Stopping Time by Ken Atchity

Managing your work doesn't work for a simple reason: Work is infinite. Good work only creates more work; in fact, bad work creates more work too. So the more you work the more work you will have. It's basic common sense that you can't manage an infinite commodity.

What can you manage? Time. You not only can, but must, manage your time because time is all too finite.

They say, "If you want to get something done, find a busy person." The busy person succeeds in getting things done because he knows how to manage his time. We all have the exact same amount of time at our disposal, 60 minutes each hour, 24 hours each day, 168 hours each week, 8,736 hours each year. If you put one hour into a project each day for a year, you'd have worked on it for 365 hours -- more than enough time to write a book, build a house, launch a new product, plan and execute a new campaign. "If you put a little upon a little," said the ancient Greek almanac writer Hesiod, "soon it becomes a lot."

One memorable day in Manhattan I was delivering a broken antique wall clock to my favorite repair shop. As I completed my drop off and turned to leave, I noticed an ultra-modern stand-up clock constructed of shiny pendulums, a different metal each for hours, minutes, and seconds, all enclosed in a sleek glass case. It was simply the most beautiful timepiece I'd ever seen.

Then I realized: it had no hands. At first I thought, No wonder it's in the shop. It's broken. Then I studied the clock more closely.

No. It was designed that way. It was a timepiece that Salvador Dali would have been as thrilled with as I was.

And it reminded me that time is a free force. It just happens, whether you do anything about it or not. It's up for grabs.

It doesn't belong to your employer, or to the government, or to anyone but you!

The trick is where do you find that free time? -- a question busy people are asked regularly. Here's their secret: busy people make time, for the activities they decide to prioritize. One good way to wrestle with that question is to ask yourself, "Where do I lose it?" You'd be surprised.

Make a chart of your weekly hours and use it to determine how many hours you devote to each activity in your cluttered life. Maybe you'd be surprised, or maybe not, that most people have no idea where the time goes. They come up with a grand total of 182, or 199, or 82 hours of activity -- until they remember that they, like every other human, have only 168 hours each week to spend.

Then we get serious and analyze exactly where they're lying to themselves about the time: forgetting about the endless phone calls with friends, or the true amount of time in front of the television, or the accurate time devoted to the daily commute, or the time doing absolutely nothing but staring out the window. When we get the time inventory accurate most people are surprised at the truth. But the truth is the first step to freedom, and managing your time effectively is the greatest freedom of all.

I call it "making the clock of life your clock." I believe in this philosophy so much I haven't worn a chronograph for nearly thirty years, despite owning a vintage wrist watch that belonged to my father and an even older pocket watch that belonged to my grandfather. The only chronograph I carry around with me is one that allows me to make life's clock mine: a stopwatch. It makes the Spanish proverb, la vida es corta pero ancha ("life is short but wide") come true. You can get an app on your cell phone!

The stopwatch method of time management is simple. You use it to make sure that your Priority Project is getting the amount of attention you want to give it to move it -- and your personal success -- ahead with certainty. You know that the wall clock, or the one on your wrist or displayed on your cell phone, has a way of running away with your day. You say you'll work on Priority Project from 7 to 8 a.m. and something is certain to come along to disrupt that hour almost as though life were conspiring against you. What's really happening is that you're letting life interfere with your personal time management. Of course when the interference occurs, you tell yourself "I'll catch up later," or "I'll start again tomorrow and this time protect myself from interruptions," but over the years we discover that life runs rampant over any such resolutions.

The stopwatch method works best in a life jam-packed with stimuli and distraction. It allows you to "steal time." While clocks on wrists and walls record public time, your private prime time happens only when your stopwatch is running. The stopwatch allows you to call "time out" from the game everyone else is engaged in.

Simply promise yourself you won't go to sleep at night until, by hook or by crook, you've clocked one hour (60 minutes) of working on Priority Project on your stopwatch. Turn the stopwatch ON when you're working on it, and OFF when you get interrupted. Your stopwatch minutes may be gleaned over a six-hour period, or over a twenty-four-hour period. You "steal" them when you can: waiting at the dentist's, community on public transportation, when an appointment hasn't shown up yet, when your cell phone dies and no one can reach you until you've replaced or recharged the battery, when your date for the evening calls in sick. It takes a few days to get used to this process, but once you do you'll recognize the power it gives you over time.

Isn't it hard to work in fits and starts? You might very well ask that very good question. The answer is that it's actually easier to work that way than it is to work without stopping if you employ the time-management technique of linkage.

Here's how linkage works. The phone rings, so you have to turn off your stopwatch. But you let it ring one or two more times, taking that time to make a mental decision about what you'll do when your stopwatch is running again -- that is, in your next Priority Project session. And here's a useful secret: it doesn't matter what decision you make. The minute you make it, as you answer the phone and go on from one activity to the next, your mind starts thinking of better decisions than the one you made; in fact, your mind becomes increasingly motivated to get back to that Priority Project because it knows exactly what it will do when the next session begins. You've created an automatic linkage, that makes restarting when your stopwatch is next running, no longer an occasion for blockage. Instead, you're fully ready to jump in and get as much out of that next session as possible before it's interrupted by life's next distraction.

And, yes, have a desk drawer filled with stopwatches so you can employ a different colored chronograph for each major activity you're engaged with.

The stopwatch method can truly make the clock of life your clock.

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Dr. Kenneth Atchity has been consulting on time management for decades. His 20 books include Write Time: A Guide to the Creative Process, from Vision through Revision; and How to Quit Your Day Job and Live out Your Dreams.


Follow Ken Atchity on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kennja

Write Your Novel to Be a Film by Kenneth Atchity

Novelists seeking representation complain that none of their books have been made into films. At any given moment, we have literally stacks of novels from New York publishers on our desks in Los Angeles. Going through them to find the ones that might make motion pictures or television movies, we — and other producers, managers, and agents — are constantly running into the same problems:

    “There’s no third act... It just trickles out.”

    “There are way too many characters and it’s not clear till page 200 who the protagonist is.”

    “I can’t relate to anyone in the book.”

    “At the end, the antagonist lays out the entire plot to the protagonist.”

    “There’s not enough action.”

    “There’s nothing new here. This concept has been used to death.”

    “We don’t know who to root for.”

    “The whole thing is overly contrived.”

    “There’s no dialogue, so we don’t know what the character sounds like.”

    “There’s no high concept here. How do we pitch this?”

    “There’s no real pacing.”

    “The protagonist is reactive instead of proactive.”

    “At the end of the day, I have no idea what this story is about.”

    “The main character is 80, and speaks only Latvian.”

    “It’s set in Papago...in the 1960s, and is filled with long passages in Uto-Aztecan.”

    “There are no set pieces.”

Of course anyone with the mind of a researcher can list a film or two that got made despite one of these objections. But for novelists who are frustrated at not getting their books made into films, that should be small consolation and is, practically speaking, a useless observation. Yes, you might get lucky and find a famous Bulgarian director, who’s fascinated with the angst of octogenarians, studied pacing with John Sales or Jim Jarmusch, and loves ambiguous endings.

But if you regard your career as a business instead of a quixotic crusade, you should be planning your novel from the outset to make it appealing to filmmakers.

Give us a strong (preferably male) lead who, good or bad, is eminently relatable — and who’s in the “star age range” of 35-50 (where at any given moment 20 male stars reside; a star being a name that can set up the film by his attachment to it).

Make sure a dramatist looking at your book will clearly see three well-defined acts: act one (the setup), act two (rhythmic development, rising and falling action), and act three (climax leading to conclusive ending).

Express your character’s personality in dialogue that distinguishes him, and makes him a role a star would die to play.

Have someone in the film industry read your synopsis before you commit to writing the novel.


Though I’ve observed the phenomena for several decades now, it still surprises me that even bestselling novelists, even the ones who complain that no one has made a film from their books yet, don’t write novels dramatic enough to lend themselves easily to mainstream film. It’s a well-known phenomenon in publishing that, with very few exceptions, the more books a novelist sells the less critical his publisher’s editors are of his work. So time and again we read novels that start out well, roar along to the halfway point, then peter off into the bogs of formless character development or action resolution.

A publisher invests between $25,000 and $100,000 or more in publishing your novel. A low-budget feature film from a major Hollywood studio today costs at least $40 million. There is, from a business point of view, no comparison. Risking $40 million means the critical factor is raised as high as can be imagined when your book hits the “story department” — much higher than the critical factor of even the finest publishers. Hollywood studies what audiences want by logging, in box office dollars, cents, and surveys, what they respond best to.

If you want to add film to your profit centers as a novelist, it would behoove you to study what makes films work. Disdaining Hollywood may be a fashionable defense for writers who haven’t gotten either rich or famous from it, but it’s not productive in furthering your cinematic career.

Why Do You Have to Market Your Book? 10 Ways to Focus Your Marketing

Your book is about to be published or already published, and now it's time to talk about the simple facts of marketing. The American marketplace, nearly 300 million strong, is the most lucrative market for books in the world -- and the gateway to the global marketplace. Amazon now has websites in United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil -- and is adding more each year. Your book's reach can truly be global -- if your book is visible.

One book in a million launches to instant sales while the author does absolutely nothing. It's the most common pathetic fallacy to think you'll succeed without PR or that the media will cover your book with little effort on your part.

The other 999,999 books require the marketing (promotional) efforts to become visible to the American and global marketplace. And marketing is an ongoing thing that never stops.

To begin with, you need to know this formula by heart:

MARKETING has no direct relationship with sales.

But GOOD MARKETING produces VISIBILITY.

Without VISIBILITY there can be no sales.

Consider BMW, Veuve Clicquot, Victoria's Secret, and many other brands that are embedded in the American consciousness. They well know that spending millions of dollars a year in the big slick magazines with sexy ads has NO direct relationship with sales. But they do it because it keeps their brands in the forefront of the browsers' awareness.

They don't dare NOT spend the money. For one thing, they know if they don't spend it, someone else will be spending it and that someone else may take their place in the buyers' awareness.

The same is true of the massively crowded world of books.

So one way or the other, you must MARKET YOUR BOOK as fervently as -- maybe even more fervently than -- you wrote it. Devote a minimum amount of time EACH DAY because time upon time produces results.

What are some of the best ways to market your book? From years of trials and errors, both my own and those of my clients and published authors, here's what I suggest:

1. Come up with a marketing plan that fits your time and budget constraints; revise it as you continue forward and as opportunities arise.

2. Put time into it, and as much money as you can spare. Nothing happens unless you invest your time and/or your money (and don't forget: money buys time).

3. Get help. If you don't have the time or desire to do it yourself, use our help to make your book visible.

4. Forget about all marketing except the internet. By 2012, 274 million (78.6% of the population) people were using the internet in North America alone; 2.95 billion are online worldwide! Why spend your money on television, or print ads, or even radio (though the last is still a good idea) when you can be in direct touch with this humongous market from your keyboard?

5. Focus your book by offering it exclusive on amazon.com--which has over 100 million subscribers. Get that "Author Central" page up as soon as your book is launched. Amazon is the 500-lb guerrilla -- so set the other monkeys aside until you've sold 100 million books.

6. Build a Facebook page instead of a blog. With 1.3 Billion users globally, where can you find a better marketplace? Maybe you'll consider that limiting when your book has sold a billion copies. Then you can think about expanding beyond Facebook. Meanwhile here's the biggest market imaginable -- nearly 200 million in North America -- right at your fingertips.

7. Focus on getting book reviews on your sell-page. First aim for 30, then 100, then 300. Magic happens when the amazon computer's algorithm starts paying attention to your book, and more and more reviews inevitably make that happen.

8. end out a press release about your book through a service that reaches internet reviewers. You will surely receive requests for review copies -- and at least half of those will end up as reviews on the internet.

9. Social networking is where it's all happening today: Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Linked-In, YouTube, and Tumblr. Set up accounts and send out postings regularly until you grow your following, capturing their emails so you can keep in touch with them.

10. Experiment as much as you have time and funds for, but double down on anything that's working for you.

Don't be overwhelmed by the marketing process. Take control of it by limiting it to a specific time allotment each day, say 60 minutes. You'll be amazed at the results sixty minutes a day, day in and day out, will produce. Good luck -- and enjoy the excitement of this new frontier for writers, where you can reach out directly to your readers and prospective readers.

THE MYTHIC ROOTS OF YOGA by Dr. Kenneth Atchity, Ph.D.

The roots of yoga reach down to primordial myth that nurtures the entire human race. Cultures throughout the world share the myth of “the world tree,” sometimes known as “the tree at the navel of the earth.” The Indian yoga masters, the shamans of Siberia (for whom the tree was a nursery as well as a cosmic ladder), the Persian priests, the ancient Celts, and even the Vikings knew this tree well. The Siberian shaman’s drum was said to be made from the wood of the world tree.

The Quran refers to the “Tree of Immortality” or the “Tree of Life”—very similar to the trees, “of Life,” and of “the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” in the Jewish and Christian Genesis. Even before Genesis, as long ago as 4,000 B.C., the Babylonians thought the sacred tree was somewhere near the ancient city of Eridu. In its leaves was the throne of Zikum, queen of the heavens; its trunk was the holy abode of Davkina, the Earth Goddess.

In Aztec and Mayan cultures, the world tree, Yax-cheel-cab, is filled with fruit, from apples to figs—even breasts. Mayans worshipped the kakaw tree, source of cacao and chocolate, discovered by the gods on a mountain. One depiction of the chocolate tree clearly reveals its identification with the human spine. Those “plumps” depict not only the cacao fruit but breasts, the source of all nurture.

In the creation myth of the Maori, the first thing formed from the navel of the void was the world-tree, from whose buds emerged all creation. Just as in the Garden of Eden, the world tree abounds with birds and animals—and the inevitable reptile. In Norse mythology, the sharp-eyed eagle stood watch in Yggdrasil’s upper branches to ward off the serpent Niddhogg’s constant assaults.

The Plumed Serpent gave cacao to the Maya—its symbolic depiction almost identical to the Greek caduceus, the healing rod-tree carried around which snakes are coiled, carried by the god Hermes (Mercury). In kundalini yoga belief the serpent is coiled around the human spine (the word kundalini itself means “coiled”).

The ancient Egypt hieroglyphic character ankh meant "life" or “breath of life.” A tree stylized as a straight rod with a serpent coiled around it, the ankh was considered by some as a predecessor of the Christian cross (itself another world tree). The ankh was also known as the “key of the Nile” or “crux ansata” (Latin, meaning "cross with a handle").

In universal tree mythology, diametrically opposite forces hold life and death in balance; while the tree itself remains eternally stationary.

In the pre-classical Homeric Odyssey the tree of life is the living marriage bed of Penelope. She uses her knowledge of how Odysseus carved it from the living tree around which he built their palace to identify her husband when he returns home disguised as a beggar after twenty years of wandering. 

The world tree is the post that connects heaven, earth, and the underworld; its roots mirror its branches. It links the conscious with the unconscious mind.
Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus described the world tree in one of the few cryptic fragments that have come down to us through the ages: “The way up and the way down are the same thing.” Find the world tree, and the shaman has access to the spiritual realms of the heavens and the dark earthy knowledge of the underworld. In the Torah, Jacob’s ladder is guarded by angels as you climb, by demons as you descend. Not surprisingly, Carl Jung, one of the founders of modern psychology, identified the tree with the axis mundi, the unmoving axle on which the world turns. Jung saw it as a personal “meridian,” or psychological umbilical connecting each individual to the divine source in its branches and to the dark vaults of our animal nature in its roots.

In every culture, the Tree of Life is hidden and can be found only by the initiate--the Druidic priest, the ecstatic Dionysian, or the son of God who dies on the tree for the sins of all humanity then descends from it to hell, and finally climbs it to his enlightened seat at the right hand of his father. When you practice yoga, you reenact the ancient shamanic journey toward “truth” or “enlightenment,” as your meditative breath climbs up and down the world tree. Padma Purana and Skanda Purana enumerate the many benefits to be secured from reverentially approaching and worshipping the world tree.

In ancient Hindu culture, as the Buddha discovered under that Bodhi tree (ficus

religiosa), the Tree of Life is the human spine, hidden from the living, visible only to the dead—and to the practitioner who explores it with his or her breath. The gods and goddesses in its high branches are all rooted in the trunk, which is identified with Brahman, the ultimate Reality. The atman, the individual soul, finds enlightenment by traveling up and down this internal tree as it approaches identity with Brahman. The kundalini serpent coils up from the spine-tree’s roots, its navel holds the power of rebirth, the celestial Third Eye sits at its crown and the initiate, the yogi, climbs with his breath up and down the tree at will.

Like any tree, the hidden spine bends with the wind-breath. The more it bends the longer it lives, the more life it experiences and the stronger it becomes. “There is an eternal tree called the Ashvattha, which has its roots above and its branches below,” says Katha Upanishad, a text which unveils secrets of life and death.

From “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “the Green Man,” to the Yule tree coiled with lights to light your way home through the dark, to Virgil’s “golden bough,” to Robert Graves’ The White Goddess, to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents, to the Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s Avatar, symbols of the world tree are as universal as human backbones. Cutting the tree down is the end of communication between higher and lower worlds. Strengthening it through the initiate’s ritual discipline leads to physical health and spiritual enlightenment. In Exodus, God turned Moses’ rigid staff into a snake and back into a staff which signifies the power of keeping the spine as supple as a serpent: It is better to bend than to break.


Read more Ken Atchity Huff Posts

Guest Post: We Label People at Our Peril by Dennis Palumbo

It wasn’t until 1987 that homosexuality ceased being categorized as a disease in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Used as the premiere diagnostic bible by mental health professionals and insurance companies worldwide, the DSM has been predominately responsible for the labeling of an individual’s behavior as regards whether it falls within the range of agreed-upon norms. As such, it’s been both praised and reviled over the years. Praised because of its concise descriptions and categorizations of behavioral symptoms, and reviled because of its reinforcement of stigmatizing attitudes towards those whose behavioral is deemed “abnormal.”

In fact, there’s an old joke about how clinicians use diagnostic labels to interpret their patients’ behavior. If the patient arrives early for his therapy appointment, he’s anxious. If he’s late, he’s resistant. And if he’s on time, he’s compulsive.

Nowadays, however, it’s becoming clear that the joke may be on us. Due to the influence of both broadcast media and the Internet, diagnostic labels are thrown around quite casually by people who ought to know better (shrinks on TV news programs) as well as by people who usually don’t (hosts of TV talk shows, Internet podcasts and innumerable blogs). Moreover, like many cultural phenomena, the ascribing of diagnostic labels follows the dictates of trends.

Remember how every other child was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)? Now the “hot” new label is bipolar disorder (what used to be called manic-depression). Lately, you’re not cool if you’re not bipolar.

To be fair, there’s some good that has resulted from this expanding conversation about diagnostic labels. Case in point: I was recently on a panel with a successful businesswoman who claimed that until she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she didn’t have a frame of reference for her inexplicably erratic and self-destructive behaviors. Further, she felt that having the diagnosis, and receiving the appropriate treatment to address it, was what saved her life.

I completely understand her position. I myself have patients who are calmed and even reassured by a diagnosis that aligns them with others suffering the same symptoms. They feel less alone, less alienated from how “normal” people behave. In other words, they have a “handle” on it.

However, my concern is not with how these patients see themselves. It’s with how clinicians see their patients. How so many mental health professionals use diagnostic labels to both distance themselves from patients and reduce them to a set of conventionally agreed-upon symptoms. (At a clinical conference years ago, a colleague, describing his practice, said, “It’s a nice balance. I have three bipolars, a number of major depressives, and only one borderline. Thank God.”) Obviously he didn’t see these folks as patients. Hell, he didn’t see them as people. He saw them solely in terms of their clinical diagnoses.

Now I suspect (and greatly hope) that this particular therapist’s attitude isn’t shared by most of his colleagues. Yet his comment goes directly to my point. Namely, that while I don’t exactly revile the DSM, I view its contents (and the thinking behind it) with a great deal of skepticism. Not that there’s anything wrong, per se, with labels. Nor with the idea of a common vocabulary so that all us clinical geniuses can communicate with each other. It’s just that, if we’re speaking honestly, diagnostic labels exist for the convenience of the labelers. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But how far is too far?

In my opinion, “too far” is when labeling ventures into the arena of individual freedom; i.e., when it threatens the concept of equality. How does it do this? By giving clinicians the language to reinforce the views of the dominant culture.

To me, equality means just that: all people are equal under the law, and in relation to each other. Regardless—-as the saying goes—-of race, creed, or color. To which I’d add sexual orientation, political beliefs, gender identification, and choice of living singly or with a partner. (This last point is crucial. One of the dominant culture’s norms is that healthy people are in a relationship, or, if not, yearn to be. And that preferring to live alone, or under the same roof with others but without romantic attachment, is a sign of psychological disturbance.)

Equality means the right to be what the British lovingly refer to as “eccentric.”

Equality means that thinking and living differently than how most others do is not a manifestation of anti-social behavior. Nor is it a silent condemnation of those living a more conventional life. In simplest terms, I’m saying that true equality means that a hermit living in a cabin in the woods is not necessarily suffering from a mental disorder (i.e., schizoid personality, with paranoid features). I’m not claiming he or she is not burdened by psychological distress. I’m just saying that such a lifestyle choice doesn’t in and of itself indicate a disorder. No more than it would a long-distance trucker who prefers his or her own company for weeks at a time.

If we’re to truly support and encourage equality, then we have to be skeptical of our inclination to label. And it’s not just mental health professionals who fall prey to this. We all do, to some extent. If a family member isn’t as ambitious as we think he or she should be, we label it laziness. If a friend finds the holidays so disturbing and anxiety-producing he spends each Christmas season in a tent out in the desert, we label him weird. I’ve even heard couples who choose not to have children labeled as selfish.

As a therapist in private practice for over 25 years, I’ve grown to appreciate the vast differences in temperament, relationship choices, communication styles and even prejudices of my patients. Which means I’ve been forced many times to challenge the orthodoxy of my own profession, and to pay attention to the potential inequality underlying certain therapeutic assumptions.

In the world outside my consulting room, it seems that the more lip-service is given to the notion of equality, the less actual practice of it there is. As a nation and as a global community, we’re more divided than ever. Our politics have become almost nothing but labeling, a divisiveness that strikes at the heart of equality. Sectarian violence around the world is a tangible result of one group of people denying the equality of another group. Rather than a reaffirmation of Buber’s “I and Thou”—-a relationship that can only exist in a context of equality—-people from all walks of life are asserting that their rights, opinions and beliefs have ascendance over those of others.

Put bluntly, to label is to divide. To divide is to upend equality. And without a basic sense of equality, there can never be the kind of social and cultural adhesion that ensures what our Founding Fathers called “domestic tranquility.” This is not to posit some Utopian love-fest among all peoples. That will never occur. But I’m thinking more in line with something that the late Martin Luther King said: “Peace is not the absence of conflict; it’s the presence of justice.”

If we as a people are to maintain the presence of justice in our society, then we have to view our differences through the lens of equality rather than that of labels. To label this individual as “bad” and some other individual as “good,” based on their respective beliefs, sexual orientation or lifestyles, is to render the former a non-person. And it is much easier to abuse, threaten, even kill a non-person than someone you feel has an equal right to exist.

Of course, reaffirming that all people are equal isn’t to say that all behaviors are equal. As a society, we have a right to label certain harmful or exploitive behaviors as unacceptable. Just as we have a right as a society to determine how to bring to justice those who exhibit those behaviors.

But what I’m referring to is something else. It’s the temptation each of us has to judge another, merely against the standards of conventional society or measured against our own idiosyncratic standards. To deny others’ equality as an existential right because we dislike their religious faith (or lack thereof), are offended by their choice of sexual partners, or reject their own stated gender identity.

As human beings with prejudices and insecurities (conscious or unconscious), we may be made uncomfortable by one or another of these life choices. We may even find them a sign that civilization is crumbling, or that every diverse or otherwise unconventional choice is an assault on “traditional values.” But that still does not rationalize inequality. Nothing does. Especially not knee-jerk appeals to religious freedom, patriotism and xenophobia.

Which brings me back to the DSM, and how stunningly reductionist it can be when it comes to providing diagnostic labels. The general public may be unaware of the fact that, prior to the publication of each new addition to the manual, mental health professionals can suggest new diagnostic categories to be added to the list. One of my recent favorite suggestions is quite in line with the constraints on freedom and equality that I’ve been addressing.

Called “Political Apathy Disorder,” this new diagnostic label was to be given to individuals lacking an appropriate sense of social justice. Among the criteria to be used when giving a patient this diagnosis are whether he or she lives in a gated community, fails to take into account the impact on the environment of a purchase, and refuses to vote in local elections. Believe me, I’m generally not a fan of people who exhibit these traits, but I’d never go so far as to label them evidence of a psychological disorder. To me, this is just labeling—-or in this case, social engineering—-to a disturbing degree.

In fact, a colleague of mine, Dr. David Levy, once wrote a satiric essay in which he proposed a new diagnostic category especially for mental health professionals. It was called “Pervasive Labeling Disorder.” I can think of at least a few fellow therapists who seem to suffer from it.

The sad fact is, I think we’re all guilty at times of “Pervasive Labeling Disorder.” As I mentioned above, it might even be woven into our very natures as humans. Regardless, labeling is a potential enemy of equality. And we do so at our peril.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “Liberty is the one thing you cannot have without giving it to everyone else.”

(This essay appears in a new collection called EQUALITY, from Vine Leaf Press)

Read more

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Formerly a Hollywood screenwriter (My Favorite Year; Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), Dennis Palumbo is now a licensed psychotherapist and author of Writing From the Inside Out (John Wiley). His work has been profiled in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, GQ and other publications, as well as on CNN, NPR and PBS.

His mystery fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Strand and elsewhere, and is collected in From Crime to Crime (Tallfellow Press). His acclaimed series of crime novels (Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors and the latest, Phantom Limb) feature psychologist Daniel Rinaldi, a trauma expert who consults with the Pittsburgh Police. All are from Poisoned Pen Press.

SELLING THE STORY: SIZZLE REELS

What is a sizzle reel and how can someone use one to pitch a reality show or drama?

A sizzle reel is basically a teaser or sampler of a program that’s used as an outline by the creator. The term came out of reality programming because you need a sizzle reel to sell a reality TV show. A sizzle reel is usually three minutes at the most and it’s supposed to be an exciting, well-edited teaser that gives you a vision of what the program is and what it is intended to be. In theory, the reel gives you a strong inkling of how the program will continue and how it will go beyond its pilot episode. Sizzle reels can introduce characters as well as convey the excitement and points of interest within the show.

Knowing how to make a decent sizzle reel is extremely important but very, very difficult because if you’re not actually in show business you don’t know what companies are looking for. Learning how to put one together is an extremely beneficial way of getting into the industry and it’s a great way to show what you have to offer.

If someone had a sizzle reel, would they then upload it on Vimeo or YouTube? Would it also be included in a pitch to a producer?

Yes, it’s important to send it everywhere you can. You can come up with a log line, or short pitch, that would get producers to watch it. Do a short version for Instagram. YouTube is definitely a great tool. People scour YouTube all the time looking for ideas for movies. Facebook is also good. It’s important to send it it in whatever way you can. If you have an email list, send it to everyone. Ask people to share it, pass it on.

Excerpt from Jeff Rivera's HuffPost Interview with Ken Atchity

GETTING INTO THE INDUSTRY

As the man who found everything he was looking for in his “retirement,” Dr. Atchity is a shining example of the never-ending potential of dreams and aspirations. In a HuffPost interview with Jeff Rivera Ken outlines many of the problems he encountered when shifting to a new career along with some useful advice for those looking to go down the same road.

Taking into account how the film industry has changed over the past couple of years, what advice would you give today that you wouldn’t have given two years ago?

I think it’s becoming harder to sell anything to big studios because they have become almost entirely married to producing big franchises and pre-sold concepts. Marketing has taken over the entertainment industry. Even in the publishing world, big publishers are only interested in how many copies of a certain book they can sell.

For new voices it can be extremely difficult to get published and this is very much the case in Hollywood. It’s often easier to get your work produced independently or through the MD method than it is to go to the studios. Keep in mind that the big studios used to produce hundreds of movies every year whereas now they produce dozens. Some studios are completing as little as three movies a year, but they’re making $400 million films from pre-established franchises like Spider-Man and Captain America.

There’s a global market for these movies and it’s a safer bet for them to spend a lot of money on one movie and earn it all back plus extra. This can make it even more difficult for new writers to sell their ideas, although I think writers can be proactive in finding ways to draw attention to their stories.

If someone, for example, lived in Nebraska and had a story about a family that lived in a cornfield, would they have any hope of having a studio make that film?

Always remember that if you don’t have hope then you shouldn’t be doing it, and hope is never something that can be analyzed statistically. It comes from within. In any industry, looking at the odds can be more than a little discouraging but if you believe them then you might as well go back to work as a bank teller. You have to think to yourself, what can I do? How can I think outside the box to draw attention to my story?

These days, the internet can be hugely beneficial if you’re looking to get your story out there as it provides millions, if not billions, of people access to you work. If you’re looking to generate interest then the internet is the best tool you can use. Studios have executives who do nothing but trawl through the internet looking for new stories. The Hunger Games is one of the biggest success stories of the last 10 years in this sense.

I think the gatekeepers are becoming predictable because they’re so enslaved to their corporate owners but what the true creative executives are looking for is someone who’s not saying the same thing as everyone else. Anyone who has a following as the result of their work is a potential line of interest. So, if I were in Nebraska facing that dilemma, I would focus on the thing that I have in front of me – that everyone has in front of them – the internet. You just have to find a way to pierce that golden shield.

Read more 

ITS NEVER TOO LATE

As the man who found everything he was looking for in his “retirement,” Dr. Atchity is a shining example of the never-ending potential of dreams and aspirations. In a HuffPost interview with Jeff Rivera Ken outlines many of the problems he encountered when shifting to a new career along with some useful advice for those looking to go down the same road.

If you were to start your career over again as a producer, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself?

I would probably say to think it over because I realized throughout my career, and from talking to many producers, that producing is probably the most masochistic profession in the world. In the old days, when I first started, you actually got development fees when you set up a project or sold it but that stopped about years ago. Now you don’t get paid until the movie is made.

There are of course dozens of things that can go wrong and prevent a movie from being made. I have one in production right now that has been in the works for 21 years, and I produced one two years ago that was in the works for 20 years. So, you definitely have to have a day job or other things to do.

I’d also say that you should strategize as best as you can in order to stay on top of the game. The important thing about producing is simply staying in the running, which means you have at least $10,000 at the baccarat table. If you don’t have that stake, you’re out of the game. You have to find a way to do that because it’s really a rich person’s profession or the profession of somebody very, very young. When I got into the industry I was already 45 years old so I didn’t have any particular advantage. I would say be smart and diversify, and that’s what I ended up doing; I took my own hypothetical advice.

What advice do you have for people who are middle aged and want to be producers?
Well, I became a producer in the years after becoming a tenured professor, which I resigned from in order to pursue the career I have now, but there are plenty of other examples too. I’ll never forget the time that Dr. Joyce Brothers invited me on her television show after hearing my story. She had two other people there that night, one was a hairdresser who became a psychiatrist after going through medical school and the other was an 83-year-old man who was signing up for law school.

The older man explained how he had to stand in the admission line to sign up and was surrounded by 20-something year olds. It wasn’t long before the kid behind him finally said, sir, excuse me, but I just can’t help asking you, what are you doing in this line? And the man looked at him and he said, what line should I be in? I absolutely love his story because that’s the attitude we have to have towards life. If you want to do it, just do it.

And you’re never too old to do it, it’s never too late.

There are numerous examples of people who succeeded in later life, including Bernard Shaw and Colonel Sanders. In fact, when I was young I remember reading something that Benjamin Franklin wrote: “There is nothing wrong with retirement as long as it does not interfere with the man’s work.” This has been my motto ever since. I’m retired from the academic world but it hasn’t prevented me from working. I’ve written more books since retiring than I did when I was an academic. I’ve made more than 30 movies, I’ve had a wonderful life, and I do all the things I want to do.

It’s crazy to think you have to stick with what you’re doing for the rest of your life as it’s now typical in American society for people to have two or three careers. We’re living longer and that’s the way it should be. Who wants to live to be 90 or 100 and have the same career the entire time? So if you’re thinking you’re too old for it, read my book, leave your day job, live out your dreams, and never give up.

Read more

Jeff Riveria Interviews Producer Kenneth Atchity on How He Began a New Career at 45

For Dr. Kenneth Atchity, age was nothing but a number. Despite being a tenured professor for a substantial amount of time, the decision to retire at the age of 45 came at the drop of a hat as he put all of his talents into a different cause. Now 72-years-old, Atchity is an Emmy-nominated Hollywood producer and author who has been successful in completely turning his life in a different direction.

There are many who choose not to pursue their dreams until later on in life and a lot of talented people who are completely unaware of their true calling until decades into their career. In the following interview, Atchity talks about his new book Sell Your Story to Hollywood in which he addresses his own success story and experiences working in the industry. It’s not always easy to get your foot in the door but Atchity is out to show readers that, whether young or old, there’s always a way to see your story on the big screen.

As the man who found everything he was looking for in his “retirement,” Dr. Atchity is a shining example of the never-ending potential of dreams and aspirations. The following interview outlines many of the problems Atchity encountered when shifting to a new career along with some useful advice for those looking to go down the same road.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

If you were to start your career over again as a producer, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself?

I would probably say to think it over because I realized throughout my career, and from talking to many producers, that producing is probably the most masochistic profession in the world. In the old days, when I first started, you actually got development fees when you set up a project or sold it but that stopped about years ago. Now you don’t get paid until the movie is made.

There are of course dozens of things that can go wrong and prevent a movie from being made. I have one in production right now that has been in the works for 21 years, and I produced one two years ago that was in the works for 20 years. So, you definitely have to have a day job or other things to do.

I’d also say that you should strategize as best as you can in order to stay on top of the game. The important thing about producing is simply staying in the running, which means you have at least $10,000 at the baccarat table. If you don’t have that stake, you’re out of the game. You have to find a way to do that because it’s really a rich person’s profession or the profession of somebody very, very young. When I got into the industry I was already 45 years old so I didn’t have any particular advantage. I would say be smart and diversify, and that’s what I ended up doing; I took my own hypothetical advice.

Read more

Write Your Novel to Be a Film by Kenneth Atchity

Novelists seeking representation complain that none of their books have been made into films. At any given moment, we have literally stacks of novels from New York publishers on our desks in Los Angeles. Going through them to find the ones that might make motion pictures or television movies, we — and other producers, managers, and agents — are constantly running into the same problems:

    “There’s no third act... It just trickles out.”
    “There are way too many characters and it’s not clear till page 200 who the protagonist is.”
    “I can’t relate to anyone in the book.”
    “At the end, the antagonist lays out the entire plot to the protagonist.”
    “There’s not enough action.”
    “There’s nothing new here. This concept has been used to death.”
    “We don’t know who to root for.”
    “The whole thing is overly contrived.”
    “There’s no dialogue, so we don’t know what the character sounds like.”
    “There’s no high concept here. How do we pitch this?”
    “There’s no real pacing.”
    “The protagonist is reactive instead of proactive.”
    “At the end of the day, I have no idea what this story is about.”
    “The main character is 80, and speaks only Latvian.”
    “It’s set in Papago...in the 1960s, and is filled with long passages in Uto-Aztecan.”
    “There are no set pieces.”

Of course anyone with the mind of a researcher can list a film or two that got made despite one of these objections. But for novelists who are frustrated at not getting their books made into films, that should be small consolation and is, practically speaking, a useless observation. Yes, you might get lucky and find a famous Bulgarian director, who’s fascinated with the angst of octogenarians, studied pacing with John Sales or Jim Jarmusch, and loves ambiguous endings.

But if you regard your career as a business instead of a quixotic crusade, you should be planning your novel from the outset to make it appealing to filmmakers.

Give us a strong (preferably male) lead who, good or bad, is eminently relatable — and who’s in the “star age range” of 35-50 (where at any given moment 20 male stars reside; a star being a name that can set up the film by his attachment to it).

Make sure a dramatist looking at your book will clearly see three well-defined acts: act one (the setup), act two (rhythmic development, rising and falling action), and act three (climax leading to conclusive ending).

Express your character’s personality in dialogue that distinguishes him, and makes him a role a star would die to play.

Have someone in the film industry read your synopsis before you commit to writing the novel.

Etc.

Though I’ve observed the phenomena for several decades now, it still surprises me that even bestselling novelists, even the ones who complain that no one has made a film from their books yet, don’t write novels dramatic enough to lend themselves easily to mainstream film. It’s a well-known phenomenon in publishing that, with very few exceptions, the more books a novelist sells the less critical his publisher’s editors are of his work. So time and again we read novels that start out well, roar along to the halfway point, then peter off into the bogs of formless character development or action resolution.

A publisher invests between $25,000 and $100,000 or more in publishing your novel. A low-budget feature film from a major Hollywood studio today costs at least $40 million. There is, from a business point of view, no comparison. Risking $40 million means the critical factor is raised as high as can be imagined when your book hits the “story department” — much higher than the critical factor of even the finest publishers. Hollywood studies what audiences want by logging, in box office dollars, cents, and surveys, what they respond best to.

If you want to add film to your profit centers as a novelist, it would behoove you to study what makes films work. Disdaining Hollywood may be a fashionable defense for writers who haven’t gotten either rich or famous from it, but it’s not productive in furthering your cinematic career.

Follow Ken Atchity on Twitter

Guest Post: Iran and Nuclear Technology by Dan Turello

The Details Matter -- But Even More Important Is the Long View of History

 

We will be hearing all manner of opinion about the particulars of the recently brokered deal with Iran. In the midst of them, we should remember that behind the nuances of current strategy lies an important philosophical question that has hounded political theorists for a long time: that is the relationship between "might" and "right" and what may happen when allegedly less evolved civilizations gain access to technology that allows them to threaten other nations.

Among the philosophers who have dealt with this question, Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) deserves particular attention. Vico's life was a case-study in perseverance. His day-to-day existence was full of trials. He fell off a ladder in his youth and had severe learning problems. Bookish and serious, he studied law, Latin, and rhetoric. At various points in his career he was so poor he wrote eulogies to supplement his income. He aspired to be a law professor, but that faculty snubbed him, so he toiled at a much less prestigious post in rhetoric at the University of Naples, Italy. All the while, he puzzled about some of the most complex problems in politics and philosophy and penned a number of major volumes. Mostly ignored during his lifetime, he gained popularity after his death, and is rightly remembered today for his magnum opus, Principj di una scienza nuova intorno alla natura delle nazioni, or New Science, as it is rendered in English translation, as well as earlier works of philosophy and history that attempted to offer a comprehensive explanation of the rise and fall of nations.

Reading the pages of Vico's early 18th century writings makes the Iran debates seem like a deja-vu. In the three centuries prior to Vico's time, the Ottoman Empire had secured a wide sphere of influence, and had posed an ongoing threat to the Christian West. Commentators had been in a quandary about how to interpret this. The Ottomans were generally considered retrograde, and their civilization deemed less moral. Yet, they had managed to acquire and develop military technology that made them a threat.

Reflecting on this period of history, one of Vico's conclusions was that the Ottoman's success was in part the result of Christian traitors -- advisers who were selling their military wisdom to enemies of the state. But what is most important about Vico's thinking is that he correctly came to the conclusion that beyond the nuances of any particular moment in history, technological mastery and military superiority were ultimately linked to the long-term quality of a country's cultural investments. Supremacy in military power, he thought, was the result of the superior flourishing of the arts and letters -- in other words, those habits of mind that lead to robust curiosity, free debate, and restless searching, scientific and otherwise. Given these virtues and ongoing investments, he believed a nation's military superiority and ability to defend itself could be preserved over time.

While pursuing a spirited debate about if and how to engage with Iran is important, even more significant to the long term health and vitality of the United States is to remember, along with Vico, that first and foremost we must continue to support those habits of culture that have made the United States strong in the first place. This means sustaining large investments in basic and applied science, in education at every level, in the arts and letters -- all areas that will ensure robust inquiry and the country's long-term vitality. If we persevere with these investments, we may continue to wield influence in world affairs in the decades to come. We will also give ourselves reason to continue being proud of the values we seek to defend.

This perspective has an added benefit. It points the way towards a nuanced stance that embraces patriotic support for the values and aspirations embedded in the American experience while recognizing that global leadership is not about manifest destiny, providence, a once-and-for-all position of rightness vis-à-vis the rest of the world, or any other such wishful thinking. It's about an ongoing attention to the values and investments that make us strong, and noble, over the long term.

Follow Dan Turello on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danturello 

Dan Turello grew up in the Piedmont region of Italy, served in the Italian Alpine Troops and completed a Ph.D. at Harvard. Whether it’s engineering in the Renaissance or sci-fi and information networks today, most of his writing comes back to themes of “earth-tones” and “green.” He has published articles and reviews in the Washington Post, Renaissance Studies, Rassegna dell’Esercito, The Romance Sphere, and Italian Studies. 

Reposted From The Huffington Post

'Phantom Limb': A Conversation With Dennis Palumbo

 

Photo: Nathanson's Photography

Dennis Palumbo is a thriller writer and psychotherapist in private practice. He's the author of the non-fiction book, Writing from the Inside Out and a collection of mystery stories, From Crime to Crime. He has also been writing the Daniel Rinaldi mystery series. He was formerly a Hollywood screenwriter, whose credits include the film My Favorite Year, which was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Screenplay. He was a staff writer for the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter. Currently, he blogs for the Huffington Post and has a column, Hollywood on the Couch, for Psychology Today.

His mystery-thriller series concerns Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, a psychologist and trauma expert, who consults with the 
Pittsburg Police. His specialty is treating victims of violent crime who suffer from the traumatic after-effects of those experiences. Rinaldi suffered such a trauma when his wife was killed during a mugging. Though he too was shot, he lived, but struggled with survivor's guilt long afterwards. Now, his mission now is to help others deal with their trauma symptoms, but in the process, he manages to get heavily involved in police investigations, often to the consternation of his police colleagues.

In Phantom Limb, the fourth book in the series, Dr. Rinaldi consults with a prospective patient, a woman he last saw thirty years ago in Playboy. Lisa Campbell, ex-starlet and current trophy wife of elderly tycoon Charles Harland, plans to kill herself at 7 o'clock that evening. Daniel has only fifty minutes, the length of their session, to talk her out of it. Soon after Lisa leaves his office, she's kidnapped. As a psychologist who may have heard critical information, he's ethically bound not to share what they discussed. So, Rinaldi must navigate tricky waters to help the police locate Lisa. Rinaldi find himself amid a tangled web of kidnapping, murder, sexual deviance, and family secrets.

It seems in some respects, Daniel Rinaldi bears a resemblance to you. True?
He does, in the sense we're both born and raised in Pittsburgh. We both went to Pitt. We're both Italian-Americans and the big similarity other than we're both psychologists, is we straddle the Pittsburgh of old and new. When I went to college, the city was loaded with steel mills. They're all gone now. Industrial Pittsburgh has been replaced by a high-tech, sophisticated city. Daniel and I are very aware of that change, from a formerly dingy city, with its skies filled with smoke and ash, and coal barges going up and down the Allegheny River, to what it is now: a city with gleaming skyscrapers and clean air.

Daniel is also some things I'm not: he's a former amateur boxer; he's brave and resourceful, which I'm not (Laughter). The things he gets involved with would have me running in the other direction. Kirkus Reviews called him 'Jack Reacher with a psychology degree.' (More laughter).

As a psychotherapist yourself, how much of your training do you bring to the Daniel Rinaldi novels?
I've been a licensed therapist for almost twenty-eight years. For three-and-half years, I worked in a psychiatric hospital with schizophrenics. Earlier in my career, I spent five years in training on trauma theory with the nation's leading trauma expert, Dr. Robert Stolorow. That's one of the reasons I made Daniel a trauma expert. In most thriller novels, the effects of trauma on crime victims are never dealt with. In the Daniel Rinaldi series, these effects are very important. That's part of what my training as a psychologist brings to the writing.

The Daniel Rinaldi novels are written from the first-person perspective. What are the advantages of this style?
For me, the advantage is we get to be inside Daniel's head and thoughts. From that perspective, we really hear his voice. Rather than hearing a removed, third-person authorial voice, we get to stay within Daniel himself; we're inside his head. So, not only will he say something to another character, but he'll also think something to himself, something to which the reader is privy. We get a solid sense of who he is. I also like that by using the first person, the reader only knows what Daniel knows. Often, in thrillers, the reader knows what the bad guy is thinking. So, from a first person perspective, it's a bit more difficult to build suspense, but I'm able to do it. I construct the story so enough dread is foreshadowed to make the reader worry for Daniel.

You've been outspoken about the thriller-mystery genre being a venerable one. Will you talk about that?
Many people question the literary quality of crime thrillers. I think crime novels, from Sherlock Holmes on, have done what Tom Wolfe said, 'The purpose of a novel is to show the details of an era's status, to demonstrate its culture.'

If you want a picture of Victorian London, read any Sherlock Holmes novel. It's revelatory. I don't think there's a better dissection of modern marriage than what's depicted in Gone Girl. Whether it's Camus's The Stranger, or Conrad's Heart of Darkness, they delineate the era in which they were written. And, they're crime-mystery novels. There's tremendous literary value in these works.

There's a tendency to think of literature, and crime novels as inhabiting two separate spheres, as being in different categories. The best crime novels are indeed literature. I don't think there are better writers than Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, or for that matter, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Hugo, or Dickens. To one or another extent, they all wrote novels about crime. When it comes to writing, there's good writing, mediocre writing and bad writing. That's it.

What has surprised you about the writing life?
What's most surprising to me is that success in writing is much more about craft than talent. It's really a matter of hard work and diligence. It's not sitting around, drinking absinthe, and waiting for inspiration. It's hard work. You sit down every day at the typewriter or keyboard, and do the work. And hopefully, thirty-five years later, you have something to show for it.

What do you love about the writing life?
I've been a writer since I was twenty-two. The thing I love most is the creation of a completely different world in a novel. Screenwriting is a collaborative process; things get rewritten by various people; they're then interpreted and changed by directors and actors. If, in the end, there's any resemblance to what you initially wrote, it's a small miracle. But in my Daniel Rinaldi novels, I get into his head and construct his world. I love that. I love creating a whole new world.

What advice would you give novice writers?
My advice is very simple: don't follow trends; don't try to copy other people's success; keep giving the readers you, until you is what they want.

Congratulations on writing Phantom Limb, the fourth in the Daniel Rinaldi mystery-thriller series. Publishers Weekly called it "twisty," "satisfying," and said it "ends on a cliffhanger." I found it to be a riveting novel.

Mark Rubinstein
Author of Mad Dog House and Love Gone Mad

Follow Mark Rubinstein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mrubinsteinCT


Reposted from The Huffington Post

Why Do You Have to Market Your Book? 10 Ways to Focus Your Marketing

Your book is about to be published or already published, and now it's time to talk about the simple facts of marketing. The American marketplace, nearly 300 million strong, is the most lucrative market for books in the world -- and the gateway to the global marketplace. Amazon now has websites in United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil -- and is adding more each year. Your book's reach can truly be global -- if your book is visible.

One book in a million launches to instant sales while the author does absolutely nothing. It's the most common pathetic fallacy to think you'll succeed without PR or that the media will cover your book with little effort on your part.

The other 999,999 books require the marketing (promotional) efforts to become visible to the American and global marketplace. And marketing is an ongoing thing that never stops.

To begin with, you need to know this formula by heart:

MARKETING has no direct relationship with sales.

But GOOD MARKETING produces VISIBILITY.

Without VISIBILITY there can be no sales.

Consider BMW, Veuve Clicquot, Victoria's Secret, and many other brands that are embedded in the American consciousness. They well know that spending millions of dollars a year in the big slick magazines with sexy ads has NO direct relationship with sales. But they do it because it keeps their brands in the forefront of the browsers' awareness.

They don't dare NOT spend the money. For one thing, they know if they don't spend it, someone else will be spending it and that someone else may take their place in the buyers' awareness.

The same is true of the massively crowded world of books.

So one way or the other, you must MARKET YOUR BOOK as fervently as -- maybe even more fervently than -- you wrote it. Devote a minimum amount of time EACH DAY because time upon time produces results.

What are some of the best ways to market your book? From years of trials and errors, both my own and those of my clients and published authors, here's what I suggest:

1. Come up with a marketing plan that fits your time and budget constraints; revise it as you continue forward and as opportunities arise.

2. Put time into it, and as much money as you can spare. Nothing happens unless you invest your time and/or your money (and don't forget: money buys time).

3. Get help. If you don't have the time or desire to do it yourself, use our help to make your book visible.

4. Forget about all marketing except the internet. By 2012, 274 million (78.6% of the population) people were using the internet in North America alone; 2.95 billion are online worldwide! Why spend your money on television, or print ads, or even radio (though the last is still a good idea) when you can be in direct touch with this humongous market from your keyboard?

5. Focus your book by offering it exclusive on amazon.com--which has over 100 million subscribers. Get that "Author Central" page up as soon as your book is launched. Amazon is the 500-lb guerrilla -- so set the other monkeys aside until you've sold 100 million books.

6. Build a Facebook page instead of a blog. With 1.3 Billion users globally, where can you find a better marketplace? Maybe you'll consider that limiting when your book has sold a billion copies. Then you can think about expanding beyond Facebook. Meanwhile here's the biggest market imaginable -- nearly 200 million in North America -- right at your fingertips.

7. Focus on getting book reviews on your sell-page. First aim for 30, then 100, then 300. Magic happens when the amazon computer's algorithm starts paying attention to your book, and more and more reviews inevitably make that happen.

8. end out a press release about your book through a service that reaches internet reviewers. You will surely receive requests for review copies -- and at least half of those will end up as reviews on the internet.

9. Social networking is where it's all happening today: Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, Linked-In, YouTube, and Tumblr. Set up accounts and send out postings regularly until you grow your following, capturing their emails so you can keep in touch with them.

10. Experiment as much as you have time and funds for, but double down on anything that's working for you.

Don't be overwhelmed by the marketing process. Take control of it by limiting it to a specific time allotment each day, say 60 minutes. You'll be amazed at the results sixty minutes a day, day in and day out, will produce. Good luck -- and enjoy the excitement of this new frontier for writers, where you can reach out directly to your readers and prospective readers.

Guest Post George Fowler: Cuba Libre

James P. Farwell 

In the movies, evil bad guys are often stupid and hire stupid people to do the wrong thing. Fidel Castro shows that evil people can be very smart, and find bright people who do the right things in advancing their goals, no matter how twisted. In My Cuba Libre (Beverly Hills: Story Merchant Books, 2013), eminent maritime attorney George Fowler has written a very insightful memoire of growing up in Cuba prior to Castro's revolution, while leveling a searing indictment of Castro's rule. Fowler exposes the dark underbelly of a repressive dictatorship that persists despite media reports - he is especially critical of The New York Times - that Castro is receding into the background and turning over power to his brother Raoul.

Castro is still the string puller. And the strings he pulls are often around the necks of dissidents who criticize him or challenge his ham-fisted regime. "There is no questioning Castro's intelligence," Fowler acknowledges. "He is brilliant, manipulative, and resourceful." Anyone who doubts that can read part of the eloquent defense that Castro delivered at his trial after an armed attack in 1953 on Moncada Barracks failed. William Safire has hailed it as a classic example of exceptional rhetoric. Castro sounds like Thomas Payne, not Joseph Stalin, in accusing the Fulgencio Batista regime of precisely the blood-thirsty crimes that on seizing power Castro perpetrated, describing the Barracks as a "workshop of torture and death."

It was a lie. As a University of Havana law student, Castro earned the nickname dirtball, writes Fowler, a reputation he feels Fidel managed to overdo during a long career in power. Many feel that Batista gave up prematurely and could have defeated the revolution, but he chose to flee with his cash, leaving behind the hapless citizens of a country that was prosperous and had a growing middle class. Fowler points out that in a population of only 7 million, Castro has since 1959 sent over 500,000 Cubans through prisons and concentration camps, and argues that the dictator's henchmen shot between 15,000 and 17,000. An extensive security apparatus monitors behavior and conversation.

Even slight infractions can send a citizen to infamous prisons like Kilo 5.5., infamous for using sleep deprivation, or the G-2 prison of Santiago de Cuba, where cells are kept at very high or very low temperatures with prisoners stripped, thrown into isolation chambers, and awaken after twenty minutes - causing irreversible psychological damage. Cuba may be situated 90 miles from Florida, but Castro's agents, Fowler cautions, are active inside the U.S. and act vigorously to murder dissenters inside U.S. waters who try to aid refugees escaping from the Communist dictatorship.

Fowler's prose is concise and clear, but his passion is evident on every page, as he calls for the U.S. to indict Castro criminally, and warns that tourists who see a charming, benign Havana are seeing a carefully orchestrated charade that hides the ugly, everyday reality that Cubans confront. Only Fidel's death will bring change, insists Fowler, and opening up trade or giving the regime access to foreign currency through commerce or tourism will merely prolong the suffering of Cubans.

A good part of the book - in many ways for me the most interesting - is Fowler's account of growing up in Cuba as a young boy and his family. Today a wealthy, esteemed expert on maritime law with an international reputation, he was born to wealth. But the revolution sent his family into severe financial straits. He worked during high school as a construction worker, and studied at a very tough, disciplined Jesuit high school in Puerto Rico before college and law school. He earned his success the old-fashioned way: through hard work and talent.

Still, his portrait of pre-revolutionary Cuba is fascinating. His affection for his large family runs deep in his roots, and his parents and grandparents - successful in the sugar business - emerge as vivid, colorful, fascinating individuals in their own right. Havana and the life they led was exciting, and while the wealthier classes enjoyed an elegant lifestyle, Fowler is emphatic that prosperity was shared and that the family went out of its way to ensure the well-being of those it employed.

Fowler's beautiful wife, Christina, hailed from a similar background, and endured a heart-breaking experience at the age of 12 when Castro jailed her father and her mother managed to get her out of Cuba. Christina was one of the "Peter Pan" children, placed on an airplane with her sisters after Castro goons smashed their dolls, and sent to the U.S., where stern Catholic nuns shipped her to a cold, inhumane existence at a Catholic school in Indiana until a farming couple took Christian and her older sister Mercedes in to live with them. The story has a happy ending: Castro released and exiled her father, and the family reunited in Laurel, Mississippi.

Fowler has a formidable intellect and he is a relentless advocate for his ideas, but writing the book, like the experiences he has gone through, proved deeply emotional for him. That he makes no effort to conceal the pain and hurt that he and those he have known strengthens this compelling story, which anybody interested in Cuba ought to read.

Guest Post: Peter O'Toole and Sid Caesar: Two Fallen Redwoods

 by Dennis Palumbo

In the past month, a number of highly-regarded performers have passed away. Of special note, because of his drug-related death at such a young age, the loss of Philip Seymour Hoffman has seemed particularly tragic.


But, from a personal perspective, the two iconic performers whose deaths resonated most with me were actor Peter O'Toole and comedy genius Sid Caesar. In differing ways, their lives intersected with mine in a manner that had a profound impact.

Though I've been a licensed psychotherapist for the past 26 years, in my prior career I was a Hollywood screenwriter. One of the scripts I co-wrote was for a film called My Favorite Year, which starred Peter O'Toole and featured a fictional 1950s TV comic named King Kaiser -- who was based on Sid Caesar.

As the character named Alan Swann -- a thinly-disguised Errol Flynn -- O'Toole gave what I and many of his fans consider one of his best performances. He perfectly captured Flynn's exuberance, narcissism and insecurity -- as well as the famous swashbuckler's self-deprecating wit.

In the role of King Kaiser -- host of a weekly comedy series based on Your Show of Shows

-- Joseph Bologna replicated Sid Caesar's enormous personal energy, embodying his infamous anger as well as his comedic intensity.

Both O'Toole and Caesar were, in their heyday, larger than life personalities. Famous for their struggles with alcohol, they were willing to live life on their own terms -- even when the consequences of that choice caused them more grief than glory.

Regardless, each, in my opinion, should have been given the opportunity to work much more than they did. Especially when both performers were at the top of their game. That they weren't always afforded that opportunity is our collective loss. In fact, it's unlikely that we'll see many performers of their monumental talent and outsized personalities again.

When each of their deaths were reported in the news, I thought of something a friend of mine had said when film director Stanley Kubrick died. "Well, that's one more fallen redwood in a rapidly dwindling forest."

That forest is now missing two more redwoods.

As a fan, and as a former screenwriter who'd once been professionally connected -- at least tangentially -- with both men, I mourn the passing of Peter O'Toole and Sid Caesar. And offer a posthumous thanks for the richness that each added to my life.

Rest in Peace.

A former Hollywood screenwriter, Dennis Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author of Writing From the Inside Out. He also writes the Daniel Rinaldi mystery series.


Reposted From The Huffington Post