Ridiculous, I know. But hear me out. Bocce is an Italian form of lawn bowling that many say originated back in the Roman Empire. Basically, the goal of the game is to toss a small sphere called a “pallino” (about the size of an egg, but round) onto a narrow rectangular court and then try to roll the rest of your balls (four to a team per round) as close as possible to that pallino. I just finished my summer bocce league (came in 4th – yay!) and since I see almost everything through the prism of ... VIEW POST
The Five Stages of Grief and Learning Social Media
Okay, I admit I’m making a weird connection here. I’m about to apply the five stages of grief to the process of learning social media. Back in 1969, psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a ground-breaking treatise on what is still an uncomfortable topic for many of us. Her book, On Death and Dying, outlined five universal stages that individuals often go through as death approaches: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Since then, her theory has been used to describe the ... VIEW POST
A Romantic Hero as Real As You or Me
One of the gripes against genre fiction is that too often the heroes, even the flawed ones, are unbelievably cool—emphasis on the word “unbelievably.” For the romance genre that’s especially true because authors want to transport the reader to a place whose inhabitants are much more captivating than most of the characters they meet in everyday life. Nobody, the critics say, is as heroic as those Dudley Do-Rights in the novels. But wait. I just read a book—non-fiction, mind you— about a young ... VIEW POST
Know the Rules Before You Break Them
The keynote speaker for this year’s Annual Idaho Writers Rendezvous was Ron Powers, an acclaimed author and historian who has written extensively about Mark Twain. Besides assuring the audience that the iconic American author would have applauded the rise of today’s “literary proletariat” through indie publishing (yay!), Powers explained that Twain signaled the cultural breaking away of America from British and European literary tradition by writing about common people using vernacular—i.e. ... VIEW POST
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