The Lucky Elephant--March, 2010

Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) is turning eighteen and is deeply disturbed by the fact that her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) will remain seventeen for eternity. While most people can push fears about their mortality off into the distant future, she has a constant reminder of her own aging. After Bella gets a paper cut and sends one of the Cullen clan into a frenzy, Edward fears the danger she's in and finds the first excuse he can to skip town and avoid contact with her. While he's gone, Bella starts to grow closer to her friend Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner). A vengeful vampire is also lurking about, apparently wanting to kill Bella while her protectors the Cullens are gone.

Harlequin Enterprises is the biggest publisher in Romance and one of the biggest publishers in the world. They are the gold standard when it comes to romance, and romance is the biggest selling genre right now. Over 500 romance novels are published every month, and while the rest of the publishing world is hitting hard economic times, romance publishers continue to turn a profit every quarter. Harlequin included. But Harlequin is a corporation, and the one thing that corporations are always looking after is the bottom line. So who can really blame Harlequin for expanding into new forums and new publishing models? They recently opened an epublisher that will take advantage of the current trend of digital publishing. They also announced a brand new program called Harelquin Horizons.

TITLE: A Hearing Heart
AUTHOR: Bonnie Dee
PUBLISHER: Liquid Silver Books
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 94k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $6.10

Catherine Johnson is the new schoolteacher in the small town of Broughton, Nebraska. When she witnesses a man getting hauled from the saloon and tied to a horse to be dragged through the streets, she races forward to stop them, succeeding in slowing them down long enough to get other locals involved. Jim Kinney is deaf-mute, communicating in only the most rudimentary ways. Most of the town thinks he’s stupid, too, but Catherine sees intelligence in him, and takes it upon herself to try and teach him to read and sign after saving him from the attack. Their friendship quickly escalates, their attraction undeniable, but their difference in social status makes Catherine wonder if they could have any kind of future…

I've been coaching baseball now for 22 years, with a year of coaching little kids in tee-ball before that. That's probably more coaching experience than most people will ever get in a lifetime and something I take more and more pride in as the years go by. It has resulted in some interesting experiences and lessons that I'm always happy to share with whoever asks. And now, I'm gonna share a few thoughts with you.

This article is written primarily for the North American visitor to these shores. It may be of some use to others but addresses specifically those things that I think in my infinite wisdom would be useful for the average American or Canadian visitor to Ireland. These are just a few things you should know before embarking on a vacation here. 

Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine star in this intense 1961 B&W drama of two friends that run a private school for girls. The movie starts by introducing most of the principal characters. Audrey is Karen Wright and Shirley is Martha Dobie. They have been best friends since they were 17 and are now 28. About 2 years ago they opened the Wright Dobie School, a private school for upper class girls. The school has just gone into the black and hopes are high. They are supporting Martha’s eccentric aunt Lily Mortar a past her prime thespian played by Miriam Hopkins. The two friends have clearly been putting in very long hours. Teaching and caring for their students. They seem to do all the cleaning and cooking too.

Karen (Audrey) is engaged to young Doctor Joe Cardin played well by James Garner who works at the local hospital. He is impatient to marry her and seems a bit sexually frustrated. One of the students is his young cousin Mary played by Karen Balkin. Her Grandmother Amelia Tilford is her caregiver but it is never explained why. She has enrolled young Mary in the school. Amelia is played by Fay Bainter. There appears to be only about 20 students in the school.

Every year, about two weeks before Halloween, people start talking about NaNoWriMo. They began mentioning possible ideas, blog about their plans, start threads on message boards to meet other participants, start asking if others plan to give it a go this year, and generally behaving as though this is a great, fun game. In fact, the concept of writing a novel as a game is so interwoven in this month that there are "winners" and "losers." What do you have to do to win? Finish 50,000 words, of course! That's it. That's all. It actually seems like a rather harmless activity. One that I shouldn't have any issue with. It keeps people occupied and happy and hell, I'm always posting encouragement to writers. I love helping new writers--I'm a writing teacher for God's sake! But I hate NaNoWriMo, and I'll tell you why.

TITLE: A Report from Winter
AUTHOR: Wayne Courtois
PUBLISHER: Lethe Press
LENGTH: Novel
GENRE: Gay memoir
COST: $15.00

In January 1998, Wayne Courtois returned to Portland, Maine, the home of his youth, after a ten-year absence to sit at the bedside of his dying mother in the last week of her life. This is the account of that last week…

Memoirs are sometimes difficult things to read. When done well, they can often cut too close to the bone, creating a schism amongst a reader’s reactions. When done poorly, they are just like any other genre and end up getting dismissed as self-indulgent, or a waste of reading time. A Report from Winter falls into the former category, and while the subject matter of a parent’s death might not necessarily lend itself to casual reading, the writer’s keen, stark prose and decidedly unidealistic approach to the people in his life more than make it worthwhile.

A Hero’s Journey: The making of a Taekwondo Black Belt

If you have ever read Joseph Campbell (and if you haven’t, go do so!), you will know that he writes about mythology. Campbell says that all myths from all cultures fall into one or more archetypical structures, one of which is the monomyth, or the hero’s journey. He himself summarized the concept of the hero’s journey in his introduction to The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Leaves are changing color, the air is crisp, and you're noticing Mason jars on the shelf at your local grocer or hardware store. Perhaps you idly wonder who, at this point in history, has time for home preserving. Then you move on, filling your cart with commercially packaged jars, cans, and cardboard boxes.

But what if you decided to give canning a chance? Sounds hilariously old-fashioned, doesn't it? What's next, a pickling crock? (Well, okay, I do use one of those, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.) Rumor has it some people take up home canning because they want to create delicious concoctions or because they want to carry on family traditions. Me, I started three years ago in self defense. My partner Joe and I haven't yet managed to convince our two cats to eat fruits and vegetables, and when we signed up for a community-supported agriculture program we had no idea there would be weeks we'd get twelve pints of blueberries or several heads of cabbage at once. We only have so much fridge space; it was either going to be home canning or drowning in produce.