EDITING -- GETTING IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME.

.
All writers have problems with editing. The process involves going over sentences and paragraphs until we almost have them memorized. While this repetitive process has its rewards, there is also a downside. The more familiar the material becomes, the easier it is to overlook the omission of short words or the transposing of letters. Children, who learned to read with a strong emphasis on phonics, tend to see every letter in a word. The rest of us tend to recognize words in the same manner we recognize any other object. Words to us are pictures and the transposing of one or two letters might go unnoticed. In a recent study, Cambridge University offered the following paragraph as an example.

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulacity uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcaueae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was imphorant!

ART OR VANDALISM? I'LL LET YOU DECIDE.

I was in a restaurant near Mount Vernon several years ago. In a roped-off section near the entrance was a table with the initials G.W. carved deeply into the wood. A sign explained that this was George Washington’s initials, carved by him when he was a young surveyor.

There is a fine line between art, graffiti, and vandalism, and it is not always easy to know one from the other. Defacing public or private property is always wrong and should be discouraged, but there are occasions where there is an unmistakable beauty to some graffiti. I discovered the wonder of it while traveling around in different areas of the country.

Passing a park in a small town, I saw something from the corner of my eye I could not immediately identify. I turned around and went back. There was a rectangle of bright green grass where someone had used liquid fertilizer to write the name, Molly. The grass was taller and greener than the surrounding vegetation and was clearly visible from a long distance. I can imagine the school bus Molly rode each morning passed that way. Was the artist someone Molly knew, or was this the work of some shy young man who desperately wanted to know her?

In another town, I stopped at the approach to a newly constructed bridge. In carefully worded script were the words, Thad Is a Dork! Whoever wrote that one spent many hours with brush and paint, carefully inscribing her thoughts with loving care. I have a feeling she really didn’t really think of the him in that way, and I hope Thad was bright enough to know the difference.

I think every town should erect a sign or designate an area where teens can inscribe the names of the one they are dating, or hope to date. It is infinitely important that John loves Heather, or that Frank is MAD about Tiffany. I think it is important that you and I know that too.

The very best to John, Heather, Frank, Tiffany, and to Thad— even though he is a dork— and to the young woman who cared enough to tell him.

MAKING SENSE OUT OF HISTORY

WHO ARE WE?

Most of us have memories of sitting through long sessions in high school history classes. We remember how our eyes became heavy as our teacher droned endlessly on about places and things that held no interest for us. After suffering through the mandatory requirement to graduate, we silently vowed never to let this happen again. History doesn't have to be dull if we approach it in the right manner. Unless we understand something about the vast sweep of human history, we will never understand ourselves. We are the product of all that went before us. History is exciting, and I will prove it to you if you will set up a little straighter in your chair and take a journey with me. Are you ready? Then here we go.

Most of us are familiar with the term, DNA. It first came to the attention of most of us during the O.J. Simpson trial a few years ago. Today, the use of DNA in criminal investigations has become routine, and it frequently plays a part in determining the outcome of paternity cases. A minute sample of genetic material can identify the parents of a child with certainty. The exciting thing about DNA testing is the fact that it can not only identify our parents, it can also identify our ethnic heritage, plus a lot of other things. A scientist can take a sample of DNA and project backward in time, identifying the groups of people from which we descended. Collecting genetic samples at archaeological sites has become routine in the last few years. This allows them to identify and chart the movement of people across the face of the ancient world. Scientists have proven that every person is a descendant of one man who lived in northern Africa 60,000 years ago. From that humble beginning, the human race quickly spread across the face of the earth. Then at some indeterminate point in time, a catastrophic event almost annihilated the human race. By studying DNA taken from the remains of some very ancient skeletons, scientists determined that less than two thousand persons survived this event, although they are not willing to hazard a guess at the exact number. I have a feeling there was no more than a boatload of hardy individuals who survived.

Eventually, the human race began to multiply again. They spread across Europe and into Africa, Asia, and the islands surrounding them. Then, they started to spread to all of the other land areas. They crossed to the Islands off the continent of Asia, then to Australia, Hawaii, and across three thousand miles of open sea to Tahiti. One group migrated around the cost of China, bypassed Japan, and up the coast to the Aleutian Islands. They eventually arrived at the Pacific coast of North America. We call this group Native Americans.

Mankind has always been restless, inventive, and adventuresome. It was rather astonishing when a team of archaeologists dug into a grave in Oregon and discovered a skeleton much older than the group known as Native Americans. When they ran DNA test, they discovered this was the remains of a Caucasian person of European descent. Then they found a skeleton of another Caucasian in Illinois, and then two others in a dig in South Carolina. Some of the tools found in South Carolina suggests they were related to the people who drew the cave drawings of prehistoric animals in France.

If DNA can tell us something about our beginning, then it becomes natural to ask the question: Who are we? Why do I have a medium build, brown hair, and blue eyes, while my neighbor is six foot tall and outweighs me by thirty pounds? This is something we can actually blame on our parents, and all of those who came before us. DNA is a tiny ribbon of genetic material present in each cell of our body. It is smaller than a dust mote floating in a beam of sunlight. If you were to unfold this ribbon of material, it would be approximately fifteen feet in length, but only three atoms wide. This miraculous substance contains the codes that determine our psychical characteristics. It contains a complete blueprint of our body. Think of DNA as being like a long array of electronic circuitry with many billions of switches along its length. Some of them are flipped on and others are flipped off. The switches flipped on are the ones that control our appearance and other physical characteristics. The genetic switches flipped to the off position don't perform any function, but we still pass them on to our descendants. This is the reason you do not look exactly like your brother or your sister, and the reason your child might have your great-grandfather's red hair, even though no one else in your generation has red hair.

Who are the people in our family tree? Most of the history of the human race has been lost. Some historical accounts are of doubtful value, full of fables and inaccuracies. It is exciting that we have the science of DNA which can tell us something about human history. When most of us think about family history, we only think about the people who passed our family name along to us. Everyone― even if they were adopted and never knew their birth parents― has two parents. In the next generation, there were four grandparents. Each generation has twice as many people as the previous one. A generation is about twenty-five years in length, with four generations in each 100 years. One hundred years before your birth date, you had 16 great-grandparents in that generation. Only one of them had your surname. Unless there was intermarriage, this is true of each generation. Two hundred years before your birth date, you had 256 grandparents in that generation. At the time the European nations were making their plans to colonize North America― which was about fifteen generations back― you had 32,768 grandparents alive on that date!

Labs that conduct DNA testing for genealogical purposes, can tell you which genetic group predominates your family tree. The first immigrant bearing your family name might have come from England in the middle of the sixteen hundreds. This person was English― but wait a minute! The Englishman of the 17th century was a mixture of Brythons, Anglo-Saxons, Danish Vikings, Bretons, Normans, and many others thrown in for good measure. Your ancestor's English surname was passed down to his descendants, but if your family located in a town predominately inhabited by some other ethnic group, then it is likely most of your 65,536 grandparents who lived since the middle sixteen hundreds, were not English. This brings us back to our original question. Who are you? The next time you pass through a kitchen and someone is baking a cake, look in the mixing bowl and see is you can find the vanilla. We are an astonishing mixture of races and nationalities― we are everyone, but most important, we are uniquely ourselves.

NEXT UP: WHERE DID WE COME FROM?

HAND OF HOPE

The picture accompanying this article has been circulating on the Internet, but I had not seen it until my sister brought it to my attention. I immediately contacted the photographer, Michael Clancy, and received permission to use it on my website.


The child in the photograph is Samuel Alexander Armas, and he was diagnosed with spina bifida. At 21 weeks old, he could not live if removed from his mother's womb. Dr. Joseph Bruner, practicing at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, rose to the challenge. He performs these difficult operations while the baby is still in the womb. The procedure involves removing the uterus via C-section, and then the small incision you can see in the photograph is required to reach the fetus.


Dr. Bruner has performed many similar operations, but as he completed the surgery on Samuel, something unusual happened. Samuel reached his tiny, but fully developed hand, through the incision and grasped the doctor's finger. Doctor Bruner is reported to have said that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life. The operation was successful and Samuel was born healthy and perfectly normal.

At this point, you probably expect me to launch into a sermon or perhaps a rant concerning the many shades of gray that pro-life and pro-choice advocates have argued so eloquently. Instead, I would like you to take a moment and focus your attention of young Samuel's tiny hand, and see what this image says about hope, and trust, and the future.

Have a great life Samuel Alexander Armas. I have a feeling we are going to hear from you again.


If you would like to know more about Samuel’s story and Photographer Michael Clancy’s efforts to publicize this extraordinary event, you can follow this link. to justfacts.com.


.

THE BLACK WHOLE

I have always loved short stories. I am convinced there can never be too many of them, just as there can never be too many Christmas mornings, or too many celebrations of the 4th of July. Most of us started our reading experience with children’s storybooks, usually in our preschool years. I have some of my favorite books in a well-guarded place, safe from little fingers that might dog-ear the pages, or the expectant ones who might want to borrow them. I can still feel the excitement I felt in that long ago era when I settled back in a chair to experience the magic of Sammy Jay, or Tom Cat, or the Brothers Grimm.

Short stories present a challenge to the writer, because they have all the elements of a television commercial. You have to get to the what, where, who and the why of it, in only a few words. I am honored to have two of my short stories appearing in an anthology from Down in the Country Press. The book is called The Black Whole, and it contains 25 stories that vary widely in subject matter. You will be sure to find several of them to suit your mood, and you might want to move your chair while you read in case you need to turn the lights up again. Be sure to have a box of Kleenex handy, and tennis shoes aren’t a bad idea in case you feel the need to run. I have read halfway through the book and I think I will read just one more story before I go to bed. But before I get started on the next story, I think I will check my window. It sounds as if something is pecking on the glass . . . .

The Black Whole anthology is available from the publisher, from Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and other on-line book stores.

Don't miss this review of the Black Whole at Bookzombie!

Book Trailers - What's it all about?

If you have been in Outer Mongolia for the last few years, you might not recognize the term, Book Trailer. A book trailer is very similar to the previews of upcoming movies you are accustomed to seeing on television or at the theatre. They are short ─ most of them lasting no more than a minute ─ but they tell you a little more about the story than you can learn by looking at the picture on the front cover, or reading the blurb on the back of the book. Click on this link and watch the Trailer of my suspense novel Dead Certain.

FLASH FICTION

For many years, editors have requested manuscripts that tell a complete story, but do it succinctly. The development of computer drives with many gigabytes of storage makes it possible for us to store large amounts of text efficiently and cheaply, but it has caused many of us to develop some bad writing habits. Our novels have become longer, more expensive to print, but not necessarily better. Recently, I joined a group writing Flash Fiction. I had a brief idea of what this involved. A story of this type is ideally only five hundred words in length. I knew that, but I did not know how hard it was to gather all of the elements of a story together into a coherent pattern. Then I ran across a short anecdote about Ernest Hemingway that was rather amusing. According to the story, he made a bar bet that he could write the shortest story on earth. His contribution consisted of only six words, and it is definitely a complete story.

“For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

I haven’t reached Hemingway’s proficiency yet, but I am working on it.

READER'S DIGEST SELECT EDITIONS

When someone visits my office, their eyes always go to the top shelf of my bookcase where I have a long row of books from Reader’s Digest Select Editions displayed. For guests who aren’t familiar with Select Editions, it is probably the attractiveness of the books that catch their eye, but for others, it is almost like they are waking up on Christmas morning when they were a kid. I often hear, “I love to read, and I wonder if I could borrow just one . . .”

I always allow them to do so, because after a half century of reading almost all of the 800 novels the editors at Reader’s Digest have selected, I am still as excited as I was when I held that first edition in my hand. Many readers spend long hours in book stores trying to find something they haven’t read, while others depend on the New York Times Bestseller List. You might be surprised to learn that most of the books on the bestseller list also appear in Select Editions. If you love James Patterson, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, and all of the other great writers, you will find them there. I could go on for hours about this, but I am in the middle of one of the best novels I have read in a long time. The name of it is Iris and Ruby, and yes, it is in the current issue of Select Editions. You might want to check their website to see a complete list of the books Reader’s Digest has published since 1950. It is an astonishing list, but I need to get back to my book . . .

For more information visit the Select Editions blogsite at:

http://selecteditions.blogspot.com/

Joe Prentis

SOUTHERN WRITERS

Stories by Southern writers have always been popular among fiction fans, and I think a lot of the appeal is in the realistic settings that always seem to be present in this type of book. High school and college literature classes would not be complete without a review of William Faulkner, Margaret Mitchell, and Eudora Welty, for each of them brings something to the table that would not be complete without them. While these writers are important, a new generation is continuing to introduce readers to the uniqueness and mystery of the Southern experience. Fannie Flagg, John Grisham, and Willie Morris are among the best Southern writers of our era. Each of them presents a different view of Southern life, exploring the temperament and the feel of the times. If you are already familiar with these writers, let me add another name to your list. In the crime novel, The Sweet and the Dead, Milton T. Burton has captured the essence of the Southern criminal. You can feel the tension from the first page to the last, and the sweat and fear of the characters becomes frighteningly real as the tension mounts.

THE SWEET AND THE DEAD

by Milton T. Burton

MANFRED EUGENE ‘HOG’ WEBERN a retired Dallas County deputy sheriff, is talked into going undercover in Biloxi, Mississippi, in a multistate effort to nail a group of traveling Southern criminals who have been tagged by the press with the lurid name “Dixie Mafia”. After making contact with the gang’s nominal leader, the notorious Jasper Sparks, Webern begins to worm his way into the group’s confidence. He also meets and becomes involved with an old friend of Sparks, the mysterious Neil Bigelow, a former assistant federal prosecutor whose daddy ‘owns half of the Delta.’

Having gained the gang’s trust, Webern soon learns that the score being planned is the massive robbery of a wintering carnival of an entire year’s receipts. Joining in planning the job, he meets such well-known hijackers as Slops Moline, a Charleston, South Carolina, killer and armed robber; Lardass Collins, the country’s premier car thief; Tom-Tom Reed, one of the world’s most skilled safecrackers; and the infamous Raymond “Hardhead” Weiler, and Alabama-born moonshiner who has pulled off more than two dozen high-profile contract killings in his seventy years.

As the story develops, Webern is drawn into a maelstrom of robbery, mayhem, and senseless violence that threatens to engulf his very being. And before the final curtain falls on The Sweet and the Dead, we learn that in the murky world of Southern professional crime, nothing is ever quite what it seems to be.

ANGELA WILSON'S BLOG

I am pleased the Angela Wilson is featuring me on her web site on Pop Syndicate. Angela is not only an author with a great deal of talent, she is also involved in a number of other projects. She produces copy and pod cast for clients. Angela is also a columnist for various writing publications. She has worked as a print and broadcast journalist, marketing PR executive and radio host. Take some time to check out her web site, her blog, and some of her other projects on the web -- and while you are there, read through the articles she will be posting this week concerning my novels. Click on this link for more information.
.
http://www.popsyndicate.com/books

MEMORIAL DAY

In celebrating holidays, we sometimes forget that holidays were originally holy days, a time set aside to give thanks to our creator for some special remembrance. Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving retain strong elements of their former status as holy days, despite the fact that we have commercialized them to ridiculous extremes. As we celebrate Memorial Day, honoring the many men and women who have served their country, we should not forget that this day is holy too. We should never forget their sacrifice nor take our liberty too lightly.

CHILDREN NEVER CEASE TO AMAZE ME

Almost as soon as the earthquake ended, China invited aid workers from all over the world to come into their country and help with the victims of this disaster. Large amounts of food and emergency supplies were gathered and were on the way within hours. The stories and video footage that came back from the devastated area were heart rendering, but the acts of heroism seemed to give hope to the ones who were suffering. People were pulled from the wreckage while their families waited. Some of them were still alive, while others were less fortunate. It is hard to conceive of such a terrible event. Then in the midst of all of this terror, pain, and suffering, I saw it. A young boy who couldn’t have been over 9 years old, was seated on a pile of rubble slowly thumbing through the pages of a book. He could very easily have been the last survivor of his family, but somehow he was finding comfort from what he was reading. All across the world, books, computers, and cell phones are reaching into areas where communications with the outside world were impossible only a few years before. We will see a change in the months to come, and it will be from people like that young man who was setting on top of that pile of rubble. Never underestimate the power of the written word or the determination of the people who read it.