The Bedsore Club

Long ago is the day of perusing through musty stacks at the local library. With enhanced electronics, and the prevalence of social network websites, book rental has evolved into something streamline and instant. There are perks on both sides of the spectrum of book rental, and both can be easy to master, and fulfilling experiences.

One of my favorite experiences as a child was visiting the local library with my grandma. I remember fondly, the musky, warm, woody smell of the stacks and stacks of books. On every shelf, the possibility of meeting a new friend in the heroes and heroines bound within the covers. I would get so engrossed in the epic tales, the adventures would continue long after the last page was turned. One of the first books that sank it’s hooks into me and wouldn’t let go was a book I found of my dad’s when I was 11 years old. The cover had a picture of a shiny red car on the front which was later identified as a ’58 Plymouth Fury and was written by a man named Stephen King. The picture was vibrant and colorful and it was that alone, that pulled me into reading “Christine” That summer I breezed through that novel and was thirsty for more. I felt like a new young woman, empowered by this love for adult fiction. I felt like I had matured 6 years that summer.

I couldn’t’ read enough Stephen King, and we couldn’t afford to buy the new novels as they came out, so my mom signed me up for my very own library card. Our local library wasn’t magnificent by any means, Instead of towering buildings with amazing architecture and roman columns; we had a ranch style brick building. Even though it wasn’t a spectacular place by most people’s standards, to me, it was the best place on earth. It smelled sweet and musky, just like I remembered, only instead of the wooden tables and chairs of my first visit to a library, was plush overstuffed chairs and couches. Table after table of computers, a section for children’s books, magazines and a separate room just for genealogy. I read every Stephen King book I could get my hands on, and through him, I discovered other great authors.

I spent so many days reading, discovering new hobbies, new authors and meeting new friends with similar interests. Now that I am a busy mother of two young boys, I take them to the summer reading programs where they learn about so much and take part in all the great activities the library has to offer. Keeping rowdy boys quiet in a library, isn’t such an easy task, and finding the time to take a moment by myself is few and far between. When I can’t afford the time to head to the library, I get online and immediately go to my favorite websites. My first, being swaptree.com.

A free site where anyone can join and post the ISBN numbers of books they have in their collection along with dvd’s, cd’s, and video games. Users then directly swap with other users through the mail. It’s and most items ship for under $5. It’s book rental in its finest, by getting exactly what you want, when you want it, and returning what your finished with. Even though it does cost money to ship the books to different users, it usually balances out with what you expend in gas. It’s a great option to the library, when you’re a busy mother and housewife and an innovative and new form of the traditional book rental.

If you’re practicing occultist or magus, perhaps you own quite few magic books. But wouldn’t it be great to write down your own book of magic? In Wicca covens, and few other modern occult groups, it is required for practitioners to manually copy old books, to create new copies for personal use. You can do something similar. In this article, you will learn how to write your own book of magic.

First step to take will be to organize paper. You can purchase single pages, and then bind them together with time, or you can purchase simple thick notebook, plain or squared or ruled – it’s your choice. Or you can head to Amazon.com, I believe you can purchase plain books ready to be filled with text there. The cover of the notebook can be paperback, or hard – again, it’s your choice.

Then, if you own the notebook already, you need to start writing. What should you write down in your book of magic? A lot of things, actually. Book of magic that is created by the practicing occultist, in reality is more like a journal. Because of this, first of all you should write down your personal paranormal and occult experiences inside. Every magus and occult practitioner experience a lot of weird things during his exploration of the supernatural, so this will be the first thing to write down.

Next, at the end of your book you should write down already created and successful rites and spells that you know they work for you. You should also include charts and tables of correspondences between various practices, symbols and techniques, for example correspondences between tarot and astrology, or astrological charts etc. That part of your book will create the fundamental piece of knowledge mandatory for your practice.

You should also write down all your experiments with magic techniques, and reports from each magic ritual you perform. You should also use the book to write down new spells and rites you will create and learn during your exploration. Finally, you should write down all the coincidences and “psychic impressions”, because they will occur more often with your practice.

With time, your personal book of magic will become very important resource in your magical arts, the resource you will always use to create new spells and rites. Keep it safe, threat it well and do not allow anyone to take a look inside. Now you know how to create your own book of magic.

No, it is not a medical emergency. It’s the truth, you have at least one book inside you. No matter what kind of life or work related skills you have acquired, there are people who want the benefit of that knowledge. If you can write it down, record the audio, or make a simple video, there is someone who will pay you to help them take two or three steps up the learning ladder. You might now be thinking that you are not an accomplished Academic with special skills, and that what your expertise has no particular value? Please don’t believe it, or you’ll stall before you start. Under the conventional rules of publishing, the process of getting your work into print was far more complicated. Today, everything is within your control, and at your fingertips. I recently met a charming and successful woman who has turned her simple passtime into a thriving business. Her website is dedicated to learning how to knit. Yes, knitting! Not complicated techniques, but how to get started. But, surely every Mum just passes on that skill to every daughter? You might suppose so, but her knitting site is doing very well. Owner Penny Dablin, has put together a series of short videos, tips and tricks, patterns, and ebooks. You can see demonstration samples and then purchase her products in a moment with instant downloads. What begin as a small venture has just turned International. She just signed a deal to have her content turned into an iPhone App. Just how many iPhones are there around the World, and how many potential knitters are there? Penny is a very smart and happy Lady. Having done the initial work, she is now enjoying the benefit of passive income. It’s a great example of a niche business. Try a Google search for “Knitting”, and see just how many searches there are on the topic. There are millions each month. The proof is easy to find. The people using Search Engines are looking for information, or to buy something. You could be tapping into that wealth. Could you write thirty or forty pages on your hobby, sports, or professional skills? Or, maybe how you got a particular job. I’m not suggesting an eight hundred page novel, just an easy to digest guide to solving a problem, learning or improving something. Your computer will then convert your Word Document into a PDF file. This is the format for used ebooks. So you don’t have to hawk your manuscript around the publishing houses. Your book, audio files, or videos can be downloaded and viewed directly on any computer. There is freely available software for both sound and visual products too. There are no printing, storage, delivery, or distribution costs. And more importantly, your potential purchaser can be anywhere on the whole planet. It’s time for you to grab a piece of paper and conduct a personal audit. What you write down could be the route to filling your bank account with Cash. I have just put together a comprehensive ebook-on how to write ebooks. You can get a gratis personal copy, and also give a copy to whoever you like. Just come to my website and send me a note.

Something that many authors find difficult when it comes to facing when book marketing their own product is “how much is justifiable to spend on marketing my book?” Whilst the answer to that question will obviously depend largely on your own circumstances, relying on advances and additional royalties (and sales) is certainly not enough. What if you could use your book as the platform from which you earn money but it was not the only component of your revenue stream?

Turning your book into one component of a greater revenue generating product is one way that many authors manage to increase sales all round and not just through the sale of their books. By using the book as a tool, and perhaps holding seminars, conferences or talks as well as selling merchandise, keynoting or info products you are building a larger product for which the book is simply one component thereof.

This would enable you, the author, to derive income from many more streams than simply the book. Although the book should obviously be worthwhile and to the best standard possible, it should not be the only cog in the wheel , so to speak. By tackling your book marketing in this fashion you are no longer placing all of your eggs in to one basket and holding your breath hoping it works. You are also able to spread your product and name across many different formats, generating more publicity and brand awareness.

Internet marketing is a useful tool but is not the only tool left in today’s book marketing world. Tribal Author is a brilliant site that can help you to think outside of the box and look at other ways of generating revenue not based only on the amount of sales your book receives, but through a wider promotional vehicle where the book is a component of the whole.

Well, the 2010 New South Wales Snow and Skiing season is just around the corner again and everyone is ready for the fun and frivolity to start. In the year of the Vancouver Winter Olympics and the sensational TV coverage it will receive, it is expected that the Australian season will be one of the best ever with tens of thousands of new skiers travelling to the NSW ski fields to learn and participate in the downhill and snowboarding disciplines they have been seeing on the TV. Thredbo and Perisher Valley ski and snowboard operators are gearing up for a bumper season and all the necessary equipment like ski lifts, snow ploughs, snow cannons and the like are all being checked over to help provide a trouble free season. Lots of new hire equipment has been ordered to provide for the expected lift in visitor numbers. Everyone in the industry is expecting a bumper season.

Perisher Valley accommodation providers are already open for bookings and this year you had better book early. The GFC has seen to it that there is not much in new accommodation available and the same story is evident at the Thredbo accommodation booking websites. Traditionally, when El Nino weather conditions prevail and the winter months are drier, the ski resorts have reported excellent snow conditions so everything is lining up to make 2010 a fantastic year with moderate El Nino conditions forecast for 2010.

There is going to be plenty of on snow entertainment for snow field visitors as well. The ski season opens in Thredbo on the 12th of June 2010 for the Queens Birthday long weekend and before the season you will be able to take part in the 16th Thredbo Blues festival if you come on the 15th to the 17th of January. The Thredbo Jazz festival is a bit later running from Friday 30th of April to Sunday May 2nd 2010 and the Perisher/Snowy Mountains Music Festival will run from June the 11th to the 14th June to coincide with the season opening. Throughout the season there will be numerous special events that are both of a serious and novelty nature with fun days mixed with downhill and terrain park events for the more serious skiers and snowboarders.

Getting to the New South Wales ski fields is easy. You can fly in to Cooma or Canberra and then catch the snow bus or you can drive down from Sydney. There is plenty of on snow accommodation in both Perisher or Thredbo or you can stay off snow in Jindabyne and commute to the snow on a daily basis either by shuttle bus or on the ski tube.

Apart from the book’s fictional story, the factual one – how the book came to be discovered and published sixty years after it was written – is fascinating. The author, Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 to a wealthy Jewish banking family. She and her family fled to France at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. In France, she studied at the Sorbonne and wrote over a dozen books. She also contributed numerous articles to French magazines and literary journals. With the imminent German invasion, as a precaution, she with her husband and two small children moved to the little village of Issy-l’Évêque in Burgundy, the setting for this book. This region became part of German-occupied France and in July 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. She died there just a month later. Like the acclaimed Suite Française, the manuscript of Fire in the Blood, completed not long before her arrest, was discovered only in recent years and published in French in 2007 as Chaleur du Sang.

The book is set in a very rural area almost in the centre of France around Issy-l’Évêque: the kind of place that could be described as “the middle of nowhere.” It is roughly equidistant from Lyon, to the south and Dijon to the north, but far from the main road that links those two large towns. The backwater setting is central to the book: a place where “the days drag on while the years fly by.” It is narrated by Sylvio an old paysan, who squandered most of his inheritance when he was young.

The author masterfully captures the bleak isolation of the remote rural area and the inward looking nature of the paysans farming the land and running the mills. Their guarded, cagey character is central to the narrative; it permeates the entire story. Everyone have an unspoken past. Some are burdened with shame, others with pent-up secrets, many with inappropriate lusts and most with gnawing regrets.

Though quintessentially French, it could be about rural people almost anywhere, for whom land is everything, almost as important as people, and sometimes more. Toil and suffering infuse the narrative; these paysans acquired whatever wealth they have through generations of sweat and blood. They foster an innate distrust of everyone, strangers and neighbours alike. They wouldn’t hesitate to harbour a criminal who’s one of themselves, rather than involve the authorities, the outsiders.

Illness is rarely mentioned, except when it’s denied. Sylvio describes such a denial when he asks the old farmer Declos if he’s ill. “But he’s a true farmer: Illness is shameful and must be concealed until the last possible moment, until death is seeping from your pores.” So, as Sylvio expects, Daclos declares that he is perfectly fine, merely, tired.

Money is rarely plentiful; land is like blood, and even one’s own life is measured against its likely return on investment. When the doctor tells old Decros that he needs an urgent operation that will be costly, the old man thinks for a long moment and then asks the doctor how long it would add to his life. The doctor says “about 4 or 5 years.” The old man goes silent again, this time for a few minutes, apparently calculating. Finally, he concludes that 4 or 5 years is not a reasonable return on the money, since the likely quality of his life during those rescued years would not be very good. With cold practicality, he decides against the surgery.

Though this may seem like a dark, depressing novel, it is not. On the contrary, the characters display all aspects of human nature; many are likeable and easy to empathize with, especially the narrator, Sylvio. Tantalizingly, the author peels away layer after layer of each character’s nature, slowly revealing that nothing is as it seems; the pious, generous parents conceal a shameful past; the reserved and innocent young woman about to be married may not be as chaste as she and her parents want everyone to believe.

The author’s tremendous talent is evident in every line. In so many paragraphs, as the reader’s mind is just about to formulate thoughts, the author anticipates those thoughts and expresses them so much more succinctly than most of us could hope to do. In the process she reveals things about our feelings that we never realized existed; surely it’s the sign of a great writer to know the reader better that we know ourselves. This exceptional novel leads us through obscure backwoods of human nature and, spellbound, we gladly go wherever this inspired author decides to take us.