I wish I could get excited about graphic novels. I looked at Maus many years ago and tried to get into it. I couldn’t. I didn’t like having prefab images put my own imagination on hold. I didn’t like the lack of complexity that I enjoy so much in a literary novel (no graphics). It was like watching tv in print. Everything is oversimplified. Reduced to its lowest common denominator. (more…)
Full disclosure: I started this blog so I would have a “writer’s platform” I could show agents and potential publishers. But it doesn’t come without a cost, and that is one’s privacy.
Evonne Marzouk is an inspirational public speaker and author of 
From inside my study, one wall book-lined, the other holding a large mirror that makes the room appear bigger, I sit on the loveseat, listening to Strauss and the waterfall powered by a tiny electric pump. When I’m home, I turn it on, the sound of water like a heart beat in this house, a tangible reminder of what usually is invisible, at least to waking life—water for me representing the unconscious and all that lives there. It also is the source of the books I’ve written, the muse that continues to inspire me to write, daily. 
Fiction writers have been called many things, but magician seems the best description. They dip into the black hat of their imagination and produce an endless variety of characters, situations, images, genres, events, and styles. The effect on readers is nothing less than magical, the reader also becoming a conjurer, assisting in making visible what wasn’t there before. 
Tony Flood spent most of his working life as a journalist, initially on local and regional papers and then on nationals. He was also editor of ‘Football Monthly’, Controller of Information at Sky Television and enjoyed a spell with ‘The People’ before retiring in 2010. In his celebrity book My Life With The Stars, Tony recalls: “My work
At the beginning of 2012, in my seventy-second year, I decided to return to analysis so I could explore my concerns about aging and dying. Fortunately, I found Dr. Y, a Jungian analyst who takes Medicare, freeing me to explore my new terrain—old age—without depleting our savings. Dr. Y is a psychiatrist who merges the rational world of science with C. G. Jung’s more esoteric ideas about the psyche. I have feasted on Jung from the time I first discovered his writing in my late twenties. For me, his more mystical aspect overshadowed the scientist. I love how he evokes the multiplicity of things—the magic, the mystery, the many levels to reality including the mythic part. Of course, dreams inhabit the mythic dimension, and I view them as communications from a part of myself that knows more about me than my conscious ego does. 
I’m thinking today of timing—how important it is to success. Timing and perseverance: the two go together. I’m also noticing the seasonal aspect of creativity, how cyclic it is. That too is hard to grasp. I want it all the time. I’m afraid if it isn’t there, it won’t return. But I need to remember that if I pursue my creative impulses, and if they’re in accordance with my abilities, then there will be success. Maybe not financially, though that would be nice. But I’ll experience the satisfaction of achieving what I’m capable of. 
My novel
With two new books being published by Shanti Arts, and wondering how best to market them, I’ve been thinking about book festivals I’ve participated in. I realize that, while these events are great for focusing on the many book genres available, I also have concluded that I probably won’t attend one again. A few years ago, I signed up for the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, a relatively new venue at the time. Its first session was in 2015, and it claims to be an international event that draws people from all over the world: “More than 50,000 diverse people of all ages, from urban to suburban Bay Area communities and beyond.” 
My 
$900 on contest fees. I’ve been shortlisted in a memoir magazine contest and been declared a finalist for another book award. In one case I won a Bronze Medal in the Female Memoir division, and in another, I was named a runner up in the Memoir category. None of these “honors” paid me any money. The announcement of my “win” is most often followed by a bombardment of emails encouraging me to pay more for editorial or marketing advice or for a bronze medal on a colored ribbon or to enter more contests or book festivals. I’ve won no mention at all in six contests, and five have yet to report.
Appearances Really Are Deceiving
December 6, 2016
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Francine Prose’s latest novel Mr. Monkey has taught me something valuable about point of view. While I’m interested in the story Prose is telling, as a writer I’m even more concerned with how the narrative is shaped. Unusual for a novel, eleven chapters each feature a different character, and some appear tangentially in other sections, offering a fuller look at many of these actors.
In fact, actor is an appropriate word here to describe the various dramatis personae since the work starts by taking the reader into the production of the play “Mr. Monkey.” The first characters we meet are performers in this production. But just as actors inhabit different roles and types, so do Prose’s creations exemplify this aspect of being human. We are constantly stepping in and out of various personas throughout our days. At times we keep our more intimate self under cover, especially in our professional environments, such as the classroom or office. Other times, with close friends and family, we can reveal much more of ourselves. Yet always we are in the process of presenting a self that others can’t fully see. And so are the individuals we meet in Mr. Monkey.
As the title implies, the novel revolves around a fictional children’s play based on a children’s book. The play itself, tired from so many productions, becomes a carousel for the characters to circle on, each one connected to “Mr. Monkey” either directly, as actors and creators, or indirectly, as audience members and/or those in some relationship with individuals spinning off from the play.
Prose’s use of this structure has impressed me. She takes the reader briefly inside lives that we otherwise would not inhabit, from a young kindergartner to an aging grandfather. One would think these characters wouldn’t have much in common, but Prose skillfully shows how individuals with such far-flung interests have roots that intertwine, just as actual plants can do under ground. What might seem unrelated on life’s surface actually connects psychologically on deeper levels.
For example, Mario, a middle-aged waiter in an upscale restaurant, has been receiving free tickets to the play (Mr. Monkey) for years from the original creator. Mario loves theater, and he enthusiastically attends the various productions so he can see how original each will be in its presentation. But basically Mario’s life is provisional, his job not fully secure. He shares with many in the novel’s orbit a profound loneliness and isolation. A practicing Catholic, he agonizes with his priest confessor over guilt feelings he experiences about slights he has done to others in his daily life. Yet when a waiter serves us in a restaurant, we normally don’t wonder about his/her life outside of work, and we would be surprised to discover the various worlds that such a person inhabits. We experience this continuously in this novel.
So as a writer, I’ve learned from Mr. Monkey not just how complex we all are and how vulnerable as well, but to trust that if I focus on a small world, as Prose does here, and show aspects of a character that otherwise might go unnoticed, it can reveal universal qualities that most of us can relate to.
