Get Your Short Stories Ready!
 The 5th Annual Warren Adler Short Story Contest has begun!
The rules are simple. The stories must be no longer than 2500 words and subject matter is completely open to the author. Judges will be announced shortly. The goal of the contest is to encourage and publicize the short story as a viable and quality literary form. Cash prizes will be awarded and the winning stories will be posted on our website.
For complete details please visit the Contest Page.
Ethics on the Killing Field?
 The plight of a Marine K Company slugging it out in Afghanistan under hardships and conditions of which we sitting here comfortably in the States haven't a clue, puts me in mind of another Marine K Company, cited in one of the greatest combat memoirs ever written, With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge.
Sledge's account of his ordeal as a nineteen year old combat Marine in the bloody battles against the Imperial Japanese Army while taking the islands of Pelelui and Okinawa in the closing weeks of World War II offers startling insights into the bloody nature of war and the horrific sacrifices required of those we send into battle. The comparison of then and now is essential if we are to make any sense out of what the "new breed" of Marine must face in the baffling revised rules of combat.
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When Will the E-Book Tipping Point Arrive?
 One need not be some egghead visionary to predict the future of the publishing industry in this age of technological revolution.
Think of it this way. Every time a dedicated reader buys a digitized reading device whether it be a Kindle, SONY reader, Vook, iPad, the upcoming Google device or others crowding into the marketplace, the big box stores and small hard-pressed independents selling hardcover or paperback books lose one customer. That one customer, if he or she is a truly dedicated reader, can be counted on to buy at least one book a month.
Thus, the potential customer for both the big box and independent stores stocking books by traditional publishers can lose ten to twelve sales or more a year. Let us further calculate into the mix that most of these books are one time reads, the industry's highest profit category.
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posts about Books.
Skinning the Cat
 If you Google "How Many Ways to Skin a Cat?" you will get nearly five million entries. At first I was somewhat surprised by such an abundance of information since my reason for Googling the idiom in the first place was to illustrate the point that the Internet is a vast cloud, hawking information in various guises in infinite incarnations, most of it of dubious value.
As a bona fide news junkie, which probably has something to do with having grown up during a period in New York City when there were eleven newspapers which covered what seemed at the time a world choked with events and never ending activity. It was not uncommon to become dependent on two, three or more of these newspapers for our daily fix of information.
Early habits are a powerful influence and it seems perfectly normal to have carried these habits into the age of the Internet, a never ending perpetual flow of endless rivers of information which, as the song says, just keeps rolling along. It is not uncommon of me to tap into more than a dozen so-called information sites even after an extensive bout with my home delivered copy of the New York Times.
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posts about Technology.
Coping with Life's Little Annoyances: The Person Who Talks Too Much (First in a series)
 How many times have you faced the dilemma of the monologist?
You have begun a conversation with someone expecting a dialogue and quickly discover that the alleged partner in this dialogue is instead engaging in an interminable monologue. The discovery, while being an affront to your patience, is also a challenge to your essential understanding of the rules of politeness.
The monologue assault is endless, unedited, often repetitive, without insight to the nature of your attentiveness. The speaker, wrapped up in his narcissistic binge hasn't a clue to your interest. He is convinced that you are enraptured by his monologue, an oral deluge about which you have long lost interest, and your mind is devising ways to protect itself from this onslaught by various strategies of mental avoidance, while you assemble your features as if you were listening to the Sermon on the Mount.
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posts about Life.
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