World of Writing, Interview

-- World of Writing --

 

Author, columnist, teacher, lecturer, past president of three advertising agencies, William R. Park, Sr. is nationally known and respected in the advertising and literary worlds—and a member of International Thriller Writers, Inc. His past works include: The Talking Stones, Overlay, Fatal Incision, plus ten others, each backed by glowing praise from numerous bestselling authors.

WR.PARK currently resides in the Kansas City area with his wife Genie. Visit his official site at: http://www.wrparkpublishinggroup.com/  or connect with him here:

https://twitter.com/park_wr

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4132383.WR_PARK

*Shout out to William's agent - Kelsey McBride of BookPublicityServices.com
 

Q: How and why did you begin writing novels?

After 42-years of writing thousands of newspaper, magazine, radio and Television ads as a national-known advertising executive it was the obvious thing to do.  In my interview with Publisher’s Auxiliary the bold headline read: “Old admen never die, they reinvent themselves.”  I took my own advice—and went on to write 14-suspense-thriller novels released by four independent publishers.  The last novel was The Franciscan, which  I decided to self-publish.

Q: Briefly tell us something about The Franciscan.

It’s a novel I wrote 14-years ago about a factitious pope whose changes to Catholic doctrine place his life in grave danger.  His name was Pope Francis.  Best Thrillers website wrote: “The Franciscan is a fast-moving feast of betrayal, corruption and murder told by a master craftsman. Unlike Dan Brown’s Robert Longdon, WR.PARK’s vision of a gutsy pope is far more engrossing.”

Q: What would you say is your most interesting writing quirk?

I pattern most all of my heroes after me.  Even the  physical description.  Hey, at my age it’s the most excitement I can have without taking off my clothes.  I stole that last line from a famous advertising agency executive.

Q: What has been the most surprising thing you learned from creating your books?    

  

That the characters write their own story.  At bed at night or in the morning, I lay imagining what they will do in the coming chapter and can’t wait until I sit down at the computer to see what happens next.  To my surprise the characters take the story in a direction that I did not imagine—and most often it better than anticipated.  I’ve heard other authors have had the same experience.

Q: What is your proudest writer moment?

Having bestselling authors like James Rollins, Jon Land, William Dietrich, R. Barri Flowers, Robert S. Levinson and W. Craig Reed review my body of work and compare them to the work of Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, Stephen Hunter, David Morrell and Tony Hillerman.

Q: We understand that you have another proud moment.

Yes.  It’s when New York Times bestselling author James Rollins wrote:  “I’ve been a fan of WR.PARK”s work for years.”

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well! 

recommended resource

-- Quote of the Day -- 

 " If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, 

I must first see, at least,

 that I do not pursue them 

sitting upon another man's shoulders."

  ~ Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

-- Recommended Resource -- 

Hey all - check out the Inhabitat website focusing on creating a better world... they have some ongoing, fresh, exciting topics there that I'm sure our readers would want to know about.  

Inhabitat | Design For a Better World!

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well! 

 

Solar Power News

 -- Quote of the Day -- 

 

“Better to keep yourself clean and bright; 

you are the window through which you see the world.” 

~ George Bernard Shaw

-- Positive News --

Alternative power is picking up by leaps and bounds across the globe! It is an exciting time we live in. You know, one of the issues with peak oil effect is that greener energy sources, combined, have to replace all that oil does for us with the same or similar power behind it. So can we fly a plane on solar? Can we power a train? These kinds of questions are certainly being answered. Scroll through the archives on this topic and you'll see we've highlighted incredible experiments and trials and successes over the years. 

Just recently I learned of the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft which runs entirely on solar power and is leading the way to proving solar can indeed replace oil. 

There are many ways of generating solar panels from the rental of solar panels to consumers directly, to consumers purchasing and outfitting their homes and businesses, to farms leasing land use without interrupting their food production, to solar farms on and off land. Some of those solar farms are absolutely monstrous, covering acres of land. Topaz Solar Farm (California, US) is a cluster of 9 million solar panels generating enough energy to power 160,000 US homes annually. There are numerous farms like these going up across California, Nevada and Arizona  such as Desert Sunlight farm and the Solar Star farm.  It is interesting to note that solar panels on roof tops and parking lots and over farm land and so on do not impede other human or animal activities. In fact they often utilize disturbed and desert-like land, and include careful consideration to wildlife / environment impacts.

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well! 

World of Writing, Interview

-- World of Writing -- 

It is time for another World of Writing Interview - this time with Communications Director for Saybrook University - Benjamin Wachs, who says "We're too ready to abandon the human for the technical. Our notion of what people are capable of - what makes us human - is getting narrower and narrower." and this interest in humanistic studies led him to his 2nd career as a writer.  *(Shout out to his PR agent:Isabella Michon of IMPublicity.com)

Benjamin writes for SF Weekly and a blogger for Burningman.com.  A multi-award winner for journalism, he traveled the world as a nightlife reporter for Playboy.com. And in A Guide to Bars and Nightlife in the Sacred City, his collection of short stories loosely based upon his travels, he proposes that humanity is turning to its bars and nightlife to ask its spiritual questions. His most recent book:

Q: Is there a connection between spirituality, music, and bars, during your travel experiences in the world?

Absolutely.  In no small part because there was a connection between these things during my life at this time. I sat down, meditated, and asked myself:  “What do I really want to be doing?”  And the answer eventually came back:  travel the world.  Bars originally had nothing to do with it. But it absolutely blended the world of bars and nightlife into my post-modern spiritual quest.

Q: How did you come up with the title A Guide to Bars and Nightlife in the Sacred City?

I started looking for patterns, and realized just how many stories from this period involved somebody walking into a bar, meeting someone, having a complicated discussion, rising sexual tension, and then an experience of the magical or divine that resolved it somehow.  

                                                                                                     

Q: Explain the "Sacred City"...

Every city is an outer borough of the Sacred City, which means if you go deep enough into any city … if you go where the dreams are dense and hopes are stacked like skyscrapers and possibility hangs out of windows like air conditioning … you step into it.  That much human activity, that much input, it’s a kind of prayer, and to go deep into the heart of it is to experience the holy and magical pumping through the city like blood.

I don’t know if we’re all looking for the Sacred City all of the time, but we’re all looking for it at some point in our lives.

Q: What can a city’s nightlife tell you about the people there?

It tells you about their aspirations and their taboos, along with the state of gender politics.  Discoveries like:

·      What vices the police tolerate, and which they crack down on

·      How much a bribe can let you get away with

·      Who people are pretending to be when they go out

Q: How many cities have you visited?  Which ones were the most exotic?

I can confirm fifty-one during the period of time that inspired these stories.  Twenty-six cities are covered in the book, including Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Budapest, Prague, Moscow, Istanbul, Zurich, and Rome.

The question of how exotic a city is must be matched by the question of who you are in it. I have seen teenagers enter the Kingdom of Death and leave talking about who had a crush on whom.  I have seen Americans walk right past great works of culture because they were looking for a beer.  I have seen first world liberals walk through Havana and miss the deprivation around them because they wanted it to be a worker’s paradise.  
 

Q: You’ve sung in some of history’s greatest cathedrals.  What was that like?

I love cathedrals so much, and I love singing in them.  Those acoustics aren’t an accident:  they were built on purpose.  To “see” a cathedral without experiencing the acoustics is to be half-blind.  

Q: Any life-changing revelations during your travels?

I discovered the following.

·      It’s important to not be afraid

·      Strangers will often be kinder to you than you would be to them

·      People who say they love you are far more likely to let you starve than are the people who work in a homeless shelter

·      People are absolute geniuses at finding innovative ways to make themselves miserable

Q: If you go deep enough you might find yourself.  Can you elaborate?

If you go deep enough in the Sacred City – that’s where the miracles happen.  Sometimes people who are looking to find themselves just need some time alone to think, or to be a good listener.  Sometimes … they need a sign. 

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well! 

Protecting Bees

-- Quote -- 

“If you want to reach the peak, you have to start from scratch.”

~ Ghulam Hassan

-- Positive News -- 

The Ontario government has made a decision to restrict the number of farm land treated with neonicotinoid insecticides (a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically similar to nicotine) by 80% by 2017 and move toward banning the chemical altogether. A fantastic move to protect bees!

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well! 

 

Poetry

 -- Quote of the Day --

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores over his fellows:  he catches the changes of his mind on the hop." 

~ Vita Sackville-West

 -- Poetry --

I love sharing poetry on this blog - be it mine or written by someone else - and today I'm going to share one poem excerpt from Rhythm and Rhyme written by my husband Dave. This poem he says is "my theses on the magic of the power of music. How it keeps us young and takes us away from the blues of everyday life. I believe it is the element that sets people who play music apart from those that don't. We have the ability to sit in that sandbox and play without a care in the world for what is going on around us at the time."

Groove Yard

As children we play, in the dirt we get down

Oblivious to all that's going on all around.

Then we grow up and we seem to lose

That ability to shut off the world's blues.

We tend to get tangled in every day's grief 

Without any output to get some relief.

Making music it seems, is like being a kid once again

Nothing else matters it's just you and your friends.

When we go play we can easily forget

All the stressful things that make us all fret.

Yet if we forget to stop and play

We have lost the power of the child's way

In the Groove Yard - sitting in the sandbox

Playing in the playpen - being with your friends, and

Going to the Groove Yard - you don't have to work hard

But to take a part - you've got to have heart 

While you're in the Groove Yard.

You may be sick and you might feel down.

Things in your world are turning you around, 

But music has charms to sooth that beast

It usually works - you've got to try it at least.

We've tried the drinks and pipes to make things abuzz

But nothing has the kick that making music does. 

As musicians we play, and when we get down,

There is no stopping us, we're painting the town.

We'll not give up the power at any cost

Of that childhood ability that's so easily lost.

That way of getting through everyday grief

Because we still have the output to get relief.

There is no explaining the feeling we get

When it's all over at the end of a set.

shell-shocked from the venting of emotions

Onto a canvas of musically inspired devotions.

Humor flows and wise-crackers attack

As we wait and discuss when we can get back.

In the Groove Yard - sitting in the sandbox

Playing in the playpen - being with your friends, and

Going to the Groove Yard - you don't have to work hard

But to take a part - you've got to have heart 

While you're in the Groove Yard.

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well! 

 

Save Money, Cut Costs, Pay Bills

How To Pay Your Bills When You Are Broke

* Written by: Oliver J Kingsley

It seems like your bills keep getting bigger and bigger and you are barely getting to the next paycheck. Maybe you can't even pay all of your bills anymore. What can you do to get bills under control so you have more money available?

The easiest way to get started turning your financial situation around is to quickly cut spending to free up some cash. Everyone has some spending they can cut and then use that money to pay down bills. At first, you may think that you don't have any "extra" spending, but almost everyone has optional expenses they can cut to get more cash right away. You have to decide it is worth some effort and sacrifice to find some things you can live without and break some spending habits you have developed.
Here are 10 ways to cut expenses quickly to get cash to pay bills:

• Cut cable TV / satellite TV- most people could save $100 per month

• Stop eating out. Make all of your food at home, including lunches that you can take with you. Most people can save hundreds of dollars per month.

• Stop paying for entertainment. No movies or ballgames for a while until you get your bills under control.

• Arrange with your bank and credit card companies to "skip a payment" on some of your bills. Many companies will allow you to skip a payment once a year. You can use the payment that you got to skip to pay a different bill to catch up

• Cancel travel plans. You need to stay home, not spend money traveling away from home. Even driving trips to stay with relatives cost money.

• Stop using credit cards. Keep cash in your purse or wallet and spend that instead of using credit cards. It is harder to spend "real" money, so you will tend to spend less and notice how much you are spending.

• Drive less. You will save money on gas plus wear-and-tear on your car. If you are out-and-about less, you'll encounter less opportunities to spend money too.

• Can you sell your car? If you have more than one car in your household, or live near public transportation, you may be able to sell a car which will give you some cash and remove a car payment from your budget.

• Defer expenses such as buying new clothes, new shoes, or getting your hair done.

• Cut your Internet service at home. Painful, I know, but if you can use Internet at work or at the library you can save $50 per month starting now.
  

These tips to cut spending and sell unneeded items can give you a jump-start to get back on track financially. You may need to look at increasing your income by getting a second job or higher paying job if your bills have exceeded your income capacity.

For more tips on saving money, check out this FREE eBook: Pinch Like You Mean It! 101 Ways to Spend Less Money Now
 https://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/Pinch-Like-You-Mean-It-101-Ways-to-Spend-Less-Money-Now

*  *  And be sure to check out the Brummet’s Trash Talk - It's Easy To Be Green book series to learn how to be green while saving a great deal of cash as well. *  * 

Trash Talk - It's Easy To Be Green book#1

Trash Talk - It's Easy To Be Green book#2

 Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well!