Book of Mercy Finalist in Midwest Book Awards

 Book of Mercy, Censorship, Libraries, Parenting, Publishing Industry, Writing  5 Responses »
May 142012
 

Book of Mercy was a finalist in the 22nd Annual Midwest Book Awards, which were announced on May 9 in Bloomington, MN.

Is this a big deal?

I interviewed Antigone Brown, the main character in Book of Mercy, about her view of this momentous event. She is a mother-to-be who stands up to the book banners in her small North Carolina town, even though she can’t read.

Me: So Antigone how are you feeling about this nomination?

Antigone: They like me. They REALLY like me.

Me: Yeah, it was cool to be nominated. Publishers from 12 Midwestern states submitted 362 entries in 50 categories in this year’s competition.

Antigone: That many? Well, it’s validation. [Lowers voice.] After all, this was an indie (self-published) book.

Me: Why do you need validation?

Antigone: In the fiction world, as a female lead character, everybody is comparing you to either Scarlet O’Hara or Katniss Everdeen.

Me: Really? I had no idea.

Antigone: Yes. I only take on a group of highly influential women removing “undesirable” books from the school library . . .

Me: And don’t forget the pie thrower.

Antigone: How could I? I’m still washing that banana cream out of my clothes. But Scarlet in Gone with the Wind faced down the Union Army, and Katniss in The Hunger Games outmaneuvered mutant killer wasps. Tough competition.

Me: Personally, I hate contests.

Antigone: I’m with you. But we live in a world consumed by contests, from sports to American Idol and the Academy Awards.

Me: Still, I’m sorry I didn’t pit you against hordes of fighting men or an evil empire.

Antigone: Irene (the leader of the censors) was evil enough.

Me: Cheer up. You have a secret library. I doubt Scarlet ever read a book, and Katniss was too busy trying to feed her family.

Antigone: Yes. Bookhenge. Nice name for a library, by the way. But back to all these contests. I’m beginning to wonder what my child will be compared to.

Me: You’re always worrying about that baby.

Antigone: Of course. What’s a parent to do?

Me: You have many agonizing years ahead of you. There will be school recitals and pageants and spelling bees.

Antigone [shudders]: Kids called me a loser because I had trouble reading. I don’t want that for my child. I don’t see why we have to make comparisons at all.

Me: Because if you lose, it is supposed to make you try harder the next time.

Antigone: You mean, in the next book, you’ll try to write a better me?

Me: There is no better you. I will write a different you.

Antigone: Make her skinnier. She’ll like that.

The Midwest Book Awards are sponsored by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association.

________________

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to this blog, make a comment, or check out Book of Mercy. It would make Antigone happy, but please don’t compare her to Scarlet or Katniss. She gets touchy about those folks.

 Posted by at 4:55 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

Why Not Start Your Own Library?

 Book of Mercy, Books, Libraries, Maud's House, Reading  2 Responses »
Apr 272012
 

The goal is to build more libraries than Andrew Carnegie. That’s 2,510. They don’t have to be big or built of marble or be guarded by massive stone lions. They just have to have books and people who want to read them.

The Little Free Library movement started in 2010 in Hudson, Wisconsin, with a tiny library that resembled a one-room schoolhouse. It could hold about 20 books and was built in memory of teacher and book lover June A. Bol by her son, Todd Bol. The concept was simple: take a book; leave a book. Grow literacy like a flower garden in your own front yard. Place a bench by your library so on a summer evening a neighbor and his grandchild can stop by, grab a book, and sit down right then and there and read it.

This simple idea took off and now there are Little Free Libraries in more than 40 states and 20 countries. You can get plans for building your own little library at the Little Free Library website and see a diverse collection of tiny bibliothéques. They are works of art and as individual as they come.

No Library Cards, No Fines

I love the idea of sharing books with abandon, of no one keeping records or collecting fines. I search for libraries wherever I go, and I delight when I find them in unsuspecting corners, like an old general store in Vermont or a historic lodge in Montana. Someone cared enough about the summer readers or vacationing hikers to pull together an often well-worn collection.

Back when Rubbertoes, my partner, and I were geocacheing every weekend, we actually started our own lending library in a cache by a Minnesota lake. We called it Maud’s House after my first book and stocked it with copies of said book carefully protected in waterproof bags. Geocacheing operates on the same principle as the Little Free Library: take something and leave something. With GPS in hand, our visitors took a book, enjoyed a pleasant hike around a lovely lake, and left behind anything from Mardi Gras beads to a McDonald’s toy. It was a fair trade. Some of them read the book and brought it back for the next reader, while others maybe passed it on, leaving it in some other cache so it could travel the world (like some kind of ceramic gnome).

In my novel Book of Mercy, my protagonist Antigone Brown created her own library, Bookhenge, in response to the censorship in her community:

While the rest of Mercy chained holiday wreaths to their doors and cursed contrary Christmas tree lights, Bookhenge exploded in a spirit of giving. No one kept track of the books; no one supervised what someone else read; no one mutilated the books they didn’t like or agree with; no one plucked the words they found distasteful from the pages with razor blades. There was something pristine about the library Antigone built, something that shone like a beacon that child after child followed to a new land.

Whether you create your library to foil the censors or just to see the smiles on the faces of the kids in your neighborhood, don’t ever think you are doing a small thing. If you can instill one other person with a love for reading, and that person impacts another person, you could start an avalanche. And we need one. According to Statistic Brain, 42% of college students will never read another book after they graduate.

That’s nearly half the population missing out on love and adventure and zombies. Yes, I’ll take readers who love zombies over no readers at all. So let’s give Andrew a run for his money. Build a library.

___________________

Do you have a Little Free Library? Tell us about it. Where have you found libraries in odd places?

If you enjoyed this post, you might like my other writing: Maud’s House, about what happens when a town loses its art; and Book of Mercy, a funny novel about a serious issue: censorship. 

 Posted by at 12:18 pm  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Don’t Tangle with Tango

 Censorship, Family, Love, Nature, Parenting  No Responses »
Mar 262012
 

A little penguin named Tango and a banned book have created an uproar in Rochester, MN.

Rochester is the home of the Mayo Clinic, the facility patients come to from all over the world to get answers to tough medical questions. Here is where you hope someone will bring information into the light, not hide it. And yet in a recent move, Rochester School Superintendent Michael Muñoz and two school board members decided to do just that: They went against school policy and pulled a book from the shelves of Gibbs Elementary School after a parent complained. The book was And Tango Makes Three, a tale of two male penguins that hatch and raise a baby chick together.

This is not Tango‘s first trip to the rodeo. It has been on the American Library Association’s banned books list since it came out in 2005, usually in the number one spot. Critics contend that it endorses a homosexual lifestyle. As the book says, “She [Tango] was the very first penguin to have two daddies.”

This is a true story. Authors Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell could have included Tango’s much-publicized life in a nonfiction book about animals. Instead, they chose to write a children’s book about a most unusual penguin family.

Tango’s real family lives in the Central Park Zoo in New York. Roy and Silo are a pair of boy chinstrap penguins who prefer each other’s company to that of the girl penguins. The zookeeper noticed how Roy and Silo bowed and sang to each other, made a nice nest, and even rolled an egg-shaped rock into the nest, sitting on it for hours in the hopes of  “hatching” it.

Roy and Silo wanted a family.

When another penguin couple at the zoo produced two fertile eggs, the zookeeper gave one of them to Roy and Silo. After all, twins take work, and the odds of having two fertile penguin eggs raised to adulthood by one couple are slim. Roy and Silo knew “just what to do,” the zookeeper said. They kept the egg warm, turning it over and over so all sides would benefit, until their daughter Tango arrived. Tango’s fathers fed her, sang to her, and snuggled her warm at night. They made sure she knew she was wanted.

If we allow books like Tango to be banned because they make one person uncomfortable, we are giving in to tyranny. We are permitting someone else to control where we get our ideas, and Tango presents some brilliant ones about loving parenting and creating strong families (no matter what their makeup). It has received several national awards for good reason.

I admit I grow impatient with parents who claim censorship is needed to protect our children. I say the solution to this is simple: you control your child’s reading list, and I’ll control mine. Censorship is for cowards. If you want to provide gutsy and meaningful parenting, read Tango with your children and talk about why you do or don’t agree with the worldview it presents.

In Rochester, Tango‘s story was indeed tangled. It was first challenged in the fall of 2011. According to school district policy, it was sent for review to the district’s Committee for Reconsideration of Resources, which voted on November 15 to keep the book in its media collection. When the parent appealed again, Superintendent Muñoz and cohorts decided to ignore that decision and ban the book anyway. On March 19, after a packed school board meeting, Muñoz apologized and said the book would be returned to the library. The next step, if the parent wants to continue, would be to appeal to the entire school board during a public hearing.

I hope Tango is safe and sound in Rochester. In the recent standing-room-only meeting where not one person spoke against the book, Mayor Ardell Brede held a sign proclaiming Rochester as an “inclusive community.”

Like poet Carl Sandburg, I believe “inclusive” to be one of my favorite words. It doesn’t leave much room for hiding; it drags censorship out of the dark where the real dance begins in a free society.  

___________

For another look at censorship and parenting, check out Book of Mercy.

To hear a reading of And Tango Makes Three:
 

 

 Posted by at 8:58 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

I Have Been Outsourced to a Computer?

 Creativity, Writing  4 Responses »
Feb 212012
 

This post was crafted by a human being while eating chocolate chips straight from the bag and watching the snow fall. Not all stories have the luxury to be created in such a ridiculously unscientific manner.

Forbes is now using computer-generated stories created by Narrative Science software. Writers apparently are no longer needed for a long list of stories that can be written by algorithm, from sports stories to financial reports. 

Personally, I have known some nice sportswriters and am sad to see them being sent to the junk pile. I always admired the depth of their verb vocabulary.

Who will be next? Bloggers, short story writers, novelists? Please no. I know humans are messy and can’t spell and like to be paid. What if I took fewer bathroom breaks and limited the use of “was” in chapter one? Would that save my job?

I can be creative. I know hundreds of words. Of course, you know thousands and can remember them. But I think people want to read more than stats with a few verbs sprinkled in, something a little more eloquent than a computer manual (no offense). I think they want to be swept away by the turn of a phrase or the essence of a character. They want to imagine themselves . . .

What? Yes, that could be melted chocolate on my keyboard.

I know. That would never happen to you.

 Posted by at 6:16 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Drawing on the Walls

 Art, Creativity, Maud's House  2 Responses »
Feb 052012
 

This is a story of a woman who drew on the walls and the stove and the breadbox. Her name was Maud. And I fell in love with her spirit.

Folk artist Maud Lewis of Nova Scotia was a wee woman with such a great artistic spirit that her entire house has been preserved in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. The diminuitive dwelling doesn’t take up much space; it was only a 10 x 12 foot fisherman’s shack to begin with. Yet it was bursting with life when Maud lived there.

“Once this house was covered in tattoos.” That was the first line I wrote for my novel Maud’s House, after reading about Maud Lewis and seeing her artwork. Although my novel has nothing to do with Maud Lewis or her life, I hope it is imbued with her unquenchable desire to create. I couldn’t help but name my character Maud because she came to be as driven as the real Maud.

Pictures of Maud Lewis nearly always show her smiling and hiding her hands, which had begun to curl and become misshapen when she was 15. Her art is always joyful: brightly colored flowers, oxen with large curling eyelashes, glorious butterflies and birds. These were the things Maud saw from her window every day.

When I get stuck and consider complaining about how lousy the writing is going, I think of Maud and kick myself. She was a sickly orphan passed around from one poor relative to another until one day, in her thirties, she walked down the road from Digby to the isolated cabin of shy fish peddler Everett Lewis. Everett was impressed that his dog didn’t bark at their uninvited visitor. Apparently, Maud had passed some kind of test. Within weeks, they were married and living in their closet of a home.

Everett encouraged Maud’s love of painting and scrounged paints for his wife. Soon she was riding along on his fish route in the Model T selling hand-painted postcards—five for a quarter.  In the 1940s, Maud put out a roadside sign, “Paintings for sale,” and began selling small paintings to tourists for $2.50. By the time she died in 1970, at the age of 67, her paintings were being shipped to collectors all over the world.  

These are the things you should remember about Maud Lewis:

  • She never took a drawing lesson, read a textbook, or saw a work of art.
  • She contracted polio as a child and later was afflicted by arthritis. She lived in constant pain. By the end of her life, Everett had to lift her out of the bed in the morning, dress her, and set her by her easel and paints. And still she painted: everything in her house (even the windowpane), driftwood, cookie sheets.
  • In her final years, in the hospital with a broken hip and no longer able to control a paintbrush, she made Christmas cards for the nurses with felt pens.

When she was creating her art, Maud Lewis escaped pain, poverty, and the Nova Scotia cold.

She proved that the creative spirit makes everything seem bigger—life, love, even a painted doll house with no insulation or running water.

____________________

Visit the Painted House of Maud Lewis. 

 

 Posted by at 8:45 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force: Get Out Your GPS

 Book of Mercy, Books, Reading  125 Responses »
Jan 262012
 

January 31, 2012: Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force has come to an end. Thank you to all who stopped by and chatted with me on this blog and by email. Please visit my blog again. Also, I’d love to have you friend me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. A special congratulations to Anita, the winner of the Book of Mercy Gift Basket. The next time you play Bananagrams think of Antigone.

Calling all Sherlocks, Stephanie Plums, Richard Castles, and all you readers/geocachers/scavenger hunters.

It is time for the Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force—the most fun you’ll have on a scavenger hunt all year.

We call it get loaded because we’re going to load up your ereaders with FREE eBooks. And some of you are going to score loads of prizes as well—special gift baskets by the five participating authors and a new Kindle.

Eager to get on the trail?

Get out your GPS (Great Powers of Scavenging) and put in these coordinates:

Why am I doing this tour? Because I want you to meet: Antigone Brown, a women who can’t read and is pregnant with her first child; Irene Crump, president of the Mercy Study Club and determined to rid the town of Mercy of “undesirable” books; and Ryder, a runaway who steals right into Antigone’s heart (and yours, too, I bet).

Basically, it all boils down to a literary smackdown between Antigone and Irene. Who will win? Will censorship prevail in Mercy or will Antigone be able to save the books she can’t read? There’s a secret library involved, a brawl (with pies), hubcap art, boxing deer, and more.

How do you get this must-read? Leave a comment on my blog, during this tour, and I’ll send you a FREE eBook of Book of Mercy. Be sure to leave your email address and what type of eBook you’d like (PDF, Kindle, ePUB format).

Rules of the game:

  • Leave comments on every site of the tour. Use your GPS to hop around the tour. Try to hit every author site. Leave a comment at every site. Each comment earns you a free eBook from that site’s owner AND an entry into the site’s giveaway AND an entry into (drum roll please) the Big Golden Cache at the end: a FREE KINDLE!
  • Find your clues. After you comment, hop over to the Indie Book Collective and get clues for hidden info. While you’re there, sign up for the IBC newsletter and earn 5 MORE ENTRIES for that Kindle.
  • Grab your GPS and start hunting down info.
  • Collect all the info and e-mail your answers at the end of the tour to IBC to earn EXTRA entries for the Kindle drawing.
  • Cheating is allowed. Keep this on the down low, but I will be giving a few hints on Twitter. Follow me at @sherryroberts7 and get some insider info on this super-scavenger hunt.

Prizes:

  • Books, books, books. All of the eBook variety. Collect a FREE eBook at every author’s site. That means you’re hunting for five days, but it’s worth it. A comment on this site earns you an eBook copy of Book of Mercy.
  • Giveaways. Leave a comment at each author’s site and get entered into that author’s special giveaway. What’s in my gift basket? A signed paperback copy of Book of Mercy for your personal library. A dozen of the best cookies on the planet courtesy of Two Smart Cookies (because you won’t be able to put down Book of Mercy and will need nourishment) and a Bananagrams game (in honor of my dyslexic heroine, Antigone, who sees letters mixed up all the time and has to make sense of them). I have to limit this giveaway winner to the U.S. #sorry.
  • Free Kindle. For each comment you leave on my site, you will get one entry into the drawing for the Big Golden Cache at the end: a FREE KINDLE! For every piece of information that you scavenge from the five authors’ sites and take back to the IBC site, you get a Kindle giveaway entry. Sign up for the IBC newsletter and get 5 more entries.

So stuff that ballot box, baby. Scavenge like crazy. Don’t miss a day or a site.

Give a Big Cyber Hug to My Sponsors

Go visit my wonderful sponsors’ sites and leave a comment. These folks do a tremendous service for the reading community. Plus they have interesting stuff to say about books. Bookmark these sites; subscribe to them. Please.

SmartLit

Journey of a Bookseller

Defrosting Cold Cases

Purple Jelly Bean Chair Reviews

Reading Is My Cheap Addiction

A Word about My Tour Mates: Amazing Paranormal Reads

Go back to Day Three: Chelsea Fine’s YA paranormal romance, Anew, presents a conundrum I can honestly say I have never encountered in my long reading life. This is a fresh take on the love triangle, and you’ll find yourself wishing there was a way for everyone—brothers Tristan and Gabriel and lovely Scarlet—to live happily ever after. But first they have to break not one, but three curses. A promising start to the Archers of Avalon series. Bring us more, Chelsea. What are you doing on this tour? You need to be writing.

Get ready for Day Five: Liz Schulte is a talented writer who has woven an intricate plot with an amazingly seductive bad boy (don’t the vulnerable ones get us every time). In Secrets, she alternates first-person chapters between photographer Olivia and mysterious Holden. The world has plans for Olivia. Can she keep from falling into the abyss? Side note: The dream sequences in this book are amazing.

That’s it. So get going. Comment. Scavenge. Cheat all you want. Get those prizes. Get loaded.

Remember: Leave a comment on my blog, during this tour, and I’ll send you a FREE copy of Book of Mercy. Be sure to leave your email address and what type of eBook you’d like (PDF, Kindle, ePUB format). Here’s the question I’d like you to answer: What’s your favorite banned book and why?

 Posted by at 3:00 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fear and Loathing on the Book Tour

 Book Marketing, Book of Mercy, Censorship, Creativity, Maud's House, Publishing Industry  2 Responses »
Jan 232012
 

This book tour I am going in my pajamas.

I am participating in the Get Loaded Blog Tour de Force sponsored by the Indie Book Collective this week, and I hope to get more mileage while putting on fewer miles. This is the new paradigm in publishing.

You see, in my last book tour (back in the ’90s when few people were talking about virtual anything much less a virtual book tour), I traveled for ten days from Los Angeles to Vermont to promote my book, Maud’s House. I talked to packed houses and empty ones; one horrendous thunderstorm washed away all my potential readers in Chicago.

Maud’s House is the story of a Vermont artist who loses and regains her creativity. As a child prodigy, Maud drew on the walls of her house, every square inch. As an adult, she is has lost her muse, drinks too much Rolling Rock, and seems to only be able to draw postcards featuring cows.

The neat thing about any book tour, virtual or physical, is meeting readers and learning about their lives. On the Maud’s House tour, I met readers who cracked me up and who touched me with their stories.

One woman admitted that she had begun writing again after reading my book: “I was raised in a strict home where we weren’t allowed to dance or paint or write. I’m in my fifties and starting my first journal.”

Another woman said she had a brother who, like Maud, drew on the walls. He was always getting in trouble with their mother. In the end, he became a successful artist. One day, the mother discovered one of her son’s early drawings secreted way on a wall inside a closet. She seriously considered cutting that part of the wall out and having it framed.

I hope to meet more great readers on this tour. Come back to this blog on Thursday, January 26, my featured day of the tour, and let’s talk. I am promoting my new novel, Book of Mercy, this time. It’s a funny novel about a serious issue (censorship), so we’ll have lots to discuss.

See you Thursday. I’ll be in my PJs, so don’t dress up on my account.

________________________________

What’s on your mind? I’m listening. Maud’s House is about pursuing your creativity no matter where it takes you: to the painting studio, the kitchen, the garden, the antique car in your garage. What do you take to the level of an art? Leave a comment below.

 Posted by at 2:24 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Bet Hemingway Was a Whiz in the Kitchen

 Cooking, Writing  2 Responses »
Jan 092012
 

The last cake I baked drifted out of the pan as if it were an angel descending, settled on the platter, and promptly split down the middle. The fissure was about the size of the Grand Canyon. Since it was a birthday cake and, thus, not expendable, I made repairs. It takes a lot of frosting to fill the Grand Canyon.

I am used to such misadventures; they do not faze me. My husband says these things would not happen if: 1) I read more in the kitchen (as in Julia Child or Betty Crocker), or 2) I didn’t read as much (as in Hemingway or Steinbeck).

But why should I read cookbooks when I am such a marvelous cook to begin with?

I can boil down sentences until there is only the essence left, the true flavor of the words. They cling delicately to the bone of meaning and taste full and round in the mouth. They form such vivid images you can almost bite into them and feel their juices running down your chin.

A good story takes some preparation. Call it marinating. True, there are a few storytellers, such as Garrison Keillor, who pop out stories like microwave ovens. But I, and probably most other writers, take a while to collect information and ideas. After I gather the ingredients, I throw them into a pan, cover them with sauce from the subconscious, and wait.

Sometimes, I wait for years. Good cooking cannot be rushed.

Even after I have made the story, I must wait, let it simmer, let it age. For a story made today has a different taste tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that. Good writing, work studied and hailed and read over and over again, never loses its taste, never goes sour.

Of course, errors do happen. I forget to add a thought. Or I beat an idea instead of folding it in with gentleness and patience. Or I sprinkle in too many adjectives, and the story becomes not only runny but run on.

The best cooks never follow the book as if it were a drill sergeant. They improvise, feeling their way by taste and touch and sound. With practice, you get to know what will work; you have a sense of what the story needs, when it is missing a pinch of this or a dash of that.

And, of course, I have burned things. Everyone does. Cooks on scaffolds building skyscrapers, cooks in operating rooms navigating jungles of tiny veins. Cooks speaking before juries, exploring the ocean deep, patrolling lonely city streets. They make mistakes, but they don’t give up. They go right back and beat that steel beam again, cut out that diseased organ, flambé their opponents’ arguments.

Nothing is more disheartening than to hear someone cry: “I can’t cook.” Nonsense, everyone can cook. We all have our specialties, and none is greater or less than others. We all have some dish inside us with our name on it. Sometimes, we just forget to look for it. We let people sidetrack us. Categorize us. We don’t listen to our hearts.

I say get out your pots and pans and descend into the Grand Canyon. I hear the view is stunning.

 Posted by at 6:58 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

Meet Spider Whisperer and Writer Wren Andre

 Writing  2 Responses »
Jan 062012
 

Writer Wren Andre, the winner of the Book of Mercy Giveaway last fall, recently received a contract to have one of her erotic romance stories published by Total E-Bound Books—or rather her alter-ego did. Congratulations to Wren’s writing doppelganger, and I hope 2012 brings her much more writing success. I chatted by e-mail with her about her work and her life.

What type of writing do you do?

As Wren Andre, I like character-driven stories that reveal something extraordinary about an ordinary person. I am also working on a two-part memoir that has been an alternately excruciating and fulfilling experience. Under another pen name, I explore paranormal and erotic romance themes.

How long have you been writing and what is your writing habit—when you write, where you write, what gets you going?

I began writing around the age of 12, and I took myself very seriously! Then I became sidetracked by rock ’n’ roll for about 20 years. I was a singer/songwriter for many years and then was co-owner of the independent record label Cave Poodle Records. I’ve been back to writing for about a decade now and have finally gotten into a workable routine. My writing habits revolve around my day gig. I also have a family, and my time with them is very important, too. So it can be a challenge! I write almost every day, typically a few hours after dinner, and I will also take an entire day of one of my days off to write. Then I save the other day for family. It’s all about balance.

Who are you favorite writers?

I enjoy and gain inspiration from writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Raymond Carver, Augusten Burroughs, Phillip K. Dick, and Margaret Atwood. But I’m also an old school Stephen King fan, and I love memoirs or a good paranormal romance to shake things up. (Wren, shared a peek at her personal library.)

What writing resources do you find useful?

I follow the Writer’s Digest newsletter and subscribe to the magazine, but honestly, I get so much out of other writer’s blogs (such as yours!). There’s something magical about the writing community; I have such a sense of camaraderie that I never had when I was in the music business. I love hearing other writers’ “in the trenches” stories.

Wren is a self-proclaimed spider whisperer. What does someone in that line of work do actually?

Spider whisperers protect poor innocent spiders from those who would heartlessly smash them. My husband and everyone I work with know to come to me when a spider is in need of rescue—as in “come get this spider before I squish it with my shoe.” The next time a fly lands on your hamburger, remember that the spider is our friend.

Wren lives in Oregon. I love to hike and bike. In fact, I spent a great week in Oregon visiting Crater Lake and parks up and down the Oregon coast. Tell me what you like about the outdoors.

You should come back! I could show you some great areas to hike. The outdoors for me is a direct connection to the life spirit. Back when I lived in L.A. (shudders), I would escape to the mountains on the weekend and regain a sense of peace. Inevitably, I would become inspired to write a new song, or have one forming in my head on the way home. I would say nature is my ultimate muse. Hey, maybe that’s why I’m such a writing fool since I moved here! I think you’re on to something there, Sherry.

I’m a big X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. What do you, a paranormal junkie, read and watch?

I love Charlaine Harris and, of course, the True Blood series. I’m also a hardcore X-filer and really got hooked on Lost (however, the ending . . . hmmmm). I also think Karen Marie Moning is a fantastic writer, and I first got converted to paranormal romance through Christine Feehan. Oh, and did I mention Stephen King? He will always be my first love.

Please visit Wren’s blog, Writing in the Real World, and say hello:  http://wrenandre.wordpress.com/2011/09/27/in-the-zone/

 Posted by at 7:49 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

The College that Censored Firefly

 Art, Censorship, Reading, Writing  No Responses »
Dec 292011
 

I entered the Best Tweet About the College that Censored Firefly contest today. My chances of winning are looking about as good as my chances of using my new snowshoes in Minnesota this brown winter. I never win anything, which is fine by me. I am the Rodney Dangerfield of contest winners. So don’t vote for me and ruin my record.

I put my silly tweet in the pot just for fun, but also because I really hated what the University of Wisconsin in Stout tried to pull on theater professor James Miller. In September, Miller posted a quote from the television show, Firefly, outside his office door: ”You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” The sentiment is about standing for a certain set of values, of being straightforward and honest with your fellow humankind. No threat was intended.

But campus police were having none of it. On September 16, they removed the “unacceptable” poster because it referred to killing. In response to this censorship, Miller launched a second salvo poster, which read: “Warning: Fascism” and included a cartoon image of a silhouetted police officer striking a civilian. The poster warned, “Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets.”

Again, the university responded by removing the poster. Quickly, the incident blew up into a public relations nightmare for the university, fueled by tweets, blog posts, and articles by Firefly fans, free speech advocates, the media, celebrities such as Adam Baldwin and Nathan Fillon, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). On October 4, the university put out the publicity wildfire by reversing its decision to censor Miller.

This may sound like old news, but a similar incident will likely surface somewhere in the world tomorrow or the next day. Censorship seems to never go out of style. And so, FIRE is sponsoring the tweet contest to draw attention to a new video on censorship featuring author Neil Gaiman.

Now, I have a few disclaimers: 1) I am a Firefly addict and take umbrage at people messing with this rag-tag crew; 2) I am a free speech nut; and 3) I have written a novel about a town that censors books called Book of Mercy. Even if you are or have done none of these things, please watch the video. 

Oh, and my tweet? Here it is:

Son, if you don’t know #censorship is wrong, you just don’t get it. #Firefly in a jar w/no walls. http://bit.ly/tGzd0o

My way-too-literal friend complained, “How can a jar have no walls?”

“It’s about freedom,” I explained.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

This is why I will not win this contest. I suck at jingles.

Feel free to RT in the name of Browncoats, TV shows cancelled before their time, and the way fireflies make you feel on a summer night.

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