League of Extraordinary Authors: Sissel channels duMaurier in LAST INNOCENT HOUR

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League of Extraordinary Authors: Sissel channels duMaurier in LAST INNOCENT HOUR: Now PromoPriced at just $2.99 on Kindle (FREE with Kindle Select): Barbara Taylor Sissel's haunting first novel, The Last Innocent Hour . ...

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MOVIE REVIEW OF ANOMALISA: An Edward Hopper Painting Come to Life

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Charlie Kaufman's film ANOMALISA is the movie that moved and thrilled me the most this year. It's not for everyone, but it was for me. Kaufman gives us trippy, amazing movies like ETERNAL SUNSHINE, and BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. And this movie is just as trippy and amazing but not in his usual way. Eternal Sunshine threw us into sci-fi territory with a machine that could erase painful memories, and the visuals were a beautiful nightmare. Malkovich gave us John M in a red dress on a p iano, John M in a hallucination of multiple Malkoviches. But ANOMALISA felt different to me. What was trippy was the presentation (stop motion puppets) but for a change the content was surprisingly naturalistic and realistic (middle aged man has identity crisis en route to giving a motivational speech). But it's in the lovely, cryptic dialog, the surrealism appears. Kind of like in a Haruki Murakami novel where simple reality starts taking tiny, menacing, magical U-turns.  It also rem
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How Big Is The Circle of Your Friends?

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Do you ever think about the circles of your friends? How the circles shrink and grow and morph over time? I do.  How consciously do you work to expand your those ever-important circles? So I was talking to a Luther, a male friend, about how I find myself in mid-life with mostly female friends.  I'm a gay man. Nothing wrong with any of that. They're great friends. And many of my female friends are single women in the arts -- so we have things in common.   But I used to have a larger collection of male friends. Many of them were gay. What happened?  Well, the AIDS crisis took some of those who should rightfully be living beside me today. So there's that. Some others found life partners. And of course any friendship can end with time. Someone moves away. Someone stops keeping the ball rolling on their end. Arguments happen that can't be resolved. And that special chemistry between friends can one day disappear for no reason. You are no longer necessary to each
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What Ingredients Should Go Into Your Novel?

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I once made the above pie chart after seeing a humorous pie chart on Haruki Murakami's novels.  And to be sure, many the above ingredients are clear and present in many of my books. So there is some truth there.  In the end, the "brand" of your writing appeals or doesn't appeal to a reader because of the ingredients in the cake you're baking. Some people like very sweet cakes (German Chocolate is one of my favorite). They expect the coconut, the pecans, the frosting, the simple chocolate cake layers.  Leave out an ingredient and the eater is disappointed, just as a reader who likes a certain genre is disappointed if some trademark elements are left out of the story. One reason I bring up this subject is because I'm starting to work on a new novel.  Some of the ingredients include:  sleep, slumber parties, Japanese fables about dream monsters, the purpose of insomnia.  Well one of my favorite writers is about to release a speculative novel which has some
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