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News U Can Use
2010 PIVTR
CRAZY TUESDAY with Rowena Cherry - January 5, 2010
"On Tuesday, December 22nd, eleven Romance authors got together to read original short stories on live radio to raise donations for the homeless and the hungry in Detroit, and to fund the Capuchin Soup Kitchen in Detroit. More authors volunteered than there was air time for on December 22nd, so on Tuesday January 5th, "The Ones That Got Away" will be read starting at TEN A.M. EASTERN.
Loretta Wheeler will read her story "DARK PLEASURES".
Pauline Baird Jones will read 'GETTING A CLUE"
Becke Martin has contributed "SILVER AND GOLD" which will be read as a play with various authors taking speaking parts.
G' Morning All
I wanted to drop you all a line to officially make the announcement that there will be a whole new look to PIVR VERY soon.
This Sunday, I am setting aside some time to do a MAJOR cleanup to the site.
If you look at the home page you will see where we have a new setup for Streaming of everyone’s shows. The links at
the top of the page are the new and improved system that we have been working on over the past month or so, and these links (which may/ will take a change in shape) will be on every page within the site.
Check out the difference of the 2 links and I will explain the links:
The LISTEN LIVE link will be used for your LIVE shows. Listeners can simply click that button to listen live.
The ON DEMAND link is where they will now be able to listen to pre-recorded shows.
Normally we record your show, post the MP3 on your archives page, in the VIP section and on the mobile phone site (This hasn’t been released to the public yet). Well this will be changing very quickly. We will be posting the recorded shows to the on demand so this will eliminate the MP3’s from all archives pages. Now your archives pages can be used exclusively for your personal information as well as open a larger door for you to advertise your up and coming shows!!!! The VIP section of the website will also be eliminated (sorta) and turned into a RSS Feeds page where the pre-recorded shows will still be available for download/ purchase. There will be numerous options for purchasing the shows
1: Purchase an Individual show
2: Purchase a weeks worth of shows
3: Or purchase the entire month’s worth of shows.
Once a purchase has been made (week or month) listeners will automatically be updated with any new shows that are posted for that time period within the feed.
Now what does all of this mean to you and your loyal listeners?
MUCH easier navigation of the website,
Less maintenance and upkeep of the server, by consolidating everything,
To move forward with the latest technology available
The ON DEMAND player will carry ONE month’s worth of shows on it and be continually updated (add something new, delete something old) and the RSS FEEDS page will still carry a min of 3 months worth of archived shows. The shows within the RSS feeds that we have built currently start at the beginning of November 2009 and will move forward from that date. Shows prior to Nov can still be made available as always by contacting Lillian with date and host name.
Website cleanup:
I will be clearing out a LOT of links that are wasting space and making things hard for people to navigate and find what they are after. A simple example is the 3 Military links. This will be consolidated into one link and then branch off from the central Military page, thus eliminating 2 links from the current menu. Tom can you send me some new poems to post, and Everett, can you send me some updated military info. These pages have not been updated in forever and need some immediate help.
NEEDED INFO:
Our blog… send in your info weekly to Brittany (upcoming schedule, book signings, what’s new etc) so that she can add this info to the site. Bubblewrap92@yahoo.com Please remember to CC Lillian and myself. Creating a mail list from your current e-mail with all 3 of us in it will make things quick and simple to contact us all in one shot J
2010 is coming fast, and we are planning on WOW’ing EVERYBODY, so lets all put a little effort into this and start this year with a GIANT BANG!
As always questions, comments, and/or ideas are ALWAYS welcome!!! If you have any, please fwd to myself and Lillian. I will be starting this venture Sunday morn around 4:30am CST so try to have the ideas in before then so that everything and everyones opinion can be considered with all of the changes!
Steve
Basement_troll1@mchsi.com
Cities and States Listening to What's Happening With Portia
Abington, MA; Ann Arbor, MI; Atlanta, Georgia; Buzzard Bay, MA; Flint, MI; Grand Rapids, MI; Hendron, VA; Jonesboro, Georgia;
2/4/10 James Thompson, JMJ Phillip Recruitment
1/27/10 Rich Bergeron, Activism and the Internet
1/15/10 Rosemarie Ashley, Sassy Alternative Music
November 23 Interview with Lillian Cauldwell, author of "The Anna Mae
Mysteries-The Golden Treasure, Transcript
Lillian Cauldwell talks
legend, race, critical thinking in new tween series In “The Golden Treasure”
(Star Publish), the first book of local author Lillian Cauldwell’s “The Anna-Mae
Mysteries” series for tweens, heroine Anna-Mae Botts accomplishes something
that’s eluded almost 145 years of effort by adults: finding the lost gold of the
Confederate Treasury, supposedly buried in northern Georgia during Jefferson
Davis’ flight from Richmond after the South’s surrender. Anna-Mae doesn’t do it
alone, of course — she’s got the help of her eight-year-old brother Malcolm, her
best friend Raul Garcia, three remarkably supportive grandparents and…a giant
disembodied black fist, accompanied by a host of other supernatural
phenomena.
Told from the perspective of two black kids and a
Hispanic one growing up in rural Georgia, the book neither shies away from the
obvious facts about race — like that all the members of a junior high clique are
often the same color — nor invests them with the sort of futile hand-wringing
sometimes engaged in by adults who see race primarily as a “problem” to be
“solved.” Mostly, though, t’s an adventure story, pure and simple, focused on a
bright girl who finds it hard to fit in sometimes, has a little brother who’s
equal parts extremely useful and a pain in the rear, and occasionally finds her
best friend kinda cute in a way that makes her insides a bit “gooey.”
AnnArbor.com chatted with Cauldwell about it recently.
Q: Tell me how
this book came to be.
A: I wanted to write a book for multicultural kids.
I wanted them to know that girls could have adventures as well as boys can and
that girls can think and solve problems — and yet (as tweens) they’re also in
what I call “purgatory“. They’re not toddlers, they’re not holding their
parents’ hands, but they don’t want mid-teens giving them trouble. They don’t
know who they are, where they’re going, what people are doing, but here they are
in junior high — they’re in the big leagues. And depending on how your junior
high is set up, you may even be sharing space with the big kids, so…at any one
time, there’s always a group that’s a little superior. I know how they’re
feeling, and I wanted to get that across.
And I wanted to get across
that life isn’t fair — but before you can do anything, you have to find out who
you are, learn how to deal with what’s bugging you, and learn to get along. You
can’t just disappear; you’re going have to deal with whatever problem comes
along, and you usually have to do it by yourself. So to me, being that age meant
that you were in the middle of nowhereland. I remember what it was like, and I
remember what it was like watching my kid go through it, too. He was gifted,
very smart, and his sophistication was up there with grown-ups…but his maturity
was on the floor. (Laughs.)
Q: There’s lots of crazy supernatural stuff
going on here! Are you a believer in the supernatural in general?
A: A
lot of it was research. I’ve had one or two experiences that I don’t share much
because people who haven’t been there don’t understand. My husband is an organic
chemist, so there’s no way he’s going to believe that there’s anything else
besides us out there. A ghost could walk through him and he wouldn’t believe it.
But I’ve had those experiences, and I’ve known other people who’ve had those
experiences, especially around this age. At this age…you’re more open to other
things that may happen.
Q: What drew you to the mystery of Jefferson
Davis’ lost gold?
A: I wanted them to find the lost treasure. I did not
want my kids on a mystery where they found dead bodies or got shot; there’s
plenty of that in the world and other folks can do a better job of writing it.
So I wanted a mystery, and I started researching Davis, and the more I read, the
more intrigued I became, because the gold he lost was not all Southern gold. He
took out a loan from the French bank with interest, whether or not he won the
war. Now, you’re not taught that in history class. And I found out which bankers
he borrowed it from, and I discovered that it makes a difference whether you
read the Northern or Southern account of the story. (Davis) ran out when the
(Confederate) Cabinet fell, and he had a trick for storing the gold so that no
one would find out, and he was trying to get it to Savannah to take the gold
back to France. So I found the route he took for his great escape and added some
of my own touches. ...
Everyone has their own theory about how
the gold was carried, where it was buried, why it was buried, so I tried to give
enough of the story without digressing too much from the adventure.
Q: I
like how you’re very explicit about the systematic way the kids go about putting
their clues together. Are you hoping to sneak some critical thinking skills into
your readers’ enjoyment?
A: Oh, absolutely. Actually, the book is a plot.
(Laughs.) I wanted to show that there are certain things you need to do to take
this to its logical conclusion. When I went to school, you had to show all of
your work on a problem, so that even though I never got the right answer, my
teacher could give me credit for thinking. … I wanted these kids to actually sit
down and think about what had taken place, who was involved, and how they got
there. One of the things my husband taught me is that if you can’t find
something where you think you put it, you can go and retrace your steps and you
might find it. And it seemed like a girl would know this
instinctively.
Q: Isn’t it interesting that you said your husband taught
you, but a girl would know it instinctively?
A: (Laughs.) Well, maybe
other girls. My mother knew it, anyway! I do think a big difference is that it
seems like girls will go out and find the information they need and store it
away for another time. I think that boys do have adventures, but I think girls
maybe have better ones because they pay better attention to the details. They
use them later because they want to make their lives better, while a guy seems
more likely to say he can tough it out the way it is.
Q: You say toward
the end of the book that the South is “still fighting the war between the
states.” What do you mean by that?
A: A lot of places still have rigid
class structures, still have strict rules about who can sit together. … I wanted
to get across to kids that no matter where they lived in the United States,
there was still superstition and prejudice and (basically) no democracy. There
are still racial tensions in this country, and you ignore it at your peril. I
had a friend who was a student out west and he decided to drive home to Ohio
with a friend, and they stopped in this little town to get gas and a snack and
just got this feeling like they better conduct their business and get out of
there as fast as possible. On the other hand, I had a friend who was an adult
and she and her friend stopped in Tennessee and it was the same thing — they
knew they were not welcome and the local law was trying to figure out a way to
throw them in jail.
And a kid in this situation acts differently
than a grown-up, but they can feel it. They may not be able to say, “Oh, they
don’t like me because I’m black,” but they know they’re not welcome. So
Anna-Mae, she’s a black child in a white rural school district that’s located in
Georgia, so there’s two strikes against her there. And on top of that, she talks
to ghosts, so that’s three strikes!
Q: You have some interesting
classifications that involve race — you provide names for two classes of white
kids, and there’s a suggestion that black Anna-Mae is being treated less well by
the authorities than her white antagonist. What conversation about race are you
hoping to start?
A: I’m hoping to start (a conversation that says to)
girls, and black girls especially, that there’s more to life than being a
mother, than following a gang mentality, that they do not need to choose sports
or become or a singer or an actress to get ahead. That there are other
opportunities. ... And that girls don't need to dumb themselves down. My
attitude is more of, “You are fine the way you are, it’s the rest of the world
that’s out of whack, and don’t get down to their level. Force them to come up to
yours.” There’s no reason for the girls of today to have that kind of attitude
or that type (of worldview).
Q: Are you saying that there are no
pressures on girls today?
A: No, there are plenty of pressures — you
don’t have to look any further than Saturday morning TV! There’s a great deal of
conformity and a great deal of pressure to do what’s acceptable. But why is it
always the old maid (that we’re supposed to be scared of)? The wicked
stepmother? I never hear anything about the wicked stepfather! I guess as I’ve
gotten older, I’ve gotten a little more conservative — don’t tell my hippie
friends that, but I guess you just do — but it hasn’t gotten any easier to be a
girl since I grew up in the ’50s.
And you know that junior high
is when you learn how to kiss! I would be foolish if I didn’t recognize that at
12, you start noticing that boys and girls are a little different, and you maybe
go a little past kissing. In my second book, Anna-Mae goes overseas and meets a
13-year-old boy, and Raul knows immediately that he’s dangerous, but he doesn’t
know if he should shoot the guy or befriend him. And that’s how it goes at that
age.
Q: I like that your son (cartoonist Ben Caldwell) drew the cover and
also that you reference his “Dare Detectives” in the story. Does Anna-Mae ever
have a walk-on in his work?
A: Not yet. But he’s very interested. He’s
the one who suggested that when I set up the book, I storyboard it. So that was
how I did it. He told me that kids want to be entertained, they want to be able
to see what’s going on, because today’s world is so visual.
Q: What do
you have planned next?
A: (Book Two in the series is) “The Holy Relic,”
based against the Solomon and Sheba legend. The whole book is written as one big
clue, so you have to figure out what I’m talking about, why Anna-Mae is where
she’s at and how she’s going to get out of it. She encounters other people and
other types of problems and ultimately realizes that as bad as the United States
can be, it’s a lot better than overseas. Which a lot of kids don’t understand —
we’re way ahead of the game. We’re not bombed continually, there aren’t troops
in the streets. We do not have foreign soldiers living in our homes, our water
supply is still working, and we live a pretty comfortable life. I think it’s
important for kids to realize that any country can only offer as much as their
citizens give back to it — it’s a two-way street. (Laughs.) I don’t say that
right out, of course.
After that is “The Tablet of Stone,” which takes
place in South America, and the fourth book is “My Mother’s Keeper,” which comes
back to the United States. So I’m willing to take (the characters) all the way
up until they become adults and have careers as investigators, but I wanted to
keep away from murder and mayhem. And there are so many other types of mysteries
to be solved! Sometimes they’re right underneath you, and they have just as much
power.
You can get "The Anna-Mae Mysteries: The Golden Treasure" at
Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Star Publish, LLC, or you can contact email
Lillian Cauldwell for a signed copy. Cauldwell is also the founder of Passionate
Internet Voices Radio.
Leah DuMouchel is a free-lance writer who
covers books for AnnArbor.com.
Get your copy today. Thanks.
TOPICS:
PROGRAMS
Parents and teachers will love....
The Anna Mae Mysteries
by Lillian S. Cauldwell
Lillian Cauldwell writes with a voice that speaks to the rich
imagination of a child. A ten year old child's mind plays tricks. She
fears dark places in buildings where the grown-ups are not, because she
believes in ghosts and apparitions, and squeaking, creaking things that
could be a monster spider's joints. Yet, she yearns to find buried
treasure, or to make headlines in a good way, or to improvise and solve
a mystery.
One example of masterly "childlike" problem solving is the use of coat
hangers as divining rods.... Dowsing is such a cool thing for children!
Vivid images strike a chord in my memory, and linger in my mind of the
phantom fist, the schoolyard bully, the horror in the
air ducts, the dusty, thirsty hard work of digging in the fruit
cellar... for buried gold. It's "real", it's delightfully scary in the
way of all good and gripping page-turners, but it's not frightening.
Perhaps Lillian's writing is so believable, and so immediate because
Lillian pays attention to details - such as the ring on fourth finger
of ghostly black fist. Parents and teachers will love Lillian's
writing, too, not only because the children will be immediately engaged
by the mystery, but because of the tie-in with history, including
Jefferson Davis and Georgia's exciting past.
Lillian Cauldwell is a splendid storyteller, and my child and I are
eagerly looking forward to the next gripping tale in the series!
Rowena Cherry
http://www.rowenacherry.com
INSUFFICIENT MATING MATERIAL
Winner of the N.O.R. Awards, Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance:
http://www.youtube.com/v/RNnX5dyfzmQ
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