The 1,000th episode of America’s Most Wanted will be broadcast on Saturday, March 6, 2010.  It’s been 22 years since the show first aired and, while I don’t watch it and really never have (except the occasional episode here and there), the man responsible for the show’s origins has a heartbreaking story.

I remember reading about Adam Walsh in an issue of Guideposts magazine.  I was in my great-grandmother’s living room, sitting on the floor.  I don’t remember how old I was but I remember my mother was in the kitchen with Mema and my brother was probably somewhere nearby playing with a toy or something.

This might have been sometime in 1983. I’m not sure but that feels right.

I remember the tray of “stuff”–Kleenex, band-aids(?), other “stuff” I don’t really remember–in front of my Mema’s chair.  It was a white plastic tray and I think it was new–at least, new to me.  I remember the white light coming in from the window (was there a window over the wood console television?) and shining on the chair where Mema usually sat.  I remember her magazine rack next to that chair, the magazine rack that I would go through every time I visited.

The story told of a young boy, six-years old, who was abducted from a Sears while his mother left him to watch a few older boys play video games to go a few aisles over to look at something.  I don’t remember what she was shopping for and the above information, I didn’t really remember until I read it in the Wikipedia article (she had gone to look for lamps).

Adam Walsh

What I do remember is Adam’s portrait on the front of the magazine.  He wore a baseball hat and a bat was slung over one shoulder, the gaps in his smile revealing that he had lost a few of his front teeth all at once.  I’ve posted that picture on this website for you to see.

I remember reading his severed head was found in a ditch somewhere.  For some reason, my memory wants it to be a skull, rather than the head with flesh and muscle itself, and I want to say it was recognized by his dental records rather than it being able to be recognized on sight.  Since the head was found 5 days later, I’m really leaning towards it being thoe whole head and not just the skull.

As a parent, I hope like hell that the Walsh’s didn’t have to see it and it really was just identified by Adam’s dental records.

I remember when I read the article, I couldn’t imagine having to go through something like that.  I remember thinking that Adam Walsh would have been older than I was, had he been still alive, and to me, that was scary.  The fact that he was already dead at six years old was one of the worst facts about this crime.

I’m not sure when it dawned on me that John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted was the father of Adam Walsh (murdered boy in Guideposts).  Probably not when America’s Most Wanted was first aired.  I’m not sure if it was announced–or, being the almost-teenager I was, maybe I just didn’t pay attention.

And it was years later that Ottis Toole was posthumously indicted for Adam’s murder.

America’s Most Wanted has helped “capture more than 1,100 fugitives and helped reunite 43 missing children with their families,” according to the article on FoxNews I was reading.

Those are remarkable numbers for the past 22 years.

Mark Twain’s definition of a “classic” was “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”  Quirk Classics is ready to change that stiff and starched view of the classics, starting with the New York Times Bestseller “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

On March 23, 2010, the prequel to this bestseller will be in bookstores.  “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls” is set four years before PPZ.  Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters enjoy the life of English teenagers in the countryside until a corpse reanimates at it’s own funeral in the local parish.  Suddenly, life for the sisters is turned, if not on it’s head, at least sideways!  Amidst their eighteenth century ladylike drama, they suddenly have to train for the continuation of an ongoing war between humans and zombies.

My analysis in a nutshell: Loved it!

I must admit–this is the first novel I’ve read in this line.  Yeah, yeah, I kinda feel guilty about it myself.  (Shhh! Don’t tell anyone!)  While Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters have both caught my attention, I have yet to read either of them.  However, upon finishing this prequel, I’m ready to head out to my local bookstore to purchase and read both of them this weekend.

Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a fantastic achievement.  Hockensmith has taken an era of literature and thrown zombies in the mix–and made the story read as natural as it would have, had it been written in the nineteenth century. And had the author included zombies in their midst.

Most of it’s humor stems from the interlocking of the two genres: literary fiction and zombie horror–and, while the novel didn’t elicit the fear that horror novels are most known for, I was drawn in by the peace and tranquility of the writing style.  I know, peace and tranquility in a zombie novel?

It’s possible.  It’s the idea of sitting back and reading a good story, engrossing yourself in it, and subjects or topics you didn’t think would normally fit in a novel of that type or style fit seamlessly.  In reading the novel, I could forget that zombies were probably a more taboo topic to talk (or write) about.

I personally wouldn’t necessarily consider this a horror novel so much as a “literary fiction novel, add zombies” and that, I think, is what the author was intending.

The pictures were well done, designed to be woodcuts of particular imagery from the story–my favorite was of a quadriplegic zombie on the attack.  I wish I had a jpg to show you.

Easy to read and extremely enjoyable to do so, I loved this book.  Both Hockensmith’s craft and voice were superb and, while I had slight issues with Elizabeth’s “suitors” (for various reasons–I think they needed a tad bit more character work in the novel to come up with the conclusions Elizabeth did), I did enjoy how things were resolved at the climax and then the end of the book.

I have been thinking for a while of doing an analysis of the original Pride and Prejudice and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to see where the zombie storyline adds to the story of the original classic.  Stay tuned… I just may do that yet!

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You, my dear readers, have a chance to win one of 50 Quirk Classics Prize Packs!

What are they?  The Prize Packs have a retail value of over $100 and consist of:

• An advance copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
• Audio Books of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
• A password redeemable online for sample audio chapters of Dawn of the Dreadfuls
• An awesome Dawn of the Dreadfuls poster
• A Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Journal
• A box set of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Postcards

What do you have to do? Click on this link and mention this blog, Imperfect Clarity, on the message board somewhere.  You’ll automatically be entered to win a prize pack!

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Please be aware of my book review policies.

* Received as an advance review copy from the publisher for review.  It was agreed the review would be posted on March 3, 2010, during their “All-Out-Worldwide-Zombie-Blog-Explosion 2010.” Please note: the receipt of manuscripts from authors or publishers does not guarantee a good review of the work.  This note is to comply with FCC Regulations and to let you, the reader, know I have reviewed the work in good faith.

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You know, I never really talk about MY writing — I can talk about how to write, how not to write, how other people write, interviews of people telling you how they write, interviews of people inspiring you to write… but I never talk about my OWN writing.  That’s because… well, honestly, there hasn’t been much.

I have one story completed — from beginning to end.  It needs a bit of polishing here and there, but, overall, I am extremely pleased with it.  It’s 2100 words, so it’s short, and it’s mostly dialogue and in present tense.  I’m REALLY thrilled with it except, as I said, I need to touch it up, make it not so obvious to everyone (or at least, some of the people) I know.

I have a second one that I got the idea from Fear of Writing by Milli Thornton and one of her “Fertile Exercises.”  Well, the background, I got from her — everything else is mine.  But I need to finish it up and figure out exactly where it’s going.  I like what I have thus far, but as to how it’s going to end up… I think I have an inkling, but we shall see where it goes

I wrote 800 words tonight on a short story I have based on an incident that happened to me in real life, a detour in Kansas.  Yeah, sounds exciting, right? Well, we shall see.

So, everything at the moment is a “We shall see.”   I guess this is good.

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I’m going to start keeping track of how many words I write of fiction a day.  My goal? 750 words a day.

Why only fiction? Because I live on Facebook and Twitter and Gmail and my blog… I can write diary/journal entries all day but that’s not what I want to write.  That’s not what I want to make my career.  So, while I will still write my journals, my morning/evening pages (which I haven’t been keeping up with that well ), my comments to Facebook and Twitter statuses, it is writing fiction I want to write towards.

Today, I wrote 800 words towards this new short story and thus, met my goal for the day! I give myself… a LOLCAT!

“The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swift alive.” — The Thief of Always by Clive Barker

“It was a pleasure to burn.” – Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

“Jonathan Harker’s Journal — (Kept in shorthand.)  3 May. Bistritz. — Left Munich at 8:35 p.m., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late.” — Dracula by Bram Stoker

“Lurking, that lovely spring day, in the office of Dr. Chalmers, Atworthy College Medical Clinic, there might have been two small spirits of the air, pressed back into the dark shadow behind the door, avoiding as far as possible the warm sunlight which fell gently upon the rug.” — Fear by L. Ron Hubbard

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.” — The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

“The beet is the most intense of vegetables.”  — Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” — Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahme-Smith

Visitation Rights by Lawrence Dagstine
eBook ISBN: 9781615720088

Genre: Paranormal
Sub Genre: Horror
Short Story of 5913 words
Edited by Lisa J. Jackson
Cover Artwork by Cinsearae Santiago
Published by Damnation Books

In this futuristic courtroom horror tale of Stem Cell research turned bad, paranormal visitations and a fierce custody battle, two parents must overcome many obstacles in order to regain guardianship of something they once loved and cherished most.

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“Visitation Rights” by Lawrence Dagstine doesn’t feel as much of a horror story as a paranormal courtroom drama.  When I think of horror, I think of spine-tingling, gut-wrenching emotional effects and I just didn’t feel that here.

The parents of a soldier (Jack and Margery) are fighting with their son’s widow (Jenny) in a courtroom over visitation rights to their deceased son’s ghost (an “AV-36”) who is in a “transitioning camp” to help the transition from “life” to “after-life.”   The AV-36 is an extension of stem-cell research (the field Jack’s retired from) to the paranormal realm of ghosts and spirits.  It’s never fully explained how the two are mixed, but that’s ok.

Why they are fighting, I’m not quite sure… The parents want to visit what’s left of their son in the camp while the widow puts on a performance on the stand that feels like it is staged for the court’s reaction, talking about how the AV-36 is disturbed by the father’s visits because he doesn’t want to remember the past.

The story itself was entertaining but the characters simply didn’t grab a hold of me. They just didn’t feel like real people with real lives, but creations for the purpose of this story alone.  While I’m not going to go into detail here for obvious reasons, I didn’t quite understand why this particular ending was chosen — while, yes, it worked, the motivations behind it confused me.  It wasn’t as satisfying an ending as I would have liked.

With some work on characterization and developing the background of the characters involved, I think “Visitation Rights” would definitely be a better story.

Review: 3 out of 5 stars, definitely has potential.

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* Received as an ebook from the publisher for review.  Please note: the receipt of manuscripts from authors or publishers does not guarantee a good review of the work.  This note is to comply with FCC Regulations and to let you, the reader, know I have reviewed the work in good faith.

Seth Godin

In the past few months that I’ve been on Twitter, I’ve seen references to a man by the name of Seth Godin.  He is a blogger, the creator of Squidoo, and the author of many books on marketing.  While, in no way do I find business and/or marketing interesting, Mr. Godin’s work has caught my attention for it’s upbeat insistence that if you want to do something with your life, you (and only you) have the ability to do it.

His last two books, “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” and “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?,” talk increasingly about the leaders of today and doing something with your life.  I recently bought them through my Kindle for iPhone application and am currently taking my time to read them.

Mr. Godin maintains that ANYONE can be important — it’s just a matter of doing it

Recently, I asked Mr. Godin for an interview and he was kind enough to answer my questions. 

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I haven’t had the chance to read your newest book, “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?,” yet, but the topic is extremely familiar.   You’ve defined the term “linchpin” in another interview as: “The linchpin is the person who is indispensable, because they refuse to become an interchangeable part, someone who merely follows the manual.”

It seems that most people today confuse the terms “capitalism” and “mercantilism” to some degree.  From what I understand, they are easily confused: mercantilism is the pursuit of money and power at the expense of everything else while capitalism is the “pursuit of enlightened self-interest” in which individuals engage in trade for mutual benefit.

What you have advocated is essentially capitalism in it’s truest form, isn’t it?

Actually, I’m writing about the death of industrialism. Industrialism was the idea that a factory staffed by low-paid workers following precise instructions could generate significant profits. That was lousy for the workers but good for the owners. Now, it’s bad for both.

The future belongs to individuals and organizations that make things up as they go along, that create things worth talking about, that act like humans, not cogs.

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As a writer (and a mother, and a previous student, and…), I’m extremely familiar with the idea behind what you term the “lizard-brain.”  To me, that term is synonymous with “fear of failure.”  That fear of failure can be so ingrained into our psyche, it can be almost paralyzing when you do face it.  Sometimes we just don’t realize it or notice it when we follow what it says to do until afterwards.

This fear of failure can lead to sabotaging ourselves in our endeavors over and over and over again.

What suggestions could you make that would help us better recognize when our “lizard-brain” is talking to us?

Any time that you hear a voice that keeps you from doing something generous, artistic, brave or important, that’s the lizard. When you hear a voice telling you not to steal, bully or be selfish, that’s your conscience. And when you hear a voice calling you Sylvia, it’s time to see a doctor…

Overcoming the voice isn’t easy, but it’s your life’s work.

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I know people who absolutely hate their jobs and feel stuck in them for various reasons, whether it be money, obligations, reputations, etc.  Wouldn’t this make it more difficult for them to become a linchpin?  What would you say to them in their situations?

No one who is reading this is stuck. Not stuck if they can find part time work or not stuck if they can freelance at night or on the weekends, not stuck if they can gradually win over their boss and organization with their art, and not stuck if they can see their job as a platform of art.

To say you’re stuck is to give in to the lizard brain.

There are people from just about every walk of life, living with just about every disability and overcoming just about any odds you can describe who are doing important work. You can too.

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With your latest book, you gave out advance copies to people who donated to a charity and used word-of-mouth as your advertising, skipping traditional media altogether.  How did this idea come about? How would you compare the success of this to more traditional routes?

Not sure you can compare it to something from a few years ago, because the world has changed. But compared to my options, there’s no comparison. Everyone is a reviewer now. Everyone has a platform if she chooses. Embracing my readers was easy and smart (and scary).

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My blog is about writing and reading fiction.  I want to help myself and others achieve the goal of writing their thoughts and stories down.  We all want to be that creative force behind the next bestselling book or series, i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, the next Stephen King, if not simply to feel that what we write, what we think, is acknowledged and liked by someone else.

Do you think that fiction writers can be linchpins in their field when fiction writing tends to be so competitive?

Writing isn’t competitive. Selling books is competitive. So don’t sell books. Just write. Write and share. If it’s good, people will spread your work digitally. The more your ideas spread, the better you do. No novelist suffers from piracy, most suffer from obscurity.

Share!
Write!
Ship!

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Mr. Godin, I tend to end all my interviews with a question regarding the five items that the interviewee feels are a necessity to survive in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.  Here, I would like to ask what 3 ways would you suggest to survivors that they maintain their “indispensable nature” in said apocalypse?

Don’t be a survivor. If there’s an apocalypse, it’s way better to die fighting.

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Thank you for answering my questions!

As an English instructor at a local college, an acquaintance stated that he went through a lot of junk to get to the words that meant something.  A friend of mine called him a “garbageman.”

The acquaintance didn’t like being called a garbageman.  At all.

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“When you begin to write this way — right out of your own mind — you might have to be willing to write junk for five years because we have accumulated it over many more than that and have been gladly avoiding it in ourselves.  We have to look at our own inertia, insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable to say.  It is true that when we begin anything new, resistances fly in our face.  Now you have the opportunity to not run or be tossed away, but to look at them black and white on paper and see what their silly voices say.  When your writing blooms out of the back of this garbage and compost, it is very stable.  You are not running from anything.  You can have a sense of artistic security.  If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.  Besides, those voices are merely guardians and demonds protecting the real treasure, the first thoughts of the mind.”

– Natalie Goldman, Writing Down the Bones.

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We are all garbagemen, whether we like to believe it or not.  We have been convinced that to be a garbageman is somehow a negative thing.  But the garbagemen do us a necessary favor: they clean up our streets and take what remains of our “stuff” as we use it up.  We should thank them more, for they haul away those parts of us which we don’t want anymore.

In this case, by throwing our thoughts on the page without stopping to censor them, we do end up with a lot of garbage that needs to be thrown away.  How much of your “morning pages” or “warm up pages” or your “diary” are simply words that pop into your head and you want to get them down on the page so you can find that one statement, the “diamond in the rough” (to borrow a cliche), that will make all of the time you have spend writing worthwhile?

Me?  Oh, a lot.  Definitely a lot.  And yes, occasionally I sift through this “garbage” to see if I have found anything yet.  If not, I go back to writing.  If so, I take it and see what I can do with it.

What about you?

I, Kari Wolfe, understand that I am undertaking an intensive, guided encounter with my own creativity.  I commit myself to the twelve-week duration of the course.  I, Kari Wolfe, commit to weekly reading, daily morning (evening) pages, a weekly artist date, and the fulfillment of each week’s tasks.

I, Kari Wolfe, further understand that this course will raise issues and emotions for me to deal with.  I, Kari Wolfe, commit myself to excellent self-care — adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and pampering — for the duration of the course.

Signed, Kari Wolfe

Date: 2.19.2010

From The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self by Julia Cameron.

What you should expect from me as an independent book reviewer:

Receiving a free book does not guarantee a good review. Period. I will not give your book 4+ stars if it does not merit those stars on it’s own.  I am not an editor — while how the author accomplishes his/her goal is important when reading a book, it is not the only requirement of a good (or great) book.

I am associated with Niteblade Fantasy and Horror Magazine as an independent book reviewer. Any book I receive through Niteblade is also not guaranteed a good review unless it deserves one.

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Until today, I thought the FTC blogger disclosure rules were garbage.

Of course, I review books I receive based on what I think of them, rather than whether I received them for free.

For the last three months, I have been fighting with an internal demon. I had accepted an “unpaid internship” with a small press who stated up front that the internship required reviews of the press’s books. No problem — I like to review books.

The internship offered:

You will also have an opportunity to learn a few things about publishing, editing, and book production; to interact with authors while promoting their books; to build up your resume with hands-on editorial work; and to receive a reference for your future job search in publishing.

The publisher’s books were to be read and reviewed based on whether the author accomplished their goal with the book. In the exact words of the publisher in a personal email:

The one rule I teach all my interns – all aspiring writers and/or editors – is this: The book was not written to please you personally. It must be judged based on how well the author has accomplished what he’s set out to accomplish, even if his goal is not your personal cup of tea. Digging deeper to fully understand the author’s intent and then evaluating how well he’s lived up to it, putting yourself in the author’s shoes, is what will make you a good editor. Usually, with our books, this understanding results in positive reviews, because as an editor, I knock myself out to make sure the authors live up to their original intents. (Emphasis mine.)

If the intern felt that s/he couldn’t give 4 or 5 stars to a particular books, they were to speak to the publisher who would then try to convince them of the rating. Otherwise, the review was not wanted.

These reviews were then to be placed on various book review sites such as GoodReads and LibraryThing. Interns were also supposed to “like” other interns’ reviews of the press’s books.

This was the bulk of the internship and spoken about under the guise of “promotion.”

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The FTC rules state:

Bloggers who receive cash or in-kind payment (including free products or services for review) are deemed endorsers and so must disclose material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

When I asked about complying with the FTC rules, I was told:

In the reviews of XXXXXX titles you post on your blog, you can just say, at the very bottom, “___________ was a review copy from the publisher.” It’s an all-purpose – and true! – label. You don’t have to specify under what circumstances you received it.

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Does this sound okay with you?  Yes, I recognize that, as an intern, I was asked to not review a book if I deemed it worthy of less than 4 stars and I could choose not to review the book.

I also recognize that, in a way, it felt like stacking the deck.

There is a HUGE difference between someone picking up a book off of a shelf or a publisher sending a free review copy to a blogger with no strings attached and being sent free books by a publisher under the name of an “internship,” requiring a 4 or 5 star rating or else none at all.

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I had an interview set up with the publisher of this small press.   I asked three questions and said I would get back to them with more.  I have been wanting to say something for a while about how uncomfortable I was.  Today, I sent an email stating that I’d like to discuss the review policy.

The email I received was scathing and hurtful, telling me (yes, I’m paraphrasing) I asked stupid questions and gave my “permission” for them to be answered and reiterated that if I didn’t want to give 4 or 5 star reviews to the books to let this person have a chance to convince me that I was wrong.  At the end, the internship was terminated because my “approach to this internship was not what” they “wanted.”

After that email, I apologize for having ever been associated with them to begin with.