Category Archives: Uncategorized

Third Place Winner: Building Your Brand by James Pyles

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James Pyles – photo taken by David Pyles

EDIT: All three winners will have their articles published in the May edition of Inner Circle Writer’s Magazine.

by Steven Lester Carr

The panel of judges for the Building Your Brand project selected the top three entries. Today I post the third place entry written by James Pyles. Friday I posted the first place winning entry written by Elaine Marie Carnegie. Yesterday I posted the second place entry written by Peter Astle.

Third Place Winner: Building Your Brand by James Pyles

As an author, building your brand might seem obvious. Create a website /blog, use it to advertise your works, such as novels published, anthologies contributed to, and so on. Then link the heck out of them on social media (Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, etc…).

But everyone does that.

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Second Place Winner in the “Build Your Brand” project

james

James Pyles – photo taken by David Pyles

As I mentioned yesterday, I participated in an online contest by writing an essay about how writers and other creative people can “build our brand”. In my previous blog post, I featured first place winner Elaine Marie Carnegie. Today, we see what second place winner Peter Astle has to say.

by Steven Lester Carr

The panel of judges for the Building Your Brand project selected the top three entries. Yesterday I posted the first place winning entry written by Elaine Marie Carnegie. Today I bring you the second place entry written by Peter Astle. Tomorrow I will post the third place winning entry written by James Pyles.

Second Place Winner: Building Your Brand by Peter Astle.

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Coronavirus is no laughing matter…or is it?

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Sorry about the “language”

I’ve read a number of social media memes that have suggested the death rate due to COVID-19 has been exaggerated. I also read a New York Times article that said New York City added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive, which seems to support that suggestion.

And yet, when I tried a Google search on overestimates of Coronavirus death tolls, all I came up with is info on how the death rate is underestimated.

Here we have more or less the same news from ABC News, Nature, and CNN among others.

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Third Place in the “Building Your Brand” project

james

James

I participated in an online contest by writing an essay about how writers and other creative people can “build our brand”. Here’s the result.

Steven Lester Carr:

The panel of judges for the Building Your Brand project has selected the top three entries. First place and $50.00 goes to Elaine Marie Carnegie. Second place and $25.00 to Peter Astle. Third place and $25.00 to James Pyles.

Part of the money the winning entries received was part of a generous contribution of $25.00 that fellow Sweetycat Press member, Dawn Debraal, made toward this effort. Thank you, Dawn!

Thank you to all of you who submitted entries. Unfortunately there could only be a top three.

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It’s Okay To Be All Three

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Social media meme

First off, I’m going to say for the record, that a lot of you aren’t going to like this.

My previous blog post Presenting “What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick? drew a certain amount of attention because (I believe) there’s this notion that governmental intervention in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic (lockdown, quarantine) and U.S. constitutional rights are mutually exclusive. That is, you can’t be a responsible citizen in this crisis and still retain civil rights.

If you complain that there is a potential for certain governments to take advantage of the crisis to not only temporarily relieve citizens of their rights, but to plan to never give those rights back after the crisis has passed, you are considered something like a “pandemic denier” (and there are a few other things that being accused of being a “denier” is like being accused of mass murder).

However, as the graphic and title above suggests, it’s okay to be all three.

That said, I’ve seen a few things on twitter lately that have caused me concern.

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Presenting “What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?”

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Image found at washingtontimes.com

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

With the grand kids over this weekend (long story but it’s coronavirus related), I haven’t had a lot of time to write (even though I’ve still got a lot to say, especially on Easter Sunday and during the week of Unleavened bread). So I’m just posting the Washington Times article What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?.

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Book Review of Iain Kelly’s “A Justified State”

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Cover art for Iain Kelly’s novel “A Justified State”

I’ve been following Iain Kelly‘s writing online for a few years now. He and I (along with a bunch of other folks) met while participating in a series of internet writing challenges such as this one. That’s where I found out that he’s the undisputed master of murder mysteries, only in his case, he actually created a series of novels in that genre to prove it.

Finally (given my meager budget), I was able to download a free promotional copy of A Justified State, the first novel in his “The State Trilogy”.

It was amazing.

The story is set slightly in the future in the UK, known as the nameless “state.” The nation is in a conflict with unrevealed adversaries in “The First Strike War,” which is the backdrop for everything that follows.

Police Detective Danny Samson, who lost his twin newborns soon after birth, and his wife a year later by suicide, is mysteriously assigned to investigate the murder of a local politician, who was the victim of a professional assassination.

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The COVID-19 California Police State

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Found at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website

No, I’m really not that paranoid, but you have to admit that people are probably getting nervous about not just the pandemic, but governmental responses.

First, the rise of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic across the globe. Then the hoarding, including guns and ammo, and then martial law…well sort of.

Yesterday, I heard that San Francisco and several of the surrounding countries all went on lockdown:

Almost 7 million people are affected by the lockdown that went into place Tuesday as Bay Area counties followed San Francisco’s lead in ordering residents to shelter in place. It was the first of such measures in the United States as authorities try to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Okay, I get it. The northern California authorities are trying everything they can think of to flatten the curve.

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This Probably Isn’t Funny, But…

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© James Pyles

…we’ve got plenty of toilet paper in Boise, Idaho.

Addendum – March 13, 2020: Idaho’s first case of coronavirus has just been confirmed. While an Oregon doctor said that 82% of cases are mild, there is also information about how it is different from the flu.

This is off the cuff. No research (or damn little) involved. I’ve been listening to the hysteria over coronavirus for weeks it seems. No cases in my little corner in the world, but I can’t ignore that thousands have died. I also can’t ignore that this isn’t anything like Stephen King’s The Stand, either.

Look, I’m sorry actor Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson contracted the virus while on a trip to Australia, but on the other hand, being celebrities doesn’t mean they are any more victims than the rest of the world.

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Featured in “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers”

 

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Promotional image for “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers” by Steve Carr

Steve Carr recently created Sweetycat Press (sorry, it’s a private Facebook group, so you won’t see most of the content) to showcase and promote emerging writers. To that end, their first book is “Who’s Who of Emerging Writers”, which will become available May 1, 2020. Here’s the official press release (I don’t think I’ve been in a press release before):

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