First Parvati TV Video: Fundamentals of Independent Publishing I
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First Parvati TV Video: Fundamentals of Independent Publishing I

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Our first Parvati TV video!

It’s part of the mission of Parvati Press to spread the word about independent publishing. Here’s our first video. Please try not to laugh at my flyaway hair. I will redo this video when I have a better coiffure…and some makeup on.

I discuss how we are in the midst of the biggest sea change in book publishing since the invention of the Gutenberg press. New technologies have arisen that give authors new opportunities.

So, first, believe in yourself. The legacy publishers are putting out a lot of crap. People are hungry for good stories, for innovative stories. The legacy publishers have also forgotten the importance of nurturing a mid-list author through a few books in order to grow their readership. The big publishing companies have decided that they want an MBA type algorithm for turning every book into a bestseller out of the starting gate, and in their pursuit of this algorithm, they’ve lost sight of some important truths about books and publishing–such as offering readers well-told stories that aren’t slick, superficial examples of branded, franchise entertainment.

So believe in your material, and go for it!

Number two, a non-negotiable part of independent book publishing: Have your manuscript professionally edited and copy-edited. I repeat, have your manuscript professionally edited and professionally copy-edited by a professional editor and a professional copy-editor. Get past the crap excuses for not spending the money on a professional edit and professional copy-edit, and pay for this service to make your book as great as you can make it.

So have your manuscript professionally edited. Revise. At the end, have your manuscript copy-edited by a professional copy-editor. This makes all the difference between a silly amateur manuscript and a real professional manuscript that deserves to have customers spend twenty of their hard earned dollars on your book.

Number three, spend the money for a great book cover, which is your first marketing task. A great book cover is the reader’s first impression of your book, and it matters. It’s not a splurge to spend the money to get a great book cover. It’s the most important marketing tool for your work.

These are the first three How-to’s.

 

First Parvati TV Video

Recent BROKEN Spotlights; Recent Pix
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Recent BROKEN Spotlights; Recent Pix

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Kindly Jackie Burris, who brims over with a love of animals, recently hosted me on her fabulous blog, HOUSEWIFE BLUES AND CHIHUAHUA STORIES. I’m grateful for the exposure and she posted my guest article about “Writing, Yoga, and Dogs.”

Busy, multi-talented Drey of DREY’S LIBRARY hosted a guest post and shared her thoughts of BROKEN in a review, concluding with this very sweet comment, “Pick up Broken for a look at the artsy scene in Paris in the early days of WWII and the story of a conflicted young woman whose truth is so much more than she thought it could ever be.”

Meantime, I had some author photos done recently. See below.

Recent BROKEN Spotlights
Recent BROKEN SpotlightsRecent BROKEN SpotlightsRecent BROKEN Spotlights

Citizenfour: The Most Important Movie You Will Ever See
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Citizenfour: The Most Important Movie You Will Ever See

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I recently finished a WWII novel, and I’m still researching the era for another, very different novel set during the same time period. Since one of my closest friends is a Bavarian woman whom I know to be a person of integrity, heart, courage, compassion, and grace, I was curious: how did the NSDAP come to control Germany so completely that its citizens would commit atrocities? So that atrocities would be legalized?

Part of the answer lies in the fact that the NSDAP under Adolf Hitler legalized the illegal. They made laws to force their citizens to participate in the killing of Jews, Poles, the Romany, Socialists, Communists, and anyone who disagreed with the Nazi party. They made laws to enforce the killing and sterilization of children and adults with physical “imperfections” such as mental retardation.

So the Nazi party in Germany created a legal system based on hatred and killing. To enforce this legal system, they instituted a series of Party overseers, one in every community, to make sure that people remained “Loyal” to the party. This was the state police, the Gestapo. The Gestapo surveilled every German citizen, collecting vast files of information about German individuals. There was no “privacy” because the German State was everything.

Every dictatorship surveilles its population as a method of controlling its subjects. This is pointed out in CITIZENFOUR, Laura Poitras’ film about Ed Snowden.

Admittedly, from the beginning, I have considered Snowden a hero. There is no justification for the massive, George-Orwell-1984-Big-Brother spying on citizens in which the United States intelligence services participate. It is an outright breach and invasion of privacy, ethics, and all things good and true.

Our government, the United States government under Barack Obama, is participating in–perhaps perfecting–the exact same tactics employed by Hitler and the Nazi party: Watch every citizen. Scrutinize every private individual. Know what every single person in the State is thinking, saying, and doing. It’s all about information linking, you see.

I know this because I have been researching the Gestapo.

I happened to be at a showing of Citizenfour at Lincoln Plaza after which Poitras appeared for a Q & A. No, she doesn’t know if she’s been followed, but she expects that the US Government would use skilled personnel to follow her. She has been told that all her electronic communication “lights up like a Christmas tree” in the offices where electronic communication is collected and followed.

Poitras was composed, articulate, and expressive. She said that Snowden was exactly as portrayed in the movie: articulate and collected, trying to teach her, Glenn, and Ewan what was most important in the information he gave them.

Some people consider Snowden a traitor. Consider the White Rose in Germany, which consisted of students at the University of Munich and their professor. They had an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign to inform the German public of what was actually being done to Jews and to call the Nazi government to question.

Here is what Wikipedia says of them:

White Rose survivor Jürgen Wittenstein described what it was like to live in Hitler’s Germany: “The government – or rather, the party – controlled everything: the news media, arms, police, the armed forces, the judiciary system, communications, travel, all levels of education from kindergarten to universities, all cultural and religious institutions. Political indoctrination started at a very early age, and continued by means of the Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of complete mind control. Children were exhorted in school to denounce even their own parents for derogatory remarks about Hitler or Nazi ideology.”

The White Rose was considered traitorous, too. So they were executed.

And “Ultimate goal of mind control” can only be the reason for the NSA’s total surveillance of the American population, including hundreds of millions of completely loyal American citizens.

How long before the US government insists on the same kind of control? All in the name of “protecting” American citizens from terrorists?

Just as the Gestapo was protecting German citizens from Judeo-Bolshevik enemies.

The most important concept in the movie was one that Snowden articulated: that the NSA’s actions change the balance of power so that it’s not elected-officials and electorate, it’s now rulers and those who are ruled.

See the movie. Think about the United States government, which is acting like a bully and a dictatorship.

Citizenfour

 

 

Seattle PI Review of BROKEN: “Heat and Passion…and a Beauty that Shines Through”
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Seattle PI Review of BROKEN: “Heat and Passion…and a Beauty that Shines Through”

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Author and prolific reviewer Leslie Wright wrote a thoughtful, intelligent review of BROKEN.

She posted her article on her personal review blog Tic Toc, and then on Blogcritics.org where it was picked up by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer online. It’s cool that content on the internet works that way, spreading with resonance to reach many people.

At least, I hope it reaches many people. The review made me really happy, the way an author feels a keen, unique joy when a reader gets it, understands what the author is doing in a story, with characters and motifs.

In part, Wright said:

Slatton has created characters that seem to leap off the page, and the danger of the time is palpable. The cruelty displayed raises the hair on your neck, and creates a knot in the pit of your stomach….If you enjoy heat and passion with erotica and danger you will find this to your liking. It is riddled with bits of history and twisted into a paranormal tale, full of greed, romance and a beauty that shines through…

Find this beautiful review here on Tic Toc, here on Blogcritics, and here on the Seattle PI.

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Seattle PI Review

Yoga With Dogs
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Yoga With Dogs

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Gabriel is my boy. He is telepathically attuned to me, so he always knows what I am feeling. I can’t count the number of times over the last six years that he’s come to cuddle me at just the right moment, just when I most needed the creature comfort of his warm yellow fur, damp nose, soulful dark eyes, and eternally wagging tail.

Molly joined us three years ago. She’s a powerfully intelligent girl, a chocolate lab, a little reserved but deeply affectionate when it suits her.

About a year ago, Molly discovered that she could have some fun with me while I was doing yoga. When I do downward facing dog, she lies down beneath me, directly under the V of my body. When I do upward facing dog, she crawls over on top of me. When I’m doing jnana shirsasana, she puts a paw or her nose over my leg.

When she hears the “Om” chiming the start of my daily Yogaglo video, she trots in, and the game is on. It continues all the way through savasana, during which she stands over me and whines for me to KEEP MOVING.

So Molly and Gabriel must have talked, because now Gabriel wants in on the fun. Yesterday I tried to take some selfies. You can’t really tell but I’m in gomukasana and a reclined twist during most of the pix.

Yoga With Dogs Yoga With Dogs Yoga With Dogs Yoga With DogsYoga With Dogs

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Open Letter to Senator Schumer: Remove Me From Your List and Stop Asking Me For Money

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Dear Mr. Schumer,

I am a registered Democrat, so I understand why I keep getting emails from your office.

However, while I voted for Obama the first time, I did not vote for him in the last election. With regret, I tell you that I am hoping the Republicans take control of the Senate in the upcoming elections.

I am a disillusioned Democrat who is disgusted with the Obama presidency. Please remove me from your mailing list.

In case you wonder why I am disillusioned, I will explain. I voted for Obama the first time because I believe in women’s rights, reproductive freedom, gay rights, social justice, and gun control. So far, OK.

But I also believe in citizen privacy, supporting and encouraging small American businesses (not Wall Street and not Socialism), supporting Israel, accountability and oversight for multi-national corporations that function as sovereign nation-states, and getting the Health Insurance companies to pay for universal Health care (not the states).

I am appalled at Obama’s foreign policy, which is a joke and a shambles. “Don’t do stupid sh*t” is adolescent drivel not suited to the gravitas of the office of the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the United States military.

I also find it extraordinarily hypocritical that Obama’s tactic is to rally people against “the Have’s” when he has taken more vacations, and more expensive vacations, and played more golf, than any president in history. So many of his supporters are the Limousine liberals of Wall Street, which may be why he bailed them out.

My family is losing our expensive, bad PPO Health Insurance that we purchase through Freelancers, and we are being forced into a more expensive, worse HMO. My doctor of many years who manages my low thyroid medication is not in the HMO. Frankly, I feel screwed.

In New York state, we don’t have many options—just one outrageously expensive, covering-almost-nothing HMO after another. Our choices are limited to bad and worse, and we are losing our trusted doctors of many years, despite Obama’s “promises” to the contrary.

Mr. Schumer, you have failed the state of New York in this way.

The Obamacare plan gives money to rich, greedy Health Insurance companies, funds a ghastly bad, buggy, confusing website to the tune of over $2.1 billion, places people’s life-or-death medical decisions in the hands of medically untrained Obamacare supervisors rather than in the hands of physicians who have undergone years of medical school (more than one doctor has expressed their horror at this!), and strips people of their right to choose their health care plan—while costing them an arm and a leg. This is just the beginning of what is wrong with Obamacare.

We need a universal healthcare plan, but not this frighteningly awful one. When Democrats go on the campaign trail and state “Obamacare is working,” they are either 1, lying through their teeth, or 2, experiencing a psychotic break from reality and should be institutionalized.

I have voted Democratic since I was old enough to vote—until now. So I hope you will understand why I am asking you to remove me from your list, and to stop asking me for money.

Thank you.
Traci L. Slatton