Red Room | Where the Writers Are

"What the heck happened?"

by Vicki S. Nikolaidis

Kevin Bales Ending Slavery.jpg

Timoth G Volm Inside every older person is a younger person wondering, "What the heck happened?" Timoth, I love your thoughts. This one is one I know I will quote often because it encapsulates how I spend so many hours of the day. We thought we were making the world better and as the years passed reason would help all the variables towards the positive, and everything would ...

New York Under Water: Sea Level Change...

by Deborah Teramis Christian

At the end of September 2009, renowned climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf spoke to an international climate change conference in Oxford, England. Rahmstorf is a respected authority specializing in analysis of ice melt and sea level changes. He and other climate scientists made this startling announcement: A rise of at least 2 meters (~6 foot) in the world's sea levels is now virtually unstoppable. ...

DRUGGING OUR CHILDREN TO DEATH

by Karen Alaine Hunt

Drugging Our Children To Death“Labeling a child, ‘mentally ill,’ is like hanging a sign around his or her neck saying, ‘GARBAGE: Take It Away.’” Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry.Along the smoke-free lanes and carefree byways of Calabasas and far acrossAmerican suburbia, a river of drugs is flowing, and I am not talking illegal ones. Not too long ago, I was ...

The quiet of the birds

by Joshua Keidan

a food cart in beijing

"I prefer the voices in my head to the voices outside" Said my friend. "The voices in my head know when it is time to be quiet." Before he continued before I called over the bored waitress and asked her to get a beer for my friend. My friend has seen quite a lot in his life that people were not meant to see and as a result his sanity tends to move in opposite ...

How writers write

by Midge Raymond

I love this Wall St. Journal article about writers sharing their processes. Maybe it’s the onset of fall, the recent time change, or the fact that Mercury was in retrograde for a while — but I’ve found that this article has really resonated with fellow writers, not only for the insider’s view into some of our favorite writers’ practices but for the comfort of knowing that there’s no ...

The Colbert Report and Charactered Pieces

by Caleb J Ross

If any of you caught The Colbert Report last night, you definitely did not see an interview with me about my chapbook, Charactered Pieces: stories. I had been sweating the non-interview for weeks, well-aware of how Stephen Colbert treats his guests (victims?). Claiming fairness and balance, his questions instead aim to further weave his delusional and increasingly erratic conservative narrative. ...

Thankful

by daniel curzon

I don't know much, but I do know a few things that we can be grateful for this Thanksgiving: Carrie Prejean (Miss California) resigned as governor of Alaska, LaToya Jackson did not do a memorial album for brother Michael, and Amy Winehouse won the Cy Young Award.

Excerpt from The Wedding Gift, my new...

by Stephen Evans

In the Twenty-Third Century, the most popular wedding gift will be Oxygen.

ROGUE MALES: SUBJECT #13, DANIEL WOODRELL

by Craig McDonald

DANIEL WOODRELL

(Author’s note: Rogue Males: Conversations & Confrontations About the Writing Life, is a collection of author interviews. It includes Elmore Leonard, Stephen J. Cannell, Pete Dexter, James Ellroy, Alistair MacLeod, Craig Holden and James Crumley. Rogue Males also features an account of a trip to the desert to interview crime fiction greats Ken Bruen and James Sallis about the craft of ...

Cheat? Thierry Henry - Member of the...

The Hand of HenryThink of all those brand names that players pick up as endorsements. And make bags of money in the process. And the team strips emblazoned with corporate logos. But maybe it's time for a new logo to be branded across the chests of our favorite soccer stars -- those ones who like to flop, or use their hand to earn a goal. Welcome to soccer's growing, dynamic brand: CHEAT. To ...

The Daily Sam: Disneyworld

I should have known it was going to be bad day when the traffic reporter on KQED radio said there was still a problem on the N line after telling us about an as-yet undiagnosed problem on the L line. San Francisco’s mass transit system (MUNI) of buses, light rail, trolleys, cable cars, carrier pigeons, sleds, and roller blades always has its problems, but it usually doesn’t make the traffic ...

THE ROLLER COASTER OF LIFE

by kasmik zenter

ENJOY THE RIDE!This past Halloween, I visited Six Flags and waited in line for almost two hours to get a ride on the 'Goliath', one of the larger roller coasters in North America. Even in the drizzle and cold weather, I felt warm and prickly inside, excited by the anticipation of the enormous 200 foot climb to the top. Finally, I boarded a car, seated next to a stranger, who was equally charged ...

TENTHS OF A SECOND

I’m happy to announce the release of my first audio story original. Sniplits.com bought the audio rights to TENTHS OF A SECOND and it’s now available for download—all for the price of an iTunes download. The story can be downloaded to computers, iPods and smart phones etc. TENTHS OF A SECOND is about a struggling young racecar driver who is given the chance to get an edge on the ...

books in the media

by Annette Julia Dunlea

Books in the Media List1. Lustrum by Robert Harrishttp://astore.amazon.com/annduniriwri-20/detail/00918010012. Tricks of the Mind by Derren Brownhttp://astore.amazon.com/annduniriwri-20/detail/19050263823. Flash Forward by Robert J Sawyerhttp://astore.amazon.com/annduniriwri-20/detail/B000OTNVG24. Family Planning by Karen Mahajanhttp://astore.amazon.com/annduniriwri-20/detail/006153725X5. The ...

afternoon to write!

by James S Hoch

School was only a half day. The sub job I had was a piece of cake. Got to do some notes for chapters. This afternoon I will get to write. Yesterday, I wrote @1200 words. What a good day!!! Still dark and gray, but at least no rain. Another storm is on the agenda for tomorrow...more wind and rain. At least, it's not snow and I don't have to shovel!!!

When It Began With Me

When it began with me.I did my first bit to stop the war in the spring of 1968. However, my actions to end the conflict in Viet Nam were not altogether altruistic or free from self-interest. I had arrived on the campus of Oberlin College the previous September, two weeks shy of my 18th birthday, the benchmark at which all U.S. males of the day were required to register for Selective ...

Peace Be With … All Of Us

by Victor A Williams

After spending eight days in the heart of Thailand — the 10-million-soul city of Bangkok and tourist destinations of Pattaya and Hua Hin — on what was ostensibly a golf familiarization trip but turned into a quick-fire cultural education, I'm tempted to take that nation's long-standing path toward at least an idea of "peace." They know how to live the word, to breathe it, to embrace ...

Pax Aeterna

They are getting closer. I hear them, wave upon wave, mounted upon terrified steeds, poor abused beasts who have no Francis to calm them. I hear the clash of steel, the primal screams and cries, the whinnying, the shuddering clack of wood upon wood and stone. Francis raised these walls with his own bare hands until they were chafed sore and ...

A place to 'be'

by Ryoma A Collia-Suzuki

Gina and myself Nov '09

I’ve found it surprising to realise how ‘noisy’ and chaotic most of my life has been. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however it’s been interesting for me to look back at my life and see that even as a child I always sought ways to find a place just to ‘be’, no distractions, no chaos; just me, my thoughts and I. From around the age of nine or ten I used to spend a fair amount ...

Revolutions

by Virginia Moffatt

Yes, I know it was last week's blog but I forgot to post. So here is what I might have posted. One of a series of bicycle poems I had to submit for an assignment last year. I'm not a fan of my own poetry, but this is one that I quite like - the nearest I've ever got to a love poem.Revolutions. You were half a world away, planningpeaceful revolutions. You lunched atbreakfast, slept at tea, woke ...

Ignoring your baby

by Vanessa R Lillie

Rosemarys Baby.jpg

I’ve been working on my “Duchess” WIP for something like five years…probably more. I’m at over 400 pages and am at the half-way point (obviously, I’m an over writer). I’ve read lots of good advice about sticking with a project to the bitter end, but I also recognize that it’s my very first book. My baby. I've been learning how to write as I've been writing. As all those who have ...

Feel Good Story

by Linda Ballou

In search of traditional Hawaiian healing venues I circumnavigated the Big Island sampling lomi-lomi, and other forms of massage along the way. What better way to rejuvenate body and mind than in the knowing hands of masters and restorative waters of Hawai’i. If you follow in my footsteps, I promise you won’t be sorry. Healing Hawaiian Holiday featured article in Real Travel ...

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A TROJAN:...

by Steven Robert Travers

The SIXTIES BILL REDELL 1960 (Freshman Team) Quarterback I was very fortunate to go to USC when I did go there. It's part of my college experience and I consider myself a Trojan. I'm not bitter or feel I was treated unfairly just because I left. I loved the experience I had there. I was at the USC extension school from 1959-60 and played freshman football 1960. ...

Special Delivery: Part 3

I’ve discovered two new ways of offending the Japanese: 渡し箸 (watashibashi: resting one’s chopsticks across the top of one’s bowl) to cross over + chopsticks 渡り箸 (wataribashi: using one’s chopsticks to jump from side dish to side dish without pausing to eat rice in between) to cross over + chopsticks Both actions are considered breaches of etiquette. Just ...

Why Literature?...

by Claire Elizabeth Terry

For this week's Red Room blog on 'peace', I'd like to once again share a contribution from 'The Art of Living'*, this time by Mario Vargas Llosa, whose essay, "Why Literature?" brilliantly highlights how literature is "one of the common denominators of human existence" and how the "unvariable truth ... that men and women from across the world are equal" that ...

The Death of the Oprah Dream

by Karen Berner

I don’t know about most of you, but today’s announcement by Oprah Winfrey to end her syndicated television show left me empty, morose and wanting to crawl back into bed, never to surface again. This reaction, however, is not due to the impending absence of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in my life, although I have been a viewer on and off for most of her years on TV. No, it goes far deeper than ...

Quote by Michael Pokocky

by Michael W Pokocky

"Books are like wines. You develop a taste for them, and everyone has, a unique palette." __Michael Pokocky 2009

Celebrity

by David Moolten

Marilyn Monroe rules the world, at least The part visible in a photograph, standing Above the troops she’s about to bless With a song in her porous sequin dress, her arms Durably outstretched. She hasn’t aged a day In fifty years. The men too appear impossibly Young, mooning boys clotted around a woman Who just might show them something they’ve never seen. Picture the millions ...

Scala Contarini del Bovolo

by Angela K Nickerson

Medieval and Renaissance Venetians often built exterior staircases on their homes to save precious living space. But the architects of the Scala Contarini del Bovolo -- or staircase of the snail shell -- took the art of floor-to-floor mobility to a new artistic level. Peter Contarini added the staircase and series of loggias to his palazzo near the end of the 1400’s. The staircase and ...

Oprah and Adaptability

The news of the moment is that Oprah Winfrey is to end her daytime show.Oprah is coming off the air.Michael jackson's passing ,to me, was far more dramatic and shocking.Oprah coming off the air is a straight case of collateral damage and changing cultures.Of course I empathise with her, but let's get serious.I have been writing all along about how America is in deep trouble and all that and ...