Amazing Review of Broken by Seacoast Online’s Rebecca Skane
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Amazing Review of Broken by Seacoast Online’s Rebecca Skane

I’ve been blessed with some lovely, thoughtful reviews of BROKEN.  Writer Rebecca Skane of SEACOAST ONLINE has written a truly wondrous review.

I have written in other posts about how dazzling, and ultimately humbling, it is when a reader GETS IT about what I am trying to do with a novel. Skane GOT IT, in the fullest way possible. It’s more than simply gratifying when a book is well and thoughtfully reviewed; it is a core affirmation of an author’s existence. Sorry to put it in such dramatic terms, but a writer works in solitude at a desk, pouring her soul, her heart, her brain, her blood, sweat and tears, and everything else she’s got, into her writing. To have her book received with appreciation is an existential validation.

Here are some of my favorite lines from Skane’s review:

Traci L. Slatton is back with another novel of fantasy, romance, and danger.  In Broken, angel Alia falls from grace, giving up her wings to live the life of a Parisian woman at the start of World War II.  Beautifully written and devilishly portrayed, Alia is a not your typical fallen angel archetype.  She is more human than anything else….

Alia is consumed with pain but enjoys life as a human by taking advantage of pleasures of the flesh…

Lush and poignant prose and a beautifully rendered time period and locale, elevate Broken from the traditional novels of fantasy into something of its own element.  With the first section of the book doubling as mild erotica, it’s refreshing to find well-written verse to accompany such wickedly scandalous boudoir moments.  This isn’t 50 Shades – this is thought-provoking literature that explores female sexual equality and the nefarious act of unwanted dominance in every form.

I am more than grateful for such a deeply thoughtful review.

Read the review here, and enjoy. I did!!

Amazing Review of Broken

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

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

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

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”

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.

blogcriticimages

Seattle PI Review

Supporting Sam Harris
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Supporting Sam Harris

I took a year of Arabic as an undergraduate at Yale. Along with the language, we also discussed the culture of the Arab world. This was the mid-80’s, so liberal sanctimony didn’t have quite the stranglehold on conversation that it now exerts–even at Yale. We were allowed to discuss things like the terrible oppression and enslavement of women in Islam. We were allowed to consider that oppression wrong.

At the same time, I was the only woman in the class. There were undercurrents of, first, curiosity: Why would a woman study Arabic? And then there was contempt: She must be an idiot to do so. I skipped class regularly, being unable to deal with it. At that time, being naive, I was unable even to articulate to myself how bad it felt to be the target of such jeering condescension.

I realized years later that I had taken the class because of an archetype whom I admire: Scheherazade, the resourceful and intelligent woman of unending stories. There was something in that archetype for me, who would one day be a prolific novelist. My final project was a translation from “One Thousand and One Nights.” I worked hard on the story and pulled off a “B” despite my spotty attendance record and near inability to speak in class because of the sneers I encountered.

Because I have a background in the topic, I understand what Sam Harris is saying: Many individual Muslims are good people, but the faith itself is based on a book and teachings that directly lead to intolerance, the demeaning and enslavement of women, and violence.

That’s my interpretation of Harris’ message. When he says, “…One can draw a straight line from specific doctrines in Islam to the intolerance and violence we see in the Muslim world” in his blogpost “Can Liberalism Be Saved from Itself?”, Harris is correct. He’s not acting in a racist, Islam-hating way. He’s witnessing a truth that must be uttered.

Now he’s written a post about the defamation campaign to which he has been subjected, “On the Mechanics of Defamation.” His words are being taken out of context and twisted to make him appear evil. It’s dreadful, and the people who are doing it ought to be ashamed.

I have some experience in what it is to be the subject of a smear campaign. Someone from my past has gone to a great deal of trouble to distort everything I have ever done or said to make me out to be a bad person. He is obsessed with his vendetta, and he carries it on while stalking my blog and reading my posts obsessively, at all hours of the night and day, from different locations.

So I have some sympathy for what Harris is going through now, on many levels. He’s telling the truth and being scorned, castigated, and defamed for it.

The thing is, there is no reasoning with malice. Harris is trying to present a rational thesis to irrational people: knee-jerk liberals.

I have never met more close-minded, self-certain, impregnable-to-logic people than knee-jerk liberals. Especially since Obama took office, their sanctimony and self-righteousness has become a bell jar bulwark against any kind of reason or logic.

I voted for Obama the first time. However, I grew disillusioned. 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 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.

Whenever I have been asked by liberals, “Why don’t you like Obama?” I answer with the aforementioned reasons–citizen privacy, etc–the lengthy list of policies and presidential actions with which I do not agree. Inevitably, the liberals tell me, “You are racist.”

I provide a rational explanation that has nothing to do with the pigment in President Obama’s skin, but knee-jerk liberals can’t hear the logic. They reflexively answer with their standard dismissal of all criticism for Obama: “You are racist.”

Racism is a great social evil. It’s as bad as the misogyny in traditional Islam. I stand for the dissolution of racism and misogyny. Yes, I am equating them. Shouldn’t anyone who believes in social justice do so?

Back to Sam Harris. I support his intelligent, reasonable words and I support his right to speak them. I just doubt he’ll get anywhere with them. For one, traditional Muslims don’t want to hear what he’s saying. The many peace-loving, good Muslims are probably a bit ashamed of the intolerance, bigotry, and violence–and they perhaps feel at a loss for what to do about it. After all, the necessary end to an insistence on purity is terrorism, and Islam insists on purity.

For two, knee-jerk liberals can not hear or receive Harris’ message. They are closed and unavailable to discourse. They do not want to do the research and see truthful implications. They are just about solely interested in promoting their own ideology.

But I hope Sam Harris doesn’t give up. I hope he keeps defending himself and stating his views. I support what he says.

Sam Harris