This post is for Alex Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writers Support Group (click the link for details on what that means and how to join. You will also find a list of bloggers signed up to the challenge that are worth checking out. The first Wednesday of every month, we all post our thoughts, fears or words … Continue reading
I read recently that 70% of millennials get their news from Facebook. Really? Isn’t Facebook a place to share personal information, stay in touch with friends and families, post pictures of weddings and birthdays? So why do students turn to it for news? And then, not two days later, I heard Twitter has reclassified their … Continue reading
My current WIP, Lucy (renamed Born in a Treacherous Time), is complicated. It delves into the life of earliest man with all of its threats and dangers, as well as the inventions of those big brain ideas that changed the world (like stone tools and fire). I’ve read everything available on the topic from my local … Continue reading
Those who follow this blog know I read constantly–far too much, but it’s not something I can control. I curl up with a good book, start on page one (or the preface), lose track of time, and suddenly I’ve finished the book and am looking for the next. As I roll through book after book, … Continue reading
The Law of Primitive Man: A Study in Comparative Legal Dynamics by E. Adamson Hoebel My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews I have a long-standing passion for early man. He is my ancestor. He laid the foundation for what we as Modern Man accomplishes. How did he survive in a feral … Continue reading
Meeting Prehistoric Man by GHR Von Koenigswald My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews Meeting Prehistoric Man (Thames and Hudson 1956) by GHR Von Koenigswald is a journey in discovery of early man as paleoanthropologists understood him circa 1950. Research was well-established in places like East Africa’s Olduvai Gorge and South Africa’s Witwatersrand, … Continue reading
Margaret Meade was born in 1901, a time when a woman’s place wasn’t doing field research in island jungles. That didn’t matter to her a wit when she went to Samoa at the age of twenty-three to study the life of the residents. Turned out, she had an excellent eye for decoding what she saw. … Continue reading
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews Everyone knows Albert Einstein–smart man, came up with E=MC2, helped create the atomic bomb–but I didn’t know much beyond the hype. That’s why I picked up Walter Isaacson’s award-winning book Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon and … Continue reading
‘Creative non-fiction’ is defined by Lee Gutkind–founder of Creative Non-fiction Magazine–as “true stories well told.” The words “creative” and “nonfiction” describe the form. The word “creative” refers to the use of literary craft, the techniques fiction writers, playwrights, and poets employ to present nonfiction—factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid, dramatic … Continue reading
I mean from a writer’s perspective. If you had a character who was a hacker (or a cracker), how would you make him convincing. To be believable, you have to enter their mindset. Here are some ideas I’ve gotten from my computer friends and The New Hacker’s Dictionary: Though it’s a common stereotype that programmers … Continue reading
