Friday, March 12, 2010

My novella, The Wrong Time, has been reviewed at Readers Favorite

One of my novellas, which are free downloads from Smashwords, has been reviewed at Readers Favorite. The novella is entitled The Wrong Time. Below is a description of the story, followed by an excerpt of the review at Readers Favorite:

I thought all this stuff about time warps and things was silly scifi stuff. I'm not a fan of Star Trek or any of these other things -- which I thought was for people who couldn't get a life, who sit in their parents basement with their chemistry sets and oscilloscopes. I thought I was a level headed, successful, morally responsible member of society. Until one day I stepped into ... THE WRONG TIME


Now, here's an excerpt from the review:

Sean is transported to a parallel universe. He meets people, and goes here and there,trying to find his way back home to his wife, Erin.

In some universes, he is married to Mimi; he doesn’t like it, so he looks for a universe where he was happy with Erin. It isn’t easy, but after many attempts, he gets the hang of it. Sean travels to multiple universes and enjoys the freedom it gives him; he becomes a time traveler. In one universe, he is a bestselling author, while in his real world, he is not. ...

... With every visit he has changed something and created another alternative universe. Shortly, Sean, the author, gets tired of the reckless nature of his traveling self and conceives a plan to keep him on his home world.

This is a refreshing, engaging read. Sci-Fi and time travel aficionados will appreciate it. I recommend it to adults and teens.

Read the whole thing at Readers Favorite...

Tribalism

Here are some gems of wisdom from the Chabad website's "Ask The Rabbi", Tzvi Freeman. Read the whole article and you'll gain a better understanding of Jewish reasons for Torah Observance, as well as some insight into aspects of sociology. This is a must-read for missiologists, emergents, anyone who wonders about the importance of culture ...

Here is but a small quote...

Sociology became a science with the publication Emile Durkheim's monograph on suicide in 1897. Durkheim was a nice Jewish boy who had studied in yeshiva to become a rabbi, as his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him, but then left to think for himself and challenge his teachers at the Sorbonne. In his paper, Durkheim blamed most of society's woes (especially suicide) on the abandonment of tribalism. He coined the term anomie, which means a state of society where nobody knows who they are, what they have to do with one another or what on earth they're doing here. Durkheim demonstrated, through the first methodological, scientific study of a social phenomenon, that in turn-of-the-century France, suicide was the realm of the tribeless—meaning the Protestant and the agnostic. Catholics and Jews rarely committed suicide. Because they felt no anomie.

What this runaway-yeshiva boy ironically demonstrated, and others after him confirmed is that a human being without a tribe is like a polar bear without ice—he can survive, but he'll be awfully confused. It's through his relationship with the tribe that a human being knows that the earth beneath his feet is solid ground, that tomorrow is a day like today, that he is who he is and it's okay to be that way. Take the tribe away and none of that remains necessarily true.


There's a lot more. Read it for yourself...

Sunday, March 07, 2010

It's Read an E-Book Week

E-book information and free e-books define Read an E-Book Week. From March 7-13th major e-book retailers and authors offer free, or deeply discounted e-books for the event. These e-books will be available in the E-Book Store. Many of our participants have free, or discounted e-books throughout the year, so please return often to see what is available.

Some of my ebooks, free during E-book Week are:
To take advantage of the offers, go to the links, and find a coupon code on the right hand column to include in your order so as to activate the offer.