MARCO POLO, EAT YOUR HEART OUT!

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Dear You—

It’s been an extraordinary week. I’m continuing to explore the Internet as part of developing a marketing plan for my books, and am just plain fascinated, enthralled and vastly cheered by what I’m discovering.

What is taking place – literally under our eyes – is the greatest explosion of both creativity and exploration the world has ever seen; and yet I don’t think most of us have, as yet, grasped its scale and scope – let alone . either its significance or its potential. I know I hadn’t until recently, and I don’t think I’m fully there as yet. It’s going to change everything. It’s not just a means of communication, and a way of tapping into knowledge, but it is an intellectual force multiplier on a scale I suspect few can imagine. It’s awesome.

My friend, Chris Carrdus commented that it was akin to an “alternate universe.” Well put, but it’s our universe. Is it a force for good? I don’t think it comes equipped with a moral dimension. I do think it has the potential to enable us to solve most of our problems, though equally it could lead to mass unemployment and Big Brother. It is certainly the greatest tool for both true democracy and/or social control every conceived.

So much for the macro level. In the course of my odyssey I ran across a book called THE METAL GIRL by Judy Sandra – a fellow member of LinkedIn’s Writing Mafia - which sounds intriguing. Check out her website at http://judysandra.com/  The trailer is an evocative little movie with no voice-over at all though it sets the mood perfectly. And here was I expecting a reading. I guess I’m still not thinking  multimedia as yet because before long, you’ll open a book and it will set the scene with music.

The following is the blurb from Amazon.

JUDY SANDRA

During the dreary month of March in Copenhagen in the early 1970s, a 25 year old American woman travels on a solitary quest to become, in her mind, a "woman of the world." In fact, she is lost, adrift, dislocated, not only from familiar surroundings but from her innermost being: "It was the era of rising feminist consciousness, but my mind had not yet caught up to my age and my consciousness was not the part of me that was rising up that winter." The memoir-like narrative of The Metal Girl is told by the mature woman who looks back on her younger, more naive self. Describing a timeless and highly personal milieu, she tells her story with intimate candor as it unfolds in a lyrical, ironic and insightful voice.

She takes a room in a cheap pension, which, unbeknownst to her, is located on the edge of the city's red light district. The hotel is run by the enigmatic Elke, a quintessential blond, Scandinavian beauty, and Manfred, a German man of beefy proportions and portentous looks. Venturing out one evening to a jazz club, she meets Olaf, who attracts her with his handsome face, kindness and charm, and his friend Elizabeth, whom she finds the most alluring of all beautiful, poetic, intelligent, mysterious, wise and tragic.

Her journey through these relationships climaxes late one night when she discovers the raison d'être of everyone else and, even more surprising, the disillusioning truth about herself.

Nice quote from talented illustrator Duncan Long:  “Never judge a book by its publisher.”