https:// compulsivereader.com/2024/09/ 15/a-review-of-outcaste-by- sheila-james/ Click on the above for my review of Sheila James's new novel, "Outcaste," in "Compulsive Readers."
IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME The saying, “If you build it they will come,” originated in Field of Dreams, the baseball movie starring Kevin Costner. The film was Iowa farmer who hears a mysterious voice one night in his cornfield saying those words to him, and feels the need to act. Though others think he has looped the loop, he builds a baseball diamond on his land, with his wife's encouragement, and the ghosts of great players appear on the field. Some years ago a fellow-writer said that authors who intend to self-publish their books believe too much in “If you build it, they will come.” A writer should have a marketing plan, instead of taking the attitude that once the book is written, fate or luck will help them sell copies. Of course she was right. And yet... Sometimes the universe unfolds as it should. I haven’t been posting on my blog for a while because I’ve been researching and writing a novel set in 1940s Montreal about a woman wh...
Won’t You Be my Teddy Bear? When I was sixteen, I went with my mother and sister to the church portion of a classmate’s wedding. The bride, whom I will call “Ellie,” had been in the same grade as I throughout elementary school, and although we were not best friends, we liked each other. Everyone liked Ellie, the happy-go-lucky middle child in a family of seven.She and one of her sisters used to sing popular songs at the Friday afternoon concerts at our school, with other students, sometimes myself, making the group a trio. Our repertoire included Elvis’s “Won’t You Be My Teddy Bear?” and Hank Williams’s “Hey, Good Lookin.’” High school, with three hundred students instead of fifty, offered us a greater academic challenge and more social opportunities. I seized the former, while Ellie got caught up in the latter. A year older than I, she dropped...
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