Special #Writer’s Quote Wednesday + #BeWoW Edition Part 1 – Finishing

Welcome back to another edition of Writer’s Quote Wednesday as hosted by Colleen of Silver Threading. Today’s Writer’s Quote is part of a Special Edition where I will be combining my Writer’s Quote Wednesday Post with my #BeWoW Post (Be Writing on Wednesday / Be Wonderful on Wednesday) BUT they are coming in two separate posts. This post is Part 1. Part 2 (#BeWoW) will follow. Please bear with me.

My quote today is in honor of a project I’ve been working on and comes from The New Poetry Handbook:

I think we can relate this quote to not just poetry but writing in general. “When a man finishes a story, he shall bathe in the blank wake of his passion and be kissed by white paper”. Yes! Love how that sounds don’t you? LOL.

I love finishing a project and the feeling of accomplishment for having done so. Though I know there’s a lot of work yet to come, it is still a great feeling of positivity that I think resonates with all writers. The way that this woman is staring off into the light is how I often look at something finished; just stare at it just like that lol.

Three years ago I wrote a novel but have since taken it off market so that I can revise it for a 2nd Edition. I have even taken to adding excerpts to this blog every now and again. Today, I am excited to reveal the Book Blurb and the revised Book Cover. Its not ready yet but I am proud of the steps I have finished in the process.

In this post, I will reveal the book blurb. In the next post, I will reveal the book cover. Time permitting, I will have this Book ready to go back on the site and back into your hands by the end of the year. This means I have two major projects to end the year with. The 3rd installment of The Stella Trilogy (The Road To Freedom) and The Aftermath, Second Edition:

The Aftermath

The Aftermath surrounds the life of Doris Whitaker, a 14 year old girl living in Chicago thirty-nine years after America’s streets saw the worst destruction to ever come upon them. In 2016, streets were paved in chaos as people struggled to feed their families and to shelter their young. Bread lines stretched beyond imagination and violence ensued as people became more and more desperate to survive. Little did anyone stop to fathom that when the United States Financial System collapsed, so did the world.

In 2019, three years into America’s most destitute state, King Antiochus and his prophet Lord Pope Feinberg produced a technology that changed the way we lived. It produced financial stability, murder rates dropped significantly, and the world was at peace; or so, some of the world. “The Rebels” also known as “The Infected” is a group of people rebelling against the new system, rising up and refusing the technology. They discovered that it went against their belief systems, their morals and values and that it did not produce the kind of peace it promised. For these reasons, they turned their backs and became the world’s most hated terrorist. Antiochus had members of “The Rebel” Organization hunted down, locked away and eventually murdered. Afterward, he made it a law that anyone showing signs of rebellion were to be treated in mental institutions around the world at an attempt to cure them of the insurgence. Anyone counted with “The Infected” who could not be cured, were murdered in a legal ceremony to purge the evil from the midst of man.

It is now 2055, and this story takes place when troubled Doris is the daughter of wealthy psychiatrist John Whitaker and his wife Cynthia. The family live in a technologically advanced world where people take trips to the past and no one is ever in need. The world is finally at peace and murder rates are at zero. But when Doris and her friends get lost in Jackson Park where one of the deadliest battles took place, the Government questions the Whitaker Family’s ties to The Infected. Hidden secrets are revealed, personal ties are broken and one day Doris never comes home from school.

Discover what happens next in The Aftermath.

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And that’s it for this weeks Special Edition of Writer’s Quote Wednesday. Be sure to check out my next post for the Book Cover Reveal to this blurb in a Special Edition of #BeWoW.

Self Published Books and Libraries: How to Get Your Book onto Library Shelves

Great Info on Self-Publishing and Libraries.

readers+writers journal

What Indie Authors Need to Know About the Library Market

By Jane Friedman via Publishers Weekly

It has become a cliché to talk about how e-book distribution has leveled the playing field for indie authors and made the publishing environment more democratic. But accessing the library market remains somewhat more difficult for single authors with just a few titles.
While indie authors can gain some access to libraries by making their books available through major library distributors, that doesn’t mean that those books will be purchased. In many ways, getting self-published titles into libraries hasn’t changed since the e-book revolution: authors still have to prove that they have quality products that fit the collection. And, unfortunately, authors still face the stigma of self-publishing: there’s a long history of patrons offering to donate handwritten poetry collections or memoirs to their libraries.
Though some libraries work with their communities to publish…

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Guest Post by @PSBartlett The Kind of Writer I Want to Be.

Excellent post. I really enjoyed reading this. My favorite line: “I don’t want to write about what everyone else is writing about. I don’t need to sit at the cool kids table to feel good about myself.”

ronovanwrites

Hello everyone,

Some of you may have heard that I have a book on schedule to be released around Christmas. It’s my debut novel, written with an author by the name of P.S. Bartlett. A book related to that novel is being released Oct. 5. It’s called Jaded Tides and it is book 2 in the pirate tales series and the third book leading up to her amazing Blue Diamond: The Razor’s Edge that I absolutely loved so much that Bartlett and I became friends and ended up writing a book together. Here today is a guest post by my partner in print. Over the next few days you will be seeing several posts about her here on Ronovan Writes. Now, onto our guest post today by Award Winning Author, P.S. Bartlett.

The Kind of Writer I Want To Be

I’ve believed since I dedicated myself to this journey two…

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Movie Night Friday – Hancock (Fallen Angels and Nephillim)

Welcome back to another segment of Movie Night Friday, where I present some of my favorite movies and why I love them, now coming to you every other week.

Today, I would like to discuss the movie Hancock. There are actually a number of Will Smith movies that have profound symbolism but I will start with this one.

Hancock is a movie about a Superhero named Hancock (Will Smith) who everyone hates because of his lack of self-control. Though he is helping the city of Los Angeles, he is also destroying it, leaving damage everywhere that he goes. Hancock’s problem is not how people feel about him, Hancock’s problem is that he doesn’t care, or at least he acts like it. After saving the life of a PR executive (Jason Bateman) and meeting the man’s beautiful wife (Charlize Theron), he realizes that he may have a sensitive side after all. It is then up to the executive to train him to embrace his sensibilities and use his Super Hero status in a way that is helpful, and not harmful, to mankind.

Now that we got that out the way, let’s look at some key points here because the movie is funny but it reveals so much more. I try not to get so caught up in watching movies and TV shows exclusively for its entertainment factor because there is so many lies told through television (tell a lie through a vision) but there is also a lot of truth in these movies as well, especially by way of comedy. You see we must stop letting people define the way that we think. Stop calling everything a conspiracy just because your pastor or your society says its not truth.

One of the obvious things is that Hancock is a Super Hero. In today’s society, we have come to accept them as normal human beings with supernatural abilities. In one scene, Charlize’s character states something interesting:

“Superheroes, Gods, Angels.. different cultures call us by different names.”

There’s some truth to this. The Superhero movies have a duality to them.

#1: Fallen Angels

The first side to them is that they are the story of The Gods or Fallen Angels.

When movies have plots where the Superhero’s intermingle with humans and have children, known as Demi-Gods, it is a movie / TV show telling you the story of the Nephillim or Giants. Nephillim means from heaven to earth they came, to signify the Giants origins as they are the children of the Gods. While many deem the Nephillim to be Fallen Angels, this is not so. The Nephillim are not the Fallen Angels. The Nephillim are the offspring of the Fallen Angels by way of angelic and human relations. You saw this in Hancock being that Hancock is a God (or Fallen Angel).

One of the first scenes in the movie shows a young lady and her friends checking out Hancock as he is getting drunk at a bar. The woman follows him home and joins him in his trailer. The young lady is excited to lay with him because she knows that he is a Super Hero. This is not far-fetched. Women have been known to flock to the bed of the Gods. The bible tells us:

Gen 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
Gen 6:2 That the sons of Yah saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of Yah came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

The Sons of the Most High are the angels
The Daughters of Men are the human women
They Took Them Wives -The Gods or Fallen Angels married the Human women (Wedding ceremonies today are mimicked from the ceremonies of the Gods marriage to human women)
Went in Unto Them – Had Sex with Them
And Produced Children – Gave birth to Giants

Hancock takes place in the city of Los Angeles. (The Angels)

The Giants were a combination of flesh and spirit: Spirit from their fathers the Gods and flesh from the human women they took as Gods. There is evidence of Giants in the history of man.

“There were Giants in the earth in those days…”

“There were Giants in the earth in those days..and also after that.”

Let’s move on.

This is only one aspect of the Superhero movies. The next side may be considered controversial but it is what it is.

#2: His-Story

Another aspect is that of the African American. A lot of these Super Hero movies are incorporating pieces of his story. They are embedding messages that indicate that we are a people of power. If you think this is a stretch, let’s just let the movies speak for themselves. Let us take a look at some things in Heroes Reborn that are worth noting. Heroes Reborn is an excellent TV show picking up from its 2006 original Heroes.

The show is about humans with powers and there are quite a few African American themes. The Evo’s as they are called (Evolved Humans) are being persecuted and have to flee for safety. They are hunted down by dogs and other forms of torture. The most striking resemblance to our history however is the Underground Railroad. Not only is this system being used as a place of escape and safety for the Evo’s, but they are fleeing North to Canada. And the woman who is shown being led to the Underground Railroad in the Season Premier just happens to be a black woman and her black son. If you are not familiar with how The Underground Railroad was used or that blacks fled slavery north to Canada, I highly recommend you Google it and catch up to 2015. Or is this just a coincidence?

In the first X-Man, the woman who turns blue is ashamed of her color and the way that she looks. The saying she adopts is “Mutant and Proud”. But I suppose I’m stretching again huh? And that just happens to be strikingly familiar to “I’m Black and I’m Proud”.

There aren’t many black faces, but many of these shows are the stories of black people. That’s just the truth.

Anywho, that’s it for this weeks segment of Movie Night Friday.

Hancock is a funny movie, an educational one too. Check it out.

Movie Trailer:

Unfamiliar Faces – Lost to History

Have you ever wondered about those people who were part of history but who you never hear about? Sometimes people get lost to history. For whatever reason, their stories don’t make it to mainstream news, most of the time until years or even centuries later. Below is a list of four random people who were involved in major historical events in some way but whom we never hear much about. I will list a few every Thursday time permitting.

#1

Irene Morgan Kirkaldy in Hartford, Conn. Original Filename: A1.JPG ORG XMIT: ; 27

Irene Morgan – We have all heard of Rosa Parks, but there were at least three women who refused to give up their seats on the bus in the Jim Crow south over the course of history. Eleven years before Parks, Irene Morgan, later known as Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, an African-American woman, was arrested in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1944 for refusing to give up her seat on an interstate bus according to a state law on segregation. The Irene Morgan Decision inspired the men and women of CORE to create a nationwide protest movement called “The Journey of Reconciliation” when groups of civil rights activists rode buses and trains across states in the South in 1947, a sort of precursor to The Freedom Rides of 1961.

The Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, handed down a landmark decision on June 3, 1946, when they agreed that segregation violated the Constitution’s protection of interstate commerce. Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth served as a catalyst for further court rulings and the Civil Rights movement. Eight years later, the Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation violated Equal Rights Protection.

Irene Morgan died on August 10, 2007.

#2

Sarah Collins Rudolph – We’re all familiar with the story of the Four Little Girls who were killed in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama. However, there were five little girls who were injured, four died but one remained. Sarah Collins Rudolph is the fifth little girl who was injured in the 1963 bombing. Her story touches my heart because she was blinded and there is nothing like losing your eyes. In 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Sarah Collins Rudolph survived the blast, but her sister Addie Mae and three other girls were killed. Today, Sarah still struggles with the aftermath of the bombing.

Update (2017)

Speaking of Addie, another lost to history fact (something that is just becoming known but that didn’t make news upon discovery) is concerning Addie’s missing body. Thirty years after the bombing, her sisters visited the grave. Seeing the condition, the neglected state it was in, they decided to move the body to a better-maintained area. However, when they dug up the grave, they discovered the corpse was gone but not only was the corpse gone but so was the casket itself. Addie Mae’s body was missing. The last reported update came in May of this year (2017) when an underground radar company searched and found what appears to be a child’s casket. Read More Here

#3

Virgil Lamar Ware – Emmett Till wasn’t the only youngin who perished in that day. Virgil Lamar Ware is a name we don’t hear very often or probably never did. At 13, Virgil was riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle on September 15, 1963 when he was fatally shot by white teenagers. The white youths had come from a segregationist rally held in the aftermath of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Talk about six degrees of separation (Six degrees of separation is the theory that any person on the planet can be connected to any other person on the planet through a chain of acquaintances that has no more than five intermediaries.)

#4

Lamar Smith – We have all heard of Emmett Till who was murdered August 28 of 1955. What we don’t hear a lot about is the murder of Lamar Smith just two and a half weeks earlier of this same year. On August 13, 1955 in Brookhaven, Mississippi, a man named Lamar Smith was shot dead on the courthouse lawn by a white man in broad daylight while dozens of people watched. The killer was never indicted because no one would admit they saw a white man shoot a black man.

Beware of Flattery

Everyone wants to be appreciated at some point in their lives. At some point, everyone wants to be loved and encouraged every now and again. Flattery however is not the same as genuine praise. Not only is it counterproductive but its borderline insulting especially for the person being flattered upon. It is almost like lying or pretending to care.

Before I go on, I have to mention that not all flattery is bad. It is easy for introverts or those of us who are really shy, to be flattered by compliments. This form of flattery is likened to that of humility.

But how do you know if you’re flattering someone in a negative way or if someone is flattering you?

Ultra-Orthodox Praise

Flattery is known by what I like to call the Ultra-Orthodox Praise. This tends to really creep into my skin and tug at my nerve strings. The reason it’s so irritating is because it’s so fake. I’m sure I’m not the best thing since sliced bread. The Ultra-Orthodox Praiser however will lead you to believe otherwise. Likewise, you are not the best thing that has ever happened to me.

When someone has done something well tell them. Let them know they really touched you, how it made you feel and ways it has helped you to improve. Give credit where credit is due.

HOWEVER

Don’t overdo it. Making something out to be above what it’s worth is flattery and it does not help the giver or the receiver. When you discern this kind of flattery in your midst, don’t let it go to your head. Let’s look at some examples:

“You are very pretty and I love that new hair cut!”

Even though the word “very” was used this is a genuine compliment. The person stated what they saw in the person and showed also that they noticed something new about them. It shows that they are interested and truthful in regard to their praise.

“You are very pretty and I love the new haircut! Where’d you get it done?”

This compliment is also a good one. In fact it is better than the last one. Not only did this person notice the new hair cut but they made it a point to also ask questions. This engages the other person and shows genuine interest.

“You are by far the most beautiful person in the world! I wish I could marry you today.”

This is flattery. Is this person really the most beautiful person in the world? This is extra and is not helpful. Suppose the woman did think she was the most beautiful person ever, this will help her to do nothing but think too highly of herself. She will be filled with pride and no one will be able to tell her anything. So you see flattery is really unnecessary.

Now this next example is kinda tricky:

“I think your poetry is better than Maya Angelou’s.”

Is this a genuine compliment or is it flattery?

This is a genuine compliment. It’s genuine because it’s one person’s opinion about someone else. Remember that flattery is characterized by over-exaggeration, not necessarily the mention of famous individuals. It is also important to note that this is someone’s opinion and it is addressed as such. “I think” informs us of the nature of the statement and lets us know it is an opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Chances are the person really did think this poet’s work superseded Maya Angelou’s. It is their opinion. However, it is easy for this statement to have been one of flattery if the person went over the top with it:

“I think you should change your name to Maya Angelou since you’re such a great poet.

Though this is an opinion, it is also flattery. If the person really is a good poet, tell them but leave the extra stuff out. It only makes you look insincere and phony about what you’re saying unless it was understood that you were joking.

Why People Flatter

If you are in a situation where someone is flattering you, there are three possible reasons:

1). Envy

Believe it or not most people who are overtly zealous concerning certain individuals do not actually care for them, and their flattery is a cover. These people tend to over compensate to make it look like these people are their “besties,” but in reality they hope for their down fall. There is no reason to pretend or make someone out to be other than they are except if there are hidden motives.

2). Pity

Another result of flattery is pity. People are most likely to become victims of flattery by those who feel sorry for them in some way. If you’re attempting to build encouragement this is not the way to do it. People need to know the truth so that they can improve. You don’t have to be mean about it, but flattery is just as counterproductive.

3). They Want Something in Return

If someone is throwing unnecessary overtly zealous statements your way that are really over the top, another reason for this is that they want something from you. What they want can vary. Some people are so bad that they’ll do it just to get your attention.

How to React to Flattery

If you believe you are being flattered in negative ways just brush it off. Don’t be rude and try to jump down people’s throats for flattering you. However, don’t take it seriously. Flattery tends to be an over exaggerated form of an observation for the purpose of exacting pity, or trying to get your attention. It is sometimes based not off logic or genuine interest, but of hidden envy. Acknowledge it for what it is and keep it moving. Like the quote says, enjoy it. It may even be funny, may uplift you even but don’t swallow it. Remain humble. Mistaking flattery for truth can have its consequences. You can put yourself in the vulnerable position of being really hurt that someone was not honest with you. You will feel used and under appreciated. There is nothing like the real thing so never trade the truth for a moment of flattery. It hinders, it does not help.

If You’re a Flatterer

Sometimes we are just trying to be nice. But if you find yourself flattering a lot just keep it real with yourself always. You don’t have to over acknowledge someone, either their presence or talent, to make them feel special. If you are truly genuine they will know it and if they have good hearts they will appreciate it.

*Remember that genuine praise or excitement over someone or their work is not flattery.*

As seen in our examples, flattery tends to be over the top in unrealistic ways:

Flattering Comments

Finally, I have to bring up an important observation as it pertains to the blog world. Sometimes I get the feeling that there are certain instances where it appears differing perspectives are not welcomed in the blogosphere. Not from the comments I get since I have been fortunate to have genuine people leave their thoughts on the table and we have engaged in excellent conversations. However, while browsing the blogging world period (which doesn’t limit itself to WordPress), I do detect flattery in the comments area. Sometimes, not all the time. I know how important it is to be kind and I would never promote a debate (because its fruitless) but being nice and courteous doesn’t mean everyone will think the same or that everyone will be in agreement. That is not how it is in the real world. In fact, sometimes people may even get upset or agitated by a blog post. We need to understand that that’s OK as long as they maintain a level of self-control (no usage of profanity and angry outburst) because that’s real.

When giving commentary on someone’s blog make sure that you’re being real about it. Respect their blog as if walking into their home, but don’t make your comments so overlaid with flattery that it becomes fake.

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – Mariah Carey Hero

I have a song for you this afternoon as my contribution to Writer’s Quote Wednesday. This song is so beautiful that I thought I’d switch up my usual quotes with it. The verses that hit home for me this week were:

“So when you feel like hope is gone
Look inside you and be strong
And you’ll finally see the truth
That a hero lies in you…”

Mariah Carey – Hero

And no I am not feeling hopeless lol. I just like the song and I hope it is uplifting to your week as it has been to mine.

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And that’s it for me this week. Yall be great.

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