day of peace, stillness, silliness, three invitations to dinner, friendship & ...

An Appeal to make peel

Less than a month to Christmas and although I've missed stirring Sunday it isn't too late to begin some Christmas baking. I may let the cake slide this year but I will be making some festive breads and cakes from other countries. Read more

Thanksgiving for Cheryl's Road to Recovery

      While you are in Thanksgiving mode, here's a brilliant piece of news! Cheryl Snell's sister Janet says:"Thank you for all your prayers and kindness. Cheryl is stable and making small improvements, I'm glad to report!"Please continue to will her recovery and keep up those prayers and healing thoughts. We hope to see her back among us in the not too ...

Scene of the Crime

I went back to the spot where I killed my first man yesterday. I killed him four years ago. I return every few months. Each time I arrive, it’s so peaceful I can’t believe anyone really died. But, even though I’m a writer of crime fiction, someone really did. I walked across a dirt lot, puddled with the afternoon rain, past the empty reservoir at the head of the valley. Below me the ...

turkey dinner

In the clouded half-light of dawn, I thread my way along the ledges of the canyonito.  Just past those gnarly rocks is a little spring: only a seep in the summer but after the rains of the past week a trickle of water as cool and clear as an April morning is dribbling across the pebbles that fan out at the mouth where this flow joins the main creek.  I follow the trickle the ten or twelve ...

Gratitude

In honor of today's blog topic, "Gratitude," I will have to unreservedly say that I am grateful to live in America. With all the anti-American sentiment spinning around the globe these days, I am grateful to live in a country that, among other things, honors the entrepreneurial spirit, freedom of speech, and basic human rights. Happy Thanksgiving to all the Red Room authors that have ...

The Father Who Made Me Normal

Giving thanks to the father who made me "normal."   My friend blew out the candles on her birthday cake. She was about to blow the ninth, the good luck one for next year, when someone tapped my shoulder and said that my mother was outside. I wanted to see the last candle blown out, because not blowing the good-luck one was bad luck, but I rushed out. My mother must have found a ride ...