Images of Betrayal – Review

On January 29, 2009January 29, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writers, writing5 Comments

Tyson doesn’t have time for movies, the mall, or school because her parents have abandoned her to a roach infested apartment with paper-thin walls in the bad part of town. She works as a waitress at a diner where the tips are hardly enough to pay the rent or buy the groceries. Then, things get worse.

Claire Collins has created a practical and responsible teenage protagonist with true grit. But practicality alone doesn’t solve the problem of a mysterious photographer named Walker who shows up at the diner with mesmerizing eyes and a stare that doesn’t quit. He has a camera that predicts the future and from the photographs of violence he shares with her, Ty’s future looks bleak. Worse yet, her friends are under threat as well.

This fine mystery is well written and well paced. The characters are three-dimensional and they react to danger the way everyday people do, and goodness knows, Collins has provided plenty of danger. The book is hard to put down as one problem after another appears.

While the climax of the novel really works, the denouement is a little too perfect to seem realistic. Readers used to books being set in the traditional and more-legible Roman font may find the sans serif type face a little difficult to get used to.

That said, this book will get your attention and keep it. What fun!

Images of Betral was published by Second Wind Publishing (“The Best Authors You Haven’t Read Yet.”) Collins is also the author of Fate and and Destiny, “A romantic thriller set on a snowy mountaintop. During a blizzard, Andrew’s dog, Shadow, finds destiny–a beautiful woman left for dead, but very much alive. With her she brings mystery, danger and passion to the little cabin.“

Collins’ books are available on line at Second Wind and major booksellers.

Why I Write

On January 26, 2009January 26, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

It’s been quite obvious to me over the years that most people think writers are screwed up people.

While I’ve served on an aircraft carrier, run a locomotive, used a backhoe, driven spikes on a new RR roadbed, delivered papers, and been the voice you hear when you want computer phone support, this doesn’t cover up the fact that I’m a writer. Like Jack Palance in the movie “Shane,” I stop conversation when I come into a room. It’s not because everyone’s waiting for me to say something quotable, it’s because “regular people” see writers as different.

Variously, we are cursed, crazy, bookish, studious, libertine, bohemian, licentious, and ultra-left wing. Storytellers, like magicians, circus people, actors and patent medicine salesmen have always been seen as part of a con or a scam or the occult.

I see myself as none of these things, but it’s hard to shed the images in other people’s mind’s eye.

I see writing as a career like any other. While some writers become rich and famous, that’s not the norm. Most authors cannot earn a living from their novels. Like the rancher, insurance salesman, school principal, truck driver and computer programmer, I’m a working to support my family and maybe take a vacation once in a while.

My father was a writer, so that was an influence, just as the sons of ranchers and salesmen and teachers often step into their parents’ professions. It’s what they know and it’s what I know.

After people work a job for a while, they get better at it, and they learn tips and tricks for making it more meaningful to them in the context of their lives. Some people hang out in shops and break rooms; I hang out in libraries.

People in all professions believe that–even though they need to earn a living–the work they do is beneficial to the world, probably not the entire world, but to those they meet day to day. A friendly truck driver will stop when s/he sees your broken down car on the shoulder of an Interstate. A writer disseminates information and ideas s/he hopes will be of value, practically and/or spiritually.

My novel The Sun Singer is a case in point. First, I was writing what I know: mountains, hiking, climbing and a touch of mysticism. Such things can be entertaining and give readers a few hours of fun. But I also saw a deeper message in The Sun Singer, a path toward personal transformation that readers could either accept or reject without losing track of the entertainment value of the adventure story. I’m not a guru and wouldn’t want to be one. I don’t have the cosmic scheme of things figured out. But maybe I can say a few things that will help others to figure it out and get as close to the truth as they can. That’s everyone’s calling, isn’t it?

We’re all trying to make the world better while keeping food on the table. The work is practical and spiritual. I try to live that in my life as a writer because it’s what I fell into, or possibly what I was led into. My best friend from high school fell into being a captain of tall ships that sail around the world. What a unique profession that is, yet he sees me as the crazy one. Go figure. He sails and I write. It pays the bills and makes for a wonderful life.

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Coming February 19th

cowboycover I‘m pleased to announce that Vivian Zabel, author of “Prairie Dog Cowboy,” will be here on February 19th to discuss her new book. What a wonderful story it is!

Four of the people (within the U.S. and Canada) who stop by and ask a question or make a comment on my blog and/or the other blogs she is visiting will receive a canvas tote bag with Zabel’s 4RV Publishing logo.

While she’s here, please don’t act like writers are screwed up. Play like we’re a couple of ranchers.

Court Orders Feds to Stop Utah Leasing

On January 20, 2009January 20, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn conservation2 Comments

National Resources Defense Council News Release:

More than 110,000 acres of Utah wilderness will be protected from oil and gas companies as a result of a ruling Saturday night by Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of the U.S. District Court. Judge Urbina granted a temporary restraining order that prevents the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) from moving forward with these leases. A coalition of environmental groups — led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, the Wilderness Society, and Earthjustice — filed a lawsuit on December 17, 2008 to prevent the leasing of public lands.

“This ruling is a huge victory in protecting our nation’s pristine wilderness from destruction due to oil and gas drilling,” said Sharon Buccino, senior attorney for NRDC. “We do not need to sacrifice our wild lands to achieve a secure energy future.”

In his ruling, Judge Urbina found that the conservation groups “have shown a likelihood of success on the merits” and that the “‘development of domestic energy resources’ … is far outweighed by the public interest in avoiding irreparable damage to public lands and the environment.” The merits of the case will be heard later in 2009. Until that time, BLM is prohibited from cashing the checks issued for the contested acres of Utah wilderness.

“We’re thrilled with this decision,” said Stephen Bloch, Conservation Director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. “BLM’s attempt to sell these leases just before the Bush administration left office has been showcased for what it really is — a parting gift to the oil and gas industry. Judge Urbina’s decision firmly puts the brakes on these plans.”

The contested areas near Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Dinosaur National Monument, and Nine Mile Canyon include lands that contain the nation’s greatest density of ancient rock art and other cultural resources. These lands were recently made available to industry through hastily approved resource management plans that have serious ramifications for 3 million acres of public lands.

“Under the Bush administration, the Bureau of Land Management pushed through Resource Management Plans that treated some of America’s most sensitive and spectacular public lands as the private playgrounds of the oil and gas companies,” said Bill Hedden, Executive Director of Grand Canyon Trust. “Today’s heartening court decision gives these unique places a last second pardon from forever sacrificing their archaeological treasures, pristine air and remote wildness in order to sate only an hour or two of our national addiction to oil and gas.”

“When we begin to allow oil drilling in the backdrop of an icon like Arches National Park, we know something needs to change,” said Sierra Club representative Myke Bybee. “It’s time to stop handing over our natural treasures just so the oil industry can make more money. Instead, we could be investing in efficiency and the kind of clean energy that will benefit all of us and leave our best wild places intact.”

Three posts for writers

On January 15, 2009January 15, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writers, writing

Many of you know I also maintain a Typepad weblog called Writer’s Notebook. If you love reading, writing and books, I invite you to take a look at several of my latest posts:

The people who visit you online are more than numbers

NEA: More Americans are Reading Literature

Your passions fuel your reading

You can find recent book reviews posted on my March of Books page on my web site and you can see my author’s web log on Blogger called Sun Singer’s Travels.

As always, thanks for the visit!

Bush administration rushes to strip protections from Northern Rockies wolves

On January 14, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn conservation2 Comments

Defenders of Wildlife News Release:

WASHINGTON, DC. – Today, in a last-ditch effort by the Bush administration to undermine environmental protections, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that the Northern Rockies gray wolf will be taken off the Endangered Species List. This decision is yet another attempt to prematurely strip wolves of legal protection before the clock runs out next Tuesday on the most anti-environment administration in American history.

The Bush administration’s prior effort to delist the Northern Rockies wolf was rebuffed in federal court and then voluntarily withdrawn by the FWS shortly afterwards. This latest attempt to remove federal protection for wolves is not based on new science and does not fix the legal deficiencies cited by the federal court when it blocked the previous delisting attempt. Moreover, in rushing to again delist wolves, the Bush administration ignored calls by Defenders of Wildlife and others to involve stakeholders throughout the region in developing a strategy that addresses inadequate state wolf management plans, particularly in Wyoming and Idaho, and meets the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.

Below is a statement by Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, regarding today’s announcement.

“This blatantly political maneuver is hardly surprising. The Bush administration has been trying to strip Endangered Species Act protections from the Northern Rockies wolf since the day it took office – no matter the dire consequences of delisting wolves prematurely and without adequate state protections in place.

“The Bush administration is forcing the future of wolves in the region to play out in the courts by finalizing a delisting rule in its last hours in office. We intend to challenge this poorly constructed decision in court as soon as the law allows. It is outrageous that the Bush administration has chosen to create this unnecessary legal problem for the new Obama administration to deal with as it takes office.

“It is nonsensical to rush this rule through when states have plans in place to kill hundreds of wolves as soon as they’re delisted from federal protection. If the wolf population drops to the minimum of 300 to 450 wolves in the entire region, we already know, based on the most current science, that it cannot remain genetically viable for the long-term.

“We need to slow the process down and make sure it is done right – using science as the benchmark for recovery goals. Today’s delisting rule fails adequately to address biologists’ concerns about the lack of genetic exchange among wolf populations in the Northern Rockies.

“If allowed to stand, this rule would mean that the Northern Rockies wolf population could be slashed by as much as two-thirds, placing approximately 1,000 of the region’s roughly 1,450 wolves in peril. This is a loss from which they most likely would be unable to recover.”

“We trust that the Obama administration will see this for what it is, one last anti-environment blast from the most anti-environment administration in American history. We look forward to working with the new administration to fix this and to ensure wolf recovery that truly merits taking wolves off the endangered species list. That will be an accomplishment to celebrate.”

Below is a statement from Suzanne Asha Stone, Defenders of Wildlife representative for the Northern Rockies:

“Ramming through a flawed plan that has already been rejected by the courts doesn’t make any sense. The bottom line is wolves are a wildlife resource and an important part of our natural resources heritage. Wolves should be managed to maintain sustainable healthy populations, the way we manage mountain lions, bears and other wildlife. The states should not be allowed to kill two thirds of our regional wolf population just because wolves lose federal protection.

Our regional residents need a science based delisting plan that addresses the needs of both wolves and people. Instead of forcing this issue back into the courts, the Service should help bring all interested parties to the table, allowing stakeholders to iron out solutions to the management conflicts. We can move forward to delisting, and we should, but only under rationale conditions.

Our only reasonable course of action is again to challenge the delisting in court until the Service takes a science based approach towards long term recovery goals for wolves in the Northern Rockies.”

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Defenders of Wildlife is dedicated to the protection of all native animals and plants in their natural communities. With more than 1 million members and activists, Defenders of Wildlife is a leading advocate for innovative solutions to safeguard our wildlife heritage for generations to come. For more information, visit http://www.defenders.org.

Walsh: Telling somebody else’s story

On January 9, 2009January 9, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing6 Comments

Author Neale Donald Walsh (Conversations with God) finds himself in the awkward position of being a well-known spiritual author with an apparent lapse of memory.

It turns out, according to the New York Times, that the personal Christmas essay he posted on beliefnet.com about a pageant his son was in wasn’t his essay and wasn’t about his son.

Candy Chand, the real author, published the story 10 years ago in “Clarity.” The essay also appeared in “Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul” in 200o.

The essay has been removed with Walsh saying that he’s been telling that story for years in speaking engagements with the absolute belief that it came out of his life. Walsh wonders if somebody sent it to him over the Internet years ago and it somehow became a part of his history.

Chand doesn’t think so.

Since it wasn’t my work that was lifted and claimed by another author, I’m free to say “I wonder” about this as I recall all the things that people in my life have told as yarns for so long, they could have passed a lie detector test on their belief in the truth of the events in spite of the fact they never happened. Not in their lives anyhow.

Nonetheless, I understand Chand’s skepticism.

Publisher Cancels Novel Found to Be Based on True Story

On January 4, 2009 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing3 Comments

New York City, January 4, 2009–Conglomo House announced this morning “with substantial remorse” that it has canceled the scheduled February 1st release of Mack Hooper’s novel Stiffs Scattered Down a Lonely Road because the book was found to have been based on actual events.

While police in Hooper’s hometown of Junction City, Texas, have long questioned the synchronicity of the plot line with local events, Conglomo House editors steadfastly defended the novel as “a pack of lies” since last summer even though the first-time author failed the standard pre-contract polygraph test when he claimed he wasn’t telling the truth.

According to uninformed sources, the discovery of truth in a novel is evidence per se of breach of contract.

“Ignoring the results of the polygraph test was a bad judgement call on our point,” said former acquisitions editor Nell Quickly. “We were in too much of a rush to get Hooper’s shocking, sharply written thriller about the horrifying demise of a minister’s five former trophy wives out to the public.”

Junction City police chief Hank Kruller told reporters at a County Line Road news conference that gossip columnist Monique Starnes, writing about the novel in the local Star-Gazer, caught his attention when she said, “This story is so real, readers will smell fresh blood on the page. You just can’t make stuff like this up.”

“While I thought Starnes was just another fru-fru reporter out there making it up, I began to suspect Hooper wasn’t,” Kruller said.

According to Conglomo House editor in chief Fred Smith, publishers often find it necessary to cancel memoirs that turn out to have been faked, but withdrawing a novel based on claims of veracity is unusual.

“Speaking off the record,” said Smith, “I’m a busy man trying to reduce the amount of red ink around here, so don’t expect me to run for the border when some small town Barney Fife leaves me a voice mail asking if I know that all five of Hooper’s ex-wives have come up missing.”

Hooper’s agent Lucy Lake, his greatest fan ever since the manuscript for Stiffs Scattered Down a Lonely Road arrived in an old gun case three years ago, said she not only saw the novel as the best crime fiction to come across her desk in years, but one that would bring “hen-pecked male readers” a substantial amount of vicarious pleasure.

“Mack told me the stains on the manuscript were ketchup,” she said.

When confronted with the shallow unmarked graves scatted down County Line Road three miles from his parsonage, Hooper confessed to having based his novel on the unsolved crime. He was subsequently taken into custody for obstruction of justice and improper use of poetic license.

“If he’d come forward when he began writing the novel and told us who his protagonist Jack Cooper really is,” said Kruller, “we might have been able to close this case before all of Hooper’s wives were dead and buried. What a great memoir that might have made for the bean counters at Conglomo House.”

from the Morning Satirical News

Remembering Favorite Moments in 2008

On December 28, 2008December 28, 2008 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn mountains7 Comments

Both the Internet and the print media are filled with lists these days, the best fiction and nonfiction, the biggest tragedies, the most important events.

I could make my own list and then dwell upon it as though the existence of the list somehow validates something about my life.

I would include the fact that my nephew took his own life and that my novel completed in March has not yet found a willing publisher. I would include the fact that I saw my daughter and her husband and my 11-month-old granddaughter and that I’m stepping down as the chair of our local historic preservation commission in two more days. My wife and I had a great time with family in Memphis over Thanksgiving and with my wife’s folks on Christmas day.

Yet, I can see that even if I took these events and listed them with numbers or bullets, the presentation would completely miss the joy and the pain they brought me and other people.

So, as the year ends, I’d much rather leave a photograph or two, each of which is worth a thousand words, and say that the moments captured in pixels will always bring a smile to my face when I think of both the innocent deer and the sweet voice of the water.

Deer along the roadway between Lake Louise and Banff

Best wishes for a happy new year as you think back on your favorite moments of 2008.

December 22nd Checklist

On December 22, 2008 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life2 Comments

Sneak wife’s last present into house and wrap it without getting caught.
Eat nutritious raspberry PopTart for Breakfast.
Read another chapter of “Rhett Butler’s People.”
Find out what the cats are tearing up in the livingroom.
Steal firewood from drunk guy next door.
Remind people to read short stories on my Eye Blink Fiction site and leave comment for chance to win copy of “Tethered.”
Check fruitcake supply.
Wish Merry Christmas to Nancy, FF&F, Elizabeth, Montucky, Pinhole, Nora, Esmaa, Sue, Freya, Lesa, Johanna, Doug, Ian, Josh, Barry, Mary, Rebecca, Trish and Roxane.
Put out more bread crumbs and sunflower seeds for birds.
Remind cats not to eat birds.
Put link to Montucky’s snow photographs on my Facebook page.
Have “precautionary shot” of Scotch to keep from getting flu.
Ask Obama why he appointed Ken Salazar to Interior post.
Lure more people to Writer’s Notebook weblog with post giving away first secret of storytelling.
Adopt a wolf.
Refurbish dreamcatchers for 2009.
Send SPAM Christmas cards to Tammy22, Viagra Bob, EasyCredit Sue, and Mrs. Libertado Andelusia in Liberia as my way of saying thanks for all the goof ball e-mail you sent me this year.
Buy ammo for shooting people with bah humbug attitude.
Make sure I have a solid alibi.
Smile more often.

candycane2

Lila Shaara’s New Novel

On December 19, 2008December 19, 2008 By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing3 Comments

Author Lila Shaara (“Every Secret Thing,” 2006) has a new novel called “The Fortune Teller’s Daughter” due out December 30 from Ballantine.

While the Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviews are mixed, author Nancy Thayer says the new novel is “is fresh and authentic, the plot complex and full of surprises. This compelling suspense novel has it all–mystery, romance, fascinating characters, and some very creepy moments.”

I hope Thayer’s review is more typical of what Shaara will be hearing in response to her novel. I have high hopes for it, in part because fortune teller stories catch my attention and partly because the novel is set in north Florida where Shaara and I grew up.

While she would have no reason to remember me, I remember her as a “kid” moving around more or less behind the scenes of her father’s house. Her father, Michael Shaara (The Killer Angels) taught my Florida State University creative writing class at his house and his two children usually noticed the giant table of munchies set out for us at break time.

She has two heavy duty acts to follow, her late father as well as her brother Jeff (a prolific author of award-winning historical fiction). In light of that, I wish her well today as a pre-0rder “The Fortune Teller’s Daugher.”

Today’s Table Scraps

Leave a comment on my Eye Blink Fiction weblog for a chance to win a free hard cover copy of the novel “Tethered.” What a great debut novel by Amy MacKinnon.
My poem “Sock Puppet” won second prize in The Smoking Poet’s first annual poetry contest. You can see the winning poems here.
Today’s quotation: “One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.” –Edward Abbey