Archive for December 2010
Just posted review at SBR for “The Waters Rising”
Folks, please go read my review of Sheri S. Tepper’s unique, thought-provoking novel THE WATERS RISING. It is a novel that’s slow to develop, yet I enjoyed it a great deal — novels do not have to start quickly to be understood. (I wish more agents realized this; Ms. Tepper thanked hers, so he at least obviously understands this. Though I also realize that as Ms. Tepper is a well-known author, someone readers will seek out, that analogy only goes so far.)
At any rate, please go read my review, then check out Ms. Tepper’s book. Perhaps if more people read interesting novels like this one, agents won’t be so leery of trying something new. (One can only hope, anyway.)
Here’s the link:
Elizabeth Edwards dies at 61
Elizabeth Edwards, a Democratic Party activist, a mother, a wife, a brilliant lawyer and much, much more, died today at the age of 61.
I never had a chance to meet Mrs. Edwards, though I read her book, RESILIENCE, and was impressed by it, and I’d heard her cogent political commentary during the 2004 and 2008 elections due to her husband John Edwards having run for the Democratic nomination for President in both election cycles (and having accepted a bid to be John Kerry’s Vice Presidential nominee for the Democratic Party in 2004). Mrs. Edwards was an advocate for health care for all, and for increased cancer screening and testing — this was partly due to the breast cancer which she’d had for years, and which took her life.
What I think with regards to Elizabeth Edwards is this: she was a fighter. She did not quit. She did not give up. And she did her level best to turn lemons, like her cancer diagnosis, or her teenage son Wade’s death in an automobile accident, or her husband John’s flagrant affair with Rielle Hunter during the 2008 Presidential campaign, into lemonade.
In other words, Elizabeth Edwards was the type of person who didn’t let anything throw her, anything shock her, or anything stop her for very long. She was a truly admirable woman, someone with a great strength of character.
She will be missed by many, including me.
WinningWriters.com Mentions My Blog in their end-of-the-year Newsletter
Folks, I was very pleased to see that WinningWriters.com had mentioned my blog in their recent end-of-the-year newsletter — though I knew in advance that they were at least thinking about it as I’d heard from WinningWriters.com editor Jendi Reiter (herself an excellent poet) that they appreciated what I’d written in my second blog about their War Poetry Contest.
I once again do not know how to properly give links to WinningWriters.com as this isn’t a page I found a way to see without actually logging in, but I can cut and paste what they said, first about my blog:
*******
BARB CAFFREY’S BLOG: “More on the War Poetry Contest at WinningWriters.com”
We appreciate Barb Caffrey’s recent comments about our War Poetry Contest on her blog. Here is an excerpt:“Those fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq deserve our support, and our understanding. And the first part of giving our support and our understanding is to listen, to read, and to understand—not to shut out the soldiers who’ve given everything of themselves in order to derail the al-Qaedas and Talibans of this world so perhaps fewer innocents will die than would’ve died had our soldiers not given everything they have in the attempt.
“The War Poetry contest is a good way to keep the conversation going, and to understand exactly what is going on with our returning soldiers and how hard it is to deal with what most of us see as ‘normality’ after dealing with things that no man, or woman, or child should ever have to see. It also is a way to affirm the sacrifices of our men and women in a positive, life-affirming way.”
****** End cut-and-paste from Newsletter.
The kind folks at WinningWriters.com also listed my publication credits — more of ’em than I’d expected, actually, though I was very pleased with the “shout-out” — in this bit from the newsletter, once again cut and pasted:
Barb Caffrey has placed four short stories with e-Quill Publishing, a new e-book publisher in Australia: her original tale “The Fair at South Farallon”, a science fiction satire about aliens, friendship, and unemployment; “Iron Falls”, a near-future military suspense tale co-authored with Piotr Mierzejewski; and two stories co-authored with her late husband Michael B. Caffrey, “Trouble with Elfs” and “A Dark and Stormy Night: A Joey Maverick Adventure”. Three of Mr. Caffrey’s stories about Princess Columba and her shapeshifting cat/husband have also been released by e-Quill as a special anthology. Her poem “A Love Eternal” will appear in e-Quill’s anthology of poems about mortality. Visit their author pages (at e-Quill Publishing — www.equillpublishing.com). Ms. Caffrey blogs at https://elfyverse.wordpress.com. In other news, her poem “No Rest” was accepted by Midwest Literary Magazine for inclusion in their November issue and their anthology Bearing North.
********* end cut-and-paste.
I really appreciate them mentioning Michael’s work — his “Columba” stories — and that they mentioned my blog, not once, but twice.
I’ve known about this for a few days, but wanted to wait to post until Sunday — as Sunday is, for many, a day of private reflection where we might, occasionally, remember to give thanks for the good things which happen to us (along with condemning the bad ones, which tends to go on every single day).
Anyway, I’m very pleased about this; I just wish I knew how to give some decent links. But since I don’t, please go look at WinningWriters.com for yourself and sign up for the basic newsletter as it’s free — and as I’ve said before, I’ve found it very helpful and interesting.
BTW, the links that the kind folks at Winning Writers put in didn’t work when I cut and pasted them into this e-mail — I had to take them out (as they all referred back to WordPress’s “types of blogs” thing, which wasn’t what they should’ve done) — including the link to the War Poetry Contest itself. My apologies in advance for that error . . . I’m not great with links, but this is the first time a simple cut-and-paste did not work.
Just reviewed David P. Clark’s “Germs, Genes and Civilizations” for SBR.
Folks, I hope you’ll enjoy this book review — it’s on a subject most of us take for granted (if we think about it at all), and that is: how have humans gotten to this point, genetically, and why have we evolved in this particular way, with the particular set of genes that we have? And how has all of this impacted history, or is likely to affect it in the future?
David P. Clark’s excellent GERMS, GENES AND CIVILIZATIONS answers many of these questions in a thoughtful and humorous way; it’s a book that leaves you with a sense you’ve really learned something, but haven’t hated the learning process — and that you might actually enjoy learning something from this particular “teacher” (in this case, writer) again.
Please go read my review: http://shinybookreview.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/clarks-germs-genes-and-civilization-microbes-and-viruses-have-strong-role-in-history/
Barb Caffrey's Blog 