FWA/Palm Coast press release

•January 13, 2013 • Leave a Comment

Reblogged from FWA Palm Coast Chapter:

Click to visit the original post

From Christine Speno:

Hello everyone!

Thanks to Jeff for sharing my column in The St. Augustine Record from Saturday, January 5 that focused on our FWA/PC chapter!  This column appears semi-monthly in the print version of The Record on the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month.  You can also access the online version at www.staugustine.com using a keyword of "speno" in the search field. 

Read more… 236 more words

Some information about the writers group I co-lead in Palm Coast and other events in the Flagler/Palm Coast area.

The American Scream Cover Part Deux

•January 6, 2013 • 4 Comments

As I had promised in my post “Twenty Little Angels Above Newtown,” I have changed the cover for my satirical short story, The American Scream. Granted it took a lot longer for me to get around to it with so much going on around the holidays, but I knew I wouldn’t put it off any longer than I had to.

When I first found time to consider the new cover concept, I searched through some of my usual online image database resources, but couldn’t find anything that spoke to me. So I put it off until I had more time to get creative. Some of the images I found on Dreamstime helped to push me in the right direction though. I wanted something to express the mundane, monotonous Dilbert-like cubicle dweller existence that a lot of 8-to-5 office workers suffer. I toyed around with my own cork board at home, seeing how I could use push pins, sticky pads, and day timers as a cover theme. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t bring it all together to make a decent looking cover.

One day as I doodled at my desk, hoping upon hope for inspiration, I looked down and had a sheer moment of genius. What better way to design a cover than by using my own beautifully drawn renditions of corporate hell? I know, I know, you’re thinking: Jeff, I had no idea that you were an artist!! I’m afraid I’ve hidden my incredible drawing abilities away for fear that once made public, my life would never be the same. I’d be shoved in the spotlight and demands for next Mona Lisa or Sistine Chapel would be flooding my email, voicemail, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. I would lose my privacy and anonymity.

But I’ve decided that God gave me such an extraordinary talent, not to be contained or kept hidden under the dark, weary eyes of my own, but to be shared with the world and celebrated by all. So with that, I present to you my own hand drawn cover for The American Scream. Brace yourself, because you’ve never laid your eyes upon art as special as this! ;)

The American Scream cover final 2nd edition 3 - 72

I have no way of knowing if this new cover will improve Kindle sales of my beloved story, but I do know one thing–it sure has hell can’t hurt my sales. If you’re at all interesting, I’ve just reduced the cost of the Kindle edition to $0.99: The American Scream (Kindle edition)

Get Creative…WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME!!!

•December 20, 2012 • Leave a Comment

mushroom_cloud_clown_by_loxsox-d4ihgi9

Tomorrow is 12-21-12, or as the Mayans had predicted, the END OF THE WORLD!!! But, if you’re one of my many creative friends, you probably can’t go out with so many creative ideas swirling around your screwed up little mind. I know that I can’t. So, my friends, I challenge you to get creative today! Pen that prose, paint that canvas, tickle those ivories.

Of course, you probably don’t want to tackle anything too big. Like starting a novel, recording a rock opera, shooting a film, or painting something the size of the Sistine Chapel. My advice–think small. Something you’ll have time to complete. And for my writer friends, think small small. Even a short story may take away too many of your valuable hours. Maybe stick with some flash fiction or a poem. I’ve decided to write a haiku poem:

The world will soon end

As Mayans had predicted

Everyone will die

Need an End of the World writing prompt to help get you going? Okay, here’s the scenario, you have 24 hours left before the world will end, what will you do?

If you do decide to take me up on my challenge, please leave me a comment telling me about your creative doomsday masterpiece. But you’d better get to it…time is running out…

TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK….

Celebrate the End of the World in Palm Coast

•December 19, 2012 • Leave a Comment

Reblogged from FWA Palm Coast Chapter:

There are a couple art/literature-related End of the World parties in Palm Coast this coming Friday.

I Decided Not to End The World party will take place at Hollingsworth Gallery, located at the City Marketplace.  The Art Gallery wants to convince God with a work of ART that human race should be allowed to continue. Party starts at 6 PM.

Read more… 173 more words

In continuing with my End of the World theme....

Entertainment for the End of the World

•December 19, 2012 • 8 Comments

originalAccording to the Mayans, the end of the world is only two days away, so if you haven’t prepared your End of the World To-Do list, you’d better start it now.

To help prepare you for your final plans—which could range from efforts to secure your place in the afterlife to partying hard at Jamaica’s Hedonism Resorts—I’ve compiled a list of doomsday-related entertainment for your enjoyment.

The first, and probably the most important, form of entertainment to get you in the “we’re all doomed” mood is music. Here is my recommended End of the World Playlist:

4 Minute Warning – Radiohead

It’s the End of the World – R.E.M.

Burn – Nine Inch Nails (Warning: Graphic images in this video)

(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go – Curtis Mayfield

Apocalypse Please – Muse

Another One Bites the Dust – Queen

Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash

1999 – Prince (Couldn’t find a version with Prince on YouTube, because he’s weird about shit like that, so here’s the Revolution live without Prince)

Countdown to Extinction – Megadeth

The End – The Doors

My Way – Frank Sinatra

What better way to get you ready for the “End of Days” then immersing yourself into good flick?

I’m sorry, but I won’t be recommending any of those cheesy Hollywood doomsday movies where humanity is sure to be wiped out until a last second remarkable, and impossible, act is performed by an unlikely hero. No oil driller single-handedly destroying a Texas-sized asteroid. Or a Mac laptop wiping out an entire alien civilization. Or an ex-cop whipping the Devil’s ass. No, I feel that my recommendations are far superior in quality.

Now if you’re looking for a little humor to bring in the complete destruction of mankind, I’ve got to put Dr. StrangeLove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb at the top of the list. Slim Pickens sure had the pickinsright idea! Not only wasn’t he afraid of The End, but he made damn sure he had a front row seat to witness it. Next, Zombieland! Bill Murray as a friendly, good-natured zombie—need I say more? My final funny or lighthearted pick is Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. I haven’t seen this one yet, though, so don’t hold me to it. But I am thinking of adding it to my list.

What? You don’t feel that humor is the appropriate way to face the end of existence. Have no fear, I have some good bleak cinema for you to choose from. First up, 12 Monkeys, Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece. I don’t think Brad Pitt gets enough credit for his acting in this one and the scoring is brilliant. Children of Men is another dystopian drama that proved Clive Owen is leading man material.

In the horror genre, check out Danny Boyle’s fast-pace zombie flick 28 Days Later. Staying in the same sub-genre, I have to include the first of five Resident Evil movies, which full_millamy true love, Milla Jovovich, gets quite naked near the end. Last, but certainly not least is John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. Really, am I the only one who thinks this is the greatest apocalyptic/horror movie of all time? I still get chills thinking about the end.

My last movie recommendation is Francis Ford Coppola’s true masterpiece, Apocalypse Now. Okay, this isn’t really an end of world or post-apocalyptic film, but I’ve added it because the title alone is perfect for the theme and it’s also one of the best films of all-time. And it uses a particular song from my End of World playlist superbly.

Are you a quick reader and feel like spending your final hours sitting by a lake and feasting on some apocalyptic literature? Then check out Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s a brilliant novel and a quick read—you may even have enough time to pick something else out from my list. Although I’ve never read it, people in the past have implored me to read Stephen King’s The Stand. Now be careful with this one, it weighs in at around 1,200 pages. So you’d better be a speed reader or you’ll never to finish this one before the tomb of pages disintegrate in your hands. Another bleak end of world novel that a good friend of mine always raves about is On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Another one I haven’t read, but I may have just enough time if I download to my Kindle this morning!

Now…I know that there’s plenty of great end-of-world or apocalypse-themed entertainment out there that I didn’t think of or don’t know about. So, if you have some good titles to share, please leave me a comment about them. Who knows, I just may add one of them to my End of World entertainment queue.

T minus 2 people—get ready!!

Twenty Little Angels Above Newtown

•December 15, 2012 • 15 Comments

In the past fifteen years, certain schools have become more identified with a single tragic event, than for all of their good and accomplishments: Columbine, Virginia Tech, and now Sandy Hook. I don’t have to explain what happened in those locations—you already know. There are others—at least seven major school shootings and approximately 200 school shootings of any kind since 1997.

When I sat at my laptop this morning prepared to write about this, a thought popped in my head, which for some reason didn’t occur to me yesterday. The lost children in Newtown were between the ages of five and ten. My loving, goodhearted nephew is nine. What if this had happened to him? What would I be prepared to do?

After I fought through the tears, I didn’t come up with any reasonable answers to those questions. My only thought was I’d want the shooter to survive so that I could personally tear …

Perhaps it’s best not to get into that. Besides, what good would more violence do? Even if only hypothetical.

And being that the shooter took his own life, yet again, the family and friends of the victims are left lost. They can’t get the answers to the questions they have. Why? Why did you commit such an evil act? Why did you rip my baby from my life?

My heart goes out to all of the victim’s loved ones. May God give them the strength and courage they need to face each new day.

To say that the tragedy in Columbine back in 1999 was over-sensationalized by the media is an understatement. I believe how they descended upon the once peaceful town of Littleton, Colorado like vultures on roadside kill was detestable. There was not a stone left unturned. The lives of the victims’ families should not have been turned inside out and broadcast to the world like that. At least not in my opinion.

I believe that Columbine was a big part of why I stopped watching the news and reading the newspaper as much as I used to. That may be why I only heard about what happened in Newtown, Connecticut from an email by a family member. After that, I read about what had happened online, but stayed away from watching the news. Instead, I observed people’s reactions via Facebook. There were many passionate and heated discussions about what happened and different viewpoints on what could have caused another horrific shooting.

There were people pointing at violent video games as the culprit. Others untreated mental illness. Some insisted that we need to ban guns or provide better security for our school systems. And all these points may have some validity and can be argued by both sides until people are blue in the face. But when looking at solutions based on those issues, isn’t that the same as trying to cure a disease by addressing the symptoms, and not the disease itself?

I think that some people on Facebook hit the nail on the head—it’s a major downward change in family and societal values through recent generations that have allowed for the development of these psychopaths.

This theory reminded me of a passage in Flight From Fear, the Holocaust memoir, which I ghostwrote for Rabbi Samuel Cywiak:

The environment was already set for Hitler and the Nazis to come in and do horrific things to us.  

Rabbi Cywiak is referring to the terrible anti-Semitism that had existed throughout Europe prior to the start of the Holocaust. Without it, Rabbi Cywiak believes, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis wouldn’t have had the inside assistance they needed to carry out his Master Plan.

Now, you may consider this comparison to be quite a stretch, but I’m not so sure. By eliminating core family values, sense of community, and God from everyday life, haven’t we essentially prepared the environment for such tragedies to take place? With the majority of marriages ending in divorce, causing more and more broken homes, do children’s priorities often get lost in the shuffle?

Look at what age children are being exposed to sex and violence. We know from a psychological point of view that young minds are very impressionable. Shocking and graphic images viewed at a young age can negatively affect a person for a lifetime. That coupled with parents being too busy or self-absorbed to sit down and explain these experiences with their children could possibly allow for some type of perversion to set in. Maybe the argument about violent video games is not to be taken lightly. At least there should be serious consideration about what age is appropriate for them to start playing them. Or watching violent movies. But it’s up to the parents to enforce these restrictions.

Look at what children have to look up to for role models. How many actresses and singers they enjoy and mimic and want to be like have multiple arrest records, sex tapes, and drug addictions? What message is that presenting to our children? Are parents able to make their children understand that those type of activities are not considered to be “cool.”

Look at how easy it is for children in this digital age to go out on the internet and view pornography or violence or read about topics they are not mature enough to truly understand. How many children own smart phones or tablets and can connect to the internet anywhere and any time? I know parents who monitor what their children can access, but I’m sure plenty parents don’t. And even the ones who do may not realize that their children find ways to access the naughty stuff when they’re not around.

It’s a scary technological age we live in right now, and I’m not sure what can be done, realistically, to reverse some of the damaging effects it has already caused. One thing I can recommend is to get your children out of the house, playing outside with children. Interacting, using their creativity. That’s what my generation did for fun. Video games were basic and we only got to play them for a short period of time. We didn’t get locked into a misunderstood adrenaline rush of mowing down people with a machine gun without remorse via a realistic first-person shooter video game. There were no smart phones or internet. We didn’t have access to graphic porn, other than the one crumpled nudie magazine that got passed around from kid to kid. We weren’t exposed to things that were overly shocking or graphic or violent. We played with sticks and stones, dirt and mud. Today, children are losing the innocence way too early.

I believe that each and every one of us needs to consider what we put out there that may influence other impressionable minds. Recently I published a short story of mine, The American Scream, to Kindle. I felt that the cover image I had selected was ideal for this particular story, which is a satirical take on the high-pressured suburban life and the pursuit of the elusive American Dream.

When an early draft of my cover was accidentally viewed by my nephew, who was only eight at the time. He had asked my sister: “Why is that man holding a gun to his head?”

My sister told him it was meant to be a joke. And he seemed to accept that answer. When she told me what happened, I kind of laughed it off, not thinking it was a big deal.

But now, I’m haunted by it.

This weekend I’ll be redesigning the cover.

 

 

The Sound and The Fury, a Review…or Opinion…or Something

•November 24, 2012 • 7 Comments

It’s been months since I’ve posted something new out here, not including Reblogs, so I figured I’d share my thoughts of my attempt to read William Faulkner’s The Sound and The Fury. I had published this on Goodreads earlier.

I can’t really say I finished this one–not even close. I read as much as I could take. I loved Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and being that The Sound and the Fury is one of Faulkner’s most celebrated works, I figured I’d enjoy it as well. But I just couldn’t get into it. Since the first chapter/section is a 75 page jumble of various time periods and a heap of characters with poor transition and all told from the perspective of a unreliable, mentally-challenged narrator, it became too much work. Even after reading a guide from a review to help understand what was going on, I still struggled. And for me, that takes away the enjoyment of reading. It becomes like school work. Had the Benjy chapter come after we had an understanding of the family and characters, I might have enjoyed it better.

Still there’s no question that Faulkner set out to experiment and try something different. There is definite literary merit in doing so. In his day it was probably appreciated more than today. All I know is that if I took something like the Benjy section to one of my critique groups, they would pummel me. Does it make it wrong?–no, of course not, this book is a classic after all. I think it just depends on what a person is looking for in a read–some people like to be challenged. But such a cryptic writing style is not considered desirable by today’s writing and publishing standards.

Maybe some day when I feel more patient, and when my mind is not already in the middle of multitasking on a million different things, I’ll give it another shot. After reading some of the other reviews, it seems like you’ll get rewarded if you hang in there. But with so many books to read and so little time, I’m not sure it will ever happen.

For anyone wanting to give this book a try, I recommend this key to understanding the Benjy section that I found in an Amazon review: A Simple Key

On another note, two of my titles, Flight From Fear and The American Scream, are available on Kindle for free this entire weekend. Click here: Flight From Fear & The American Scream

 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,895 other followers