Several editors have suggested *read warned* that I leave out unnecessary sections, lines, and/or comments when writing.

In particular, I had written in one of my novels what I considered a wonderful back-story about a sub-character. He was American-Indian and a hunter. I wanted to tell his people’s story going back to when the “pale-faces” came into their ancestral communities. A beautiful write up—I thought. Unfortunately it did not further the story. I was supposed to be writing about his death, not his birth. The question, usually, does this further the story, what is the connection? If it doesn’t further the story, delete it.

This is not a new standard in writing, I’ve learned. I came across the very same comments reading a novel by H.G. Wells written around 1896. Never mind the plot/premises, read the words. Protagonist Prendick narrated and spoke of how he had adjusted to the horrorable experiences on the Island. It follows:

“In this manner began the longer part of my sojourn upon this Island of Doctor Moreau. But from that night until the end came there was but one thing happened to tell, save a series of innumerable small unpleasant details, and the fretting of an incessant uneasiness. So that I prefer to make no chronicle for that gap of time, to tell only one cardinal incident of the ten months I spent as an intimate of these half-humanised brutes. There is much that sticks in my memory that I can write, things that I would cheerfully give my right hand to forget. But they do not help the telling of the story.”

(The Island of Dr. Moreau, Unabridged Dover (1996) republication of a standard edition, page 95)

P.S. I’m flaunting my reading here. Hope you find it interesting.

Minnie Estelle Miller, Author

By Minnie E. Miller

ISBN 9780615383514

 Brianna feels both parents have abandoned her. The love and faith she places in her single mother prevents her from confronting her. Yet, she wonders, who is her father and why won’t her mother talk about him? What Brianna doesn’t know is their broken relationship leaves a bitter taste in Belle’s month. Belle Deville is a Civil Rights lawyer and news commentator. She devotes her life to her career, leaving little time for her daughter. She tells Brianna to be independent and put little faith in men.

A frightening rape forces Belle’s words of caution to the fore. Brianna buries the incident in the back of her mind.

Time moves on. Brianna is in her early-forties, unmarried, and without children. She knows she must make some changes in her attitude and work through her debilitating flash backs. She struggles, refuses to be a prisoner of her feelings.

Despite all, there is someone in her corner, or in her bathroom mirror. Mirror-Lady, a guardian angel sent by her deceased mother to guide her.

 Copyright © 2010

Mz Minerva Publishing

Available at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com

Minnie Estelle Miller
Founder, Writer, Essayist & Administrator
Mz Minerva Publishing
http://www.millerscribs.com

Top 10 Worst Things about the Republicans’ Immoral Budget

The Republican budget would:

1. Destroy 700,000 jobs, according to an independent economic analysis.

2. Zero out federal funding for National Public Radio and public television.

3. Cut $1.3 billion from community health centers—which will deprive more than 3 million low-income people of health care over the next few months.

4. Cut nearly a billion dollars in food and health care assistance to pregnant women, new moms, and children.

5. Kick more than 200,000 children out of pre-school by cutting funds for Head Start.

6. Force states to fire 65,000 teachers and aides, dramatically increasing class sizes, thanks to education cuts.

7. Cut some or all financial aid for 9.4 million low- and middle-income college students.

8. Slash $1.6 billion from the National Institutes of Health, a cut that experts say would “send shockwaves” through cancer research, likely result in cuts to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s research, and cause job losses.

9. End the only federal family planning program, including cutting all federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood to support cancer screenings and other women’s health care.

10. Send 10,000 low-income veterans into homelessness by cutting in half the number of veterans who get housing vouchers this year.

We’ve got to get the word out about this awful budget—right away. Please, share this with your friends on Facebook and Twitter, or by forwarding this email, today.

2. “GOP budget would cut funding for public broadcasting,” The Washington Independent, February 14, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=206513&id=26412-5362859-7dKQPBx&t=7

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The Seduction of Mr. Bradley

is on Kindle just in time for the holidays.

Sale price $6.00

   

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B300DI80E

~ Available for purchase on Kindle devices

and Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch,

PC, Mac, Blackberry, and Android-based devices

Minnie Estelle Miller
Founder, Writer, Essayist & Administrator
Mz Minerva Publishing

http://www.millerscribs.com
http://www.millerscribs.com/blog
http://www.msprissy-dreamweaver.blogspot.com/

Author’s Page
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003POL3FY

The Seduction of Mr. Bradley

Book Signing at "What The Traveler Saw" 10.20.2009

Prologue

 Comes A Graying Sky

 Bill got into his car and sat in silence for a couple of minutes, still feeling the heat from Jina’s body. He pondered the sweet pleasure for a while and analyzed it aloud. “There’s just no explaining a woman. This one knows what she wants and how to go after it. Our friendship has moved to another level. Sex, with a capital S has become part of our business relationship. Aw, shiiit!” he said pounding the steering wheel. He yelled into space, “Damn-damn-damn! What’s happening to you, man? Jina Cook has no idea who Bill Bradley is, wouldn’t understand even if you told her about his ‘other side.’ Hear me, man, danger, danger!”

 Comes A Rainsquall

 After a week of fretting, Bill finally got up the nerve to ask for help from the only person he knew would not turn him away, Samara Kincaid.

He hesitated then rang Sam’s doorbell. At the sound of her buzzer, he entered the hallway and slowly mounted the stairs to her condo door.

“Bill! Come on in, brother…want a drink?” Sam asked, eyeing him with compassion. She knew why he had come.

“Naw,” Bill said standing in her living room, again, a brief silence. Hands in his pockets, he slid a glance at Sam and said, “I need your help.” He moved to the sofa, unbuttoned his suit coat, sat with legs spread apart and elbows on his knees. He had difficulty deciding what to do with his hands, so he clasped them tightly in front of his mouth. For half a second he just gazed at her in a silent plea. She gazed back and waited. The ball was in his court.

“I told Jina that I’m bisexual,” Bill said in a near whisper.

As for the health care bill, I am reading it to see what it says. I downloaded it. I find that far too many people have conversations about its contents and have not read it. Or simply take the word of one side or the other. I don’t take sides. I don’t care for politics or government and don’t really believe this system is salvageable. I’m only on my side and the side of truth. I really don’t care about this dual conversation, republican vs.democrat. Blah blah blah. They are all the same, all being run by the same people and talented at keeping people divided. And people actually buy into the divisive conversation and get angry with friends and family members who are not democrat/republican, for a president/against a president, and all the crazy conversation I see going around. I believe the entire system is heading the way of the Roman Empire…as it should given how corrupt it has been since its inception over 200 years ago.

I can imagine another and better way of living. But so many have been brainwashed into not only believing this is the only way to live, but not even stepping into imagining another way of life. No one proposes anything different. No one imagines anymore. Everyone just follows, like sheep to the slaughter. And everyone has been so well trained to think that something different could never be implemented. Defeated before they even begin through brainwashing.

Anyhoo, I’m a different fish, sis. As you can see. LOL. I imagine differently. I read a lot of history as far back as written history goes. Then, I examine oral history…from nations around the world. I don’t watch TV, haven’t in over 4 years. yet I know more about what is going on in the world than the average person. I don’t take what anyone tells me as truth without examining and researching what is truth. I’m not taken in by propaganda. And I don’t think what others want me to think just because they said so.

Bottom line, anyone seeking for me to pick a “side” has stopped at the wrong doorstep. I don’t believe that any president, from the first one in history, to this one, can do anything. They have been and are all puppets to those who are truly running this system. Given that, nothing signed into law will be to our benefit. From the first law in history, to the last. From what I’ve observed, with each new law, humans become more and more enslaved and closer to an Orwellian society. Closer to the Brave New World Huxley talked about.  It is a slow but deliberate process. Some of us won’t live to see it come to full fruition. But if we are not alert, our children will suffer. The mainstream media doesn’t show the madness. I read off the beaten path news and see the craziness going on that is not televised. The mainstream media shows only what they want people to know. They show only what they want people to talk about. And they talk about only those things they want folks to focus on. And you know, the sad part is people have only those conversations. They never veer from the media scripted dialogue. And true to form, they self divide based on the brainwashing from both sides.

Personally, I’m sick of the madness. And I REFUSE to have the conversations they want me to have. I REFUSE to be divided from my brothers and sisters because some talking head has told me to be divided, either directly or indirectly. NO one guides my thinking but me.  I am about a paradigm shift. And that shift includes critical thinking, not robotic repetition of the mass psyche, or parroting the speak of these automatons. I want my people to begin to THINK. Create new thoughts. End the old conversations. Burn them to ash and plant new seeds, break ground on the psyche of mankind and let fresh soil yield to creation. We are creative beings as people of color. We need to begin allowing our birthright to show through.

I’m on the side of truth. And it’s the only conversation I want to have about this world and the things going on in it. So, I am reading the new health care plan. That’s right, all about 2,000 pages of it. I want to know the truth about it, not what a republican or democrat tells me about it. So this way, when I speak, I speak from a place of truth, not from someone who is on this or that side. Taking sides, in my humble opinion, is very low on the intellectual scale. It is not on the path to spiritual enlightenment. And I am about always moving to a new level spiritually. Any conversation that does not move my people to a new way of thinking and being, I avoid. If folks wanna talk with me, they have to be ready to have a new conversation, one that doesn’t take any side but that of truth. And one that doesn’t defend or reject any one person simply because they like or don’t like the person.

There is a quote I learned recently that speaks to where I am. And why I am a thinker first, above anything else. And a seeker of truth.

“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the need for thought.”

~ ~ ~ henri poincare

I’m about thought and truth. Period.

namaste, zaji

the zaji • the journal

zaji@thezaji.com

http://www.creative-ankh.com/

Celebrating Toni Morrison

Dr. Morrison’s writing career started while editing for Random House in 1971.

We can’t forget that Dr. Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. Her latest accomplishments were What Moves at the Margin, published April 2008 and a children’s book is Peeny Butter Fudge by Tony Morrison and son Slade. For ages 4-8, 32 pages, Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books; First Edition edition (September 15, 2009)

What Moves At the Margin, a nonfiction book.

Below is a section that stood out for me immediately.

 “His name was John Solomon Willis, and when at age five he heard from the old folks that ‘the Emancipation Proclamation was coming’ he crawled under the bed. It was his earliest recollection of what was to be his habitual response to the promises of white people: horror and an instinctive yearning for safety. He was my grandfather.” (Page 3, What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction (hardcover, Univ PR of Mississippi [TAD], April 1, 2008, page 3)

I celebrate you, Dr. Morrison. You have been my secret guide for years.

Whispers From The Mirror A novel
Belle Deville fights against discrimination for working mothers. Her careers as lawyer and freelance TV commentator leave little time for Brianna, her only child. Belle’s sermons on independence results in Brianna hiding behind a mask of feminism. And her daughter adopts distrust of men resulting from Belle’s failed relationship.

This causes Brianna to live in denial until she’s well into her 40s. She goes so far as to become celibate to avoid men. Rape by an acquaintance reinforces her mistrust and places a heavy burden on her psyche. She doesn’t know her father, her mother never explains his absence, and he never appears in her life. Mirror-Lady, an apparition and guardian angel, appears in her bathroom mirror at will. She tells Brianna that if she doesn’t open her heart she will have a loveless life and die like her mother—alone.

Minnie Estelle Miller
Marvelously Mature Author and Essayist

http://www.millerscribs.com/

http://millerscribs.com/blog/