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Welcome to Bonnie Sedgemore Author's "Short Takes," your source for quick reads offering insights, laughs, and smiles. Here you'll find essays, fiction, and poetry designed to refresh and invigorate your mind.
Short Takes
Fraud or not
The garrilkies are getting me. They are popping up in handfuls to lead me on toward a path of destruction. They want to present my books at a book club. They ask me to give a small synopsis of my book and five probing questions for club members to explore. I believe I'm to make a talk to a wonderful book club and then whamee, there is a slight fee. The digital company gives me a great fee and even identifies what they will do for that fee, and after I have worked with them and have my material tied up with them, they spring another fee on me that I must have to complete the work.
Or I am invited to do a podcast, but there is a fee.
Good Golly Molly! What will they come up with next?
A Review of The Machiavellian Man
Here is a review of my book The Machiavellian Man by John. our book instantly caught my attention, the way The Machiavellian Man dives into greed, betrayal, and ultimate justice is both gripping and thought provoking . I admire how you've taken timeless themes of power and morality and shaped them into a modern cautionary tale that keeps readers hooked until the fall. You can buy it here-https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FMNZGG6V.
Packaging extremes
Why is it that we have this desire to help people with everyday tasks, like pulling out a chair or opening something. I had a bad time opening an individual serving of syrup. They make those seals that adhere to the container so tight it is hard to pull them open. After my success my neighbor started pulling on hers. She turned it every which way, trying to get an edge that would pry loose. I almost took it from her and pulled it open. But..my success wasn't come by much better. Why did I think I could handle the lid better than she?
I do wish that children can't open them and of course they won't spoil if sealed tightly, but why does opening things have to be so difficult?
A Reading of My Book Alma and Stacey
“I spent last night with a new friend, a woman older than me who is in my accounting class.”
“How come you did that?”
“I’m not sure. It happened. It was a bit strange, but she doesn’t understand what the teacher is talking about and wants my help. I’m going to return tonight and go teach her what I can.”
They had already talked on the phone, and he warned her he couldn't spend much time with her that evening. As upset over this as she was, she did not want to show it in her voice. He was in school, and he needed to study. The waitress came and they ordered.
“I wish we could be together tonight, but I have a test tomorrow. I would have to leave you anyway.”
“I figured. I didn’t want to return to my room at the Y.”
“What’s her place like, this new friend of yours?”
Stacey started laughing, “It’s a really a cheap apartment in the heights that is above a garage. Not a nice garage either. This one looks like it could blow down in a stiff wind. Or maybe no wind at all. But she keeps it clean. Except for cockroaches. They come out at night and completely cover the floor. It’s scary. It's mad when you wake up and see a brown floor that is solid roaches running like crazy for cover. I don' think she likes me so much as she thinks I can help her, and I suppose I will."
“Well, I’m glad you’re going to help her.”
Another Day
I am beginning to get letters about my books, some better written than I could write. It excites me to see the different ways people see my work. And I am most happy to get good feedback, not just good but so very good. I think people must be very impressed to spend so much thought and time to send me such good words. I have only had one bad letter or review so far on any of my books and found I got a five star from Goodreads and from all international distributors on one book. Wow!
But the next book is a non fiction memoir and travel episode. I expect I'll be in big trouble with friends and family over that one. But it happens to be my best written book yet. so be it.
Without rules
I was sitting at lunch with a woman I didn't particularly want to sit with. I was wondering why she picked me so often, and I was using my wonderfulness forcade, quietness being my byword. She had been so engrossed with her career that she spent long periods away from home until her husband divorced her. That seemed unwise of her to me. I was looking down my nose at her until the thought came to me that she had lived her life as best she could just as I have, without the benefit of a guide book complete with instructions for day to day living. She had made mistakes as I had made mistakes. So what made me so much better than she?
Technology Busy Till It Busts
For the last two weeks I have been trying to put my books on another distributor. The computer has turned inside out rather like a cat when you are trying to give it medicine. I don't even understand the terminology. What is an OSC? Click on that and then close out your program. I click on that, and I don't have to close the program. It closes by itself. Have I lost what little progress I thought I made?
No, the computer tells me it was all on the wrong font and thus won't work at all.
I am smart, but not smart enough to understand this technology. I think maybe we have taken technology too far and have outdone ourselves.
Me, I'm perfect
I write about people and their wacky traits and their sweet traits. But none of us has an abundance of any one side of the fence. We are so many different traits seen and judged by so many others. The same trait can be seen by some to be bad and by others almost celebratory great. They can be seen as base now and in ten years acceptable. Like living together before marriage. In the fifties that was scandalous and is now acceptable. Along came birth control which allowed the worry free live in experience. So many couples either marry or break up. I think it is from a desire to be committed to one person, that people marry. A desire to have children might be seen as a reason, but still, a commitment by two people to stand up for each other plays into that.
Oh, I'm just talking. What do I know?
Easy, You Say
Posts have told how easy it is to publish your own books, how much cheaper. how this and that. I've just come from trying to add my books to another distributor and if you don't know how to do it, it isn't easy, or cheap. First, do many of you know how to make a epub doc? Well, let me tell you, it isn't so easy. Second, do you know how to embed fonts in a pdf file? ditto. Do you even know how to start? What is a contributor? It can be the author. Ha! fooled you. You thought the author of the book was the author, not the contributor. There are many other things, but that's it for now. I've spent my rage for the day.
Trees and Insects and All Other Beings
A long time ago I said trees talked and was laughed at. I believed it but had no proof, scientific proof. Then some scientists put some monitors on trees and left them for a period of time and found that trees do indeed talk. They send signals that can be understood by other trees warning them of insect invasions and of other things, but of course in a language we humans can't hear. Trees don't have brains but therefore they don't think?
All plants emit a musical sound that can be recorded and currently can be bought on a system that can be attached to plants anywhere. You can sit in your garden and listen to your plants talking. They communicate, too. I think all beings have a mind, but not a brain. It has been proven that plants have thoughts or a language that they use to communicate. Why not include in that all things except dead things, like pieces of dirt. Therefore, if the brain is not the source of thoughts or communication wherefore comes the thoughts? If not originating in the brain, where do the thoughts originate?
just Launched
Entry of the Machiavellian Man
My fourth book just launched.
It took awhile to get it up and running, but here at last. I have made many errors on publishing and probably will make more. It's a complicated world.
Writing was difficult enough, but I didn't worry about publishing and marketing. Someone else would handle that.
Whoa, not so. You have to be in the same mind frame as all those other people who go after the money. If you want people to read your work, then you need to be interested in the money side of it. To sell books you need to be in the money side of it. You need to do all those things needed to get people to buy your books.
Sorry, but it is so. A writer cannot be just a writer. He must be a business man, too. That is contrary to a writers basic personality. A writer writes and must give up making money until he succeeds at the writing, which most people know takes a long time. Usually takes a long time. A writer must expect to starve a little or a lot.
And then when he understands writing and is ready to show his work, he must turn on the money seeking charm. Now, he must go after the money for there is no other way to get his work out to the public.
Dive into our collection of "Short Takes," crafted for the inquisitive minds seeking a moment of literary escape. Discover thought-provoking essays, captivating fiction, and evocative poetry designed to leave you feeling good and refreshed.
Developing Imagination
It took me nine years to write my first novel. I wanted to write fiction but thought I didn't have much imagination. But how could I stop at one novel? I wanted to reach people and one novel wouldn't do the trick. I found that other ideas popped up for more novels. I worked on another and that came out fine. That one took me only two years. I was developing a method to my madness. I was learning to explore my imagination. One idea built another that progressed to another. Now I was using imagination
I wrote eight novels before I stopped. Or I thought I stopped. Does a writer ever stop. I was having fun. I am still having fun.
Short Takes
Where Do I Get my Ideas for My Books
A question many ask me is how I come up with ideas for my books. My books aren't in a series, but follow the general principle of life's harshness against life's overflowing happiness, of good versus bad. We all experience terrible times and circumstances in our lives where we are confronted with questions of morality. We have choices and how we determine and solve those choices determines where the road of life takes us. It isn't by chance that we end up where we do. We are in control and we drive our lives in a direction and reach whatever goal we drive towards.
But how does that have anything to do with my choice of ideas for my books? Well, we can only write about what we know. We can't write about Bourbon street if we have never been on Bourbon street. So, I take those experiences in my life that fall into the range of ideas I want to write about and fashion them into a book.
Bite-sized brilliance
Dive into our collection of "Short Takes," crafted for the inquisitive minds seeking a moment of literary escape. Discover thought-provoking essays, captivating fiction, and evocative poetry designed to leave you feeling good and refreshed.
Moments of insight
A literary pick-me-up
Welcome, inquisitive reader! Bonnie Sedgemore Author presents "Short Takes," a collection designed to offer you a quick dose of literary satisfaction. Explore essays, fiction, and poetry carefully curated to deliver insights, laughs, and smiles, leaving you refreshed and ready to tackle your day.
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