Fare thee well, Encyclopedia Brown

 by J. R. Wagner

While in my car yesterday, I was listening to NPR and heard that the author of the Encyclopedia Brown series, Donald Sobol passed away last week.

You can listen to the story HERE

I'm guessing at least half of you are wondering; who the heck is Encyclopedia Brown?

In THIS ARTICLE on Huffington Post.com,  Eva Glettner brilliantly described EB this way:

"Encyclopedia Brown Urges Children To Embrace Their Inner Nerd"

The first Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, was published in 1963 -wayyyy before I was born.  Seriously.  The cover has no doubt gone through several modifications to appeal to the audience of the times. Below are a  few examples.

 My mom used to read these books to me as a child (No doubt to help improve my pathetic reasoning skills.) and I used to absolutely love them.  I wanted to be Encyclopedia Brown (except I wasn't nearly smart enough and had the focus of a meal worm).

I think part of the allure was Brown's ability to stick it to the adults.  Nothing earns you respect on the playground faster than the ability to make your teachers and parents look like idiots.  Encyclopedia Brown was a master of picking out the obscure clues and putting them together to solve a mystery.

Before even Scooby Doo (1976) and friends came riding along in their pimped out 1963 Ford Econoline ready to solve mysteries, EB was tearing it up.

Another point of interest was the bad-ass female character in the EB series.  Sally Kimball was not only the apple of every male EB reader's eye, but she was tough. Super tough. Tough a-la Uma Therman in Kill Bill. This modern view on being tough and female and acceptable was arguably ground breaking in children's literature.

Uma Therman -Kill Bill superstar

Top ten reasons why you MUST read Exiled

Yes, I am well aware of the complete and total self-serving nature of this post...so humor me.


10. No vampires.

9. No werewolves.

8. George Lucas had nothing to do with the writing of this novel.

 

7. Because someone created a profile on Goodreads just to give Exiled a one-star rating. No other user activity whatsoever! 

6. Because you don't need completely unbelievable love triangles that take away from the plot progression to make good reading.

 5. Because Exiled isn't poorly written porn wrapped in a mainstream package.

4. Did I mention there isn't one effing Vampire in Exiled?

3. Exiled is NOT on Oprah's book club list. (although I secretly wish it was -for promotional purposes only, of course)

2. I'm working on optioning Exiled and future volumes from The Never Chronicles with a major Hollywood producer.

yep, I'm working on it

Desire for an apocalypse: a psychological analysis Part 2

Part 2 -is it all in your mind?

Is there something diagnostically wrong with the people who wish for mass death and destruction in the form of an apocalyptic event? Is there something misfiring inside the neuron-filled superhighway that comprises their brain?

The word, apocalypticism (yup, there's a word for it) is defined (by my buddies at Dictionary.com) as any doctrine concerning the end of the temporal world, especially one based on the supposed prophetic passages in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

So people have been secretly wishing for the end of times since...dare I say, the dawn of time (we're a morbid race, us humans, aren't we?). 


PBS even has a pictorial chronology of the 'Apocalyptic Worldview' a phrase coined by Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal.

In the article from Psychology Today: Why the World Will End in 2012 by Howard Bloom, Bloom references a 60 year old experiment cited in his book, The Lucifer Principle. The experiment (described below) hints at the genetic need to thrive (and therefore wipe out your competition). Essentially, humans have a subconscious and primal need to destroy the competition so they can spread their own genes and thrive. 

"In the late 1940's, the German researcher F. Steiniger put fifteen brown rats who had never met each other into a cage. At first the creatures cowered in the corners, frightened and apprehensive. If they accidentally bumped into each other, they bared their teeth and snapped. Gradually, however, it dawned on some of the males that among this batch of strangers were attractive young females. The gentleman rodents became budding Don Juans and went a courting.

The first male and female to win each others' hearts now had something all the others lacked an ally. The pair took full advantage of the situation: they terrorized their cagemates. At first, the lovers simply chased their fellow rodents away from food, sending them scurrying to the safety of the far end of the enclosure. Later, the romantic duo hunted down their neighbors one by one. The female was a particularly quick killer. She would sneak up on a victim as it was quietly chewing a bit of chow, spring with a sudden speed, and bite the unfortunate in the side of the neck, often opening a wound in the carotid artery. Some of the attacked died of infection. Others, mauled and worn down by frantic efforts to escape, succumbed to exhaustion. When the happy couple had finished, they were the only survivors.

The rats had cleared the new territory of competitors, transforming the cage into a spacious land of milk and honey for themselves. A new promised land. Now, they could found a tribe that might if left to its own devices thrive for generations to come. A tribe that would carry the parental line of genes."

Unfortunately, Bloom concludes with what appears to be a politically motivated series of questions rather than speculating on the the possible demise of humanity as we know it.  I guess when you're publishing in Psychology Today, you aren't given the liberty of causing mass hysteria.

Fortunately, I'm bound by no such constraints.

So is apocalypticism some type of neurological disorder or simply a manifestation of the desire to spread our genes while destroying the competition?

Update on my book selling adventure

Friends and family,

I'd like to take the time to update you on how things are progressing with my book.  

 

At the Chester County Balloon Festival

Are you a social media butterfly?

A Guest post by Carlie M A Cullen

Are you a social media butterfly? 

Earlier this year, I wrote two guest posts for Josh’s blog called ‘Presenting A Professional
Image’. There were two parts to it; one dealt with being able to deal with constructive
criticism, and the other was about the little things you can do when meeting and networking
with people (like getting business cards printed). I hope you found both of those articles
informative and helpful.

I decided to follow on from those posts and talk about networking with people, especially on
social media platforms.

Now I’m not one of those butterflies that flit from one social media network to another;
there are so many on the internet now, it would be only too easy to get caught in the trap
of traipsing from one to another, and another. Before you realize it, you’ve spent several
precious hours being a social media butterfly and you’ve no time left to do the most
important thing of all – writing.

I’ve decided to pick just two platforms and concentrate my efforts there. I predominantly
use Twitter (http://twitter.com/carlie2011c) and pop in to Facebook (http://facebook.com/
carlie.cullen) on occasions.

I’m not a Twitter snob and only follow writers and readers; I follow all types (except those who speak in a language I don’t know/understand). Making connections on Twitter has not
only enriched my life, I’ve forged good friendships and strong links with people from other
countries (mainly those from across the pond). And here’s where some of the networking
comes into it.

I must be doing something right on Twitter as I’m attracting more and more followers each
day. At the beginning of 2012 I had less than 200 followers – now I have over 1640. So how
did I do it? There was no magic plan, no marketing strategy and no one guiding me.

I think it happened because I genuinely care about other people and have a passion for
supporting other authors.

I regularly Retweet authors who are publicising their own or other people’s books, I tweet
about other books and several weeks ago I started my own hashtag #SupportSunday. I pick
four authors who I follow and publicise their book(s), including a link to it/them on Amazon.
I try to rotate it so I don’t have the same four people every week, although I admit I do tend
to favour my two closest friends on Twitter and they get included regularly. BUT I have
one rule where this hashtag is concerned: if the author I’ve publicised doesn’t have the good
manners to show any appreciation or even acknowledge that I’ve tried to help them, they
never get included again. How long does it take to tweet someone with a simple ‘thank you’?