"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
—Muriel Rukeyser
____________________________

Dracula The Un-Dead featured on CNN.com







A bloodier Dracula rises again

By Doug Gross

October 31, 2009 8:41 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Move over, Edward Cullen.

Tell those bayou bloodsuckers from "True Blood" to step aside, too.

More than 112 years after he first climbed out of the coffin, the world's most famous vampire is back -- and he's bloodier than ever.

"Dracula the Un-Dead," released this month in the United States, is a sequel to Bram Stoker's 1897 classic written by Dacre Stoker, the original author's great-grandnephew.

The book, co-written by Dracula historian Ian Holt, picks up 25 years after the Victorian-era monster is supposedly killed in the original and is based in part on 125 pages of handwritten notes that Bram Stoker left behind.

Click Here to read more ...

5-STAR REVIEW OF DR. NICOLAS BAZAN’S UNA VIDA ON AMAZON.COM



A tour of New Oleans and the people who made and make it special, October 13, 2009

By

David S. Papermaster (Farmington, CT USA) - See all my reviews

Una Vida is a masterpiece of plot development and the name of the lead character in this remarkable novel. Dr. Bazan introduces us to the interstices of the troubled mind of Una Vida (One Life) a wonderful early jazz singer from New Orleans who now has Alzheimer's disease. While she cannot always recognize those who care for her or love her, her recall of the early Jazz music and those who created it Una Vida: A Fable of Music and the Mind leads her to sing openly along the frequently walked byways of her home. As we meet the companions on her journey we are taken on a tour of that magnificent city, its early history, the remarkable story of the free blacks who lost their rights in the post-Civil War Jim Crow era and the impact of segregation of the development of Jazz. Occasional introductions of seemingly unrelated works of art drive you to search the Web for more background. And then, as we watch the impact of Una Vida on those who grow to love her or who have loved her for decades we are humanized to gain more understanding and a sense of participation in her journey and the journeys of those, similarly troubled, who surround us. I could not put it down and read it in one thrilling day.


David S. Papermaster, MD.
Solomon Professor of Vision Research and Eye Diseases, Emeritus
University of Connecticut Health Center
Farmington CT 06030-3401

JOIN ME AT AUTHORS 101 LAS VEGAS OCTOBER 31st WEEKEND


"Top Publishing and Marketing Experts Reveal Tools and Techniques to Get Your Book Published and Double or Triple Your Income as an Author or Publisher."

Author101 University is coming October 30 & 31, 2009 to Las Vegas





Join Mark Victor Hansen, Rick Frishman, Ken Atchity, David Hancock, Alex Carroll, and more... (read more below to see why you won't want to miss what they have to share with you)

Mark Victor Hansen
Mega-Best Selling Author

Rick Frishman
Public Relations Expert and Best Selling Author

Ken Atchity
Literary Manager
David Hancock
Morgan James Publishing, Author and Speaker
Alex Caroll
Best Selling Author, Radio Interview Expert





James Malinchak
"The Big Money Speaker™"
Stefanie Hartman
“The Expert’s Expert”
Scott Hoffman
Folio Literary Management
Berny Dohrmann
Craig Duswalt
RockStar Speaker and Author






Loren locum
Master Trainer
Tom Antion
Internet Marketing Expert
Mike Koenigs
Brendon Burchard
Best Selling Author, Speaker and Coach
Gary Spirer
Entrepreneurial Leverage Expert


Are you curious about what publishers like Harper Collins, Morgan James, Adams Media, Wiley, Random House, and Simon & Schuster are looking for? What is the best way to get your manuscript read when you're an unpublished author? Want to know the biggest mistakes to avoid when writing book proposals? You'll be engaged as these top pros share their expertise, reveal the inner workings of the publishing industry, and discuss various approaches to common marketing and publishing challenges.

Additional bonus after hours cocktail party where you'll have the opportunity to network with speakers from the day, industry experts and other attendees.


This is a small intimate event and will sell out quickly

SPACE IS LIMITED - ONLY $399

VIP PASS $149 INCLUDES PREFERRED SEATING, SPECIAL ACCESS TO AGENTS AND PUBLISHERS, FREE DRINKS AT THE EVENING COCKTAIL PARTY, AND AUTHOR 101 2008 7 CD SERIES - A $200 VALUE


Register yourself and a friend and save!!
Only $399 plus a $50 reservation deposit refunded at the event.

Some of the key topics that will be covered include:

  • How to write and present your book proposal to an agent so that your book can be sold to a publisher.

  • What are publishers looking for in a new book? What separates "yes" from "no" and what you can do
    to get the best advance.

  • What do you need to do to make your book a best seller.

  • How to promote yourself using low-cost means online to catapult your sales and exposure into the stratosphere.

What you'll learn

How to create "hooks" for yourself and your business that will make you virtually irresistible to every media outlet and make coverage for yourself a virtual certainty.

How to get rich and become famous by being a guest on radio show without spending a dime on advertising.

How to create promotional materials (media kits, etc.) that will have the media running to you for your opinion every time a story in your area pops up

How to quickly and easily create an automated process to capture leads and sales and to up-sell and cross-sell these people with a minimum of effort.

How to make any book you write or publish an Amazon best-seller with a system that has been PROVEN to work.

If you'd like to learn the secrets of getting your book published or how to turn your book or publishing business into a money machine, this course is for you. Keep reading to find out more.

You'll get more out of this $399 seminar than any event this year offered at any price in the publishing industry. http://www.author101university.com

JOIN ME AT AUTHORS 101 LAS VEGAS OCTOBER 31st WEEKEND


"Top Publishing and Marketing Experts Reveal Tools and Techniques to Get Your Book Published and Double or Triple Your Income as an Author or Publisher."

Author101 University is coming October 30 & 31, 2009 to Las Vegas





Join Mark Victor Hansen, Rick Frishman, Ken Atchity, David Hancock, Alex Carroll, and more... (read more below to see why you won't want to miss what they have to share with you)

Mark Victor Hansen
Mega-Best Selling Author

Rick Frishman
Public Relations Expert and Best Selling Author

Ken Atchity
Literary Manager
David Hancock
Morgan James Publishing, Author and Speaker
Alex Caroll
Best Selling Author, Radio Interview Expert





James Malinchak
"The Big Money Speaker™"
Stefanie Hartman
“The Expert’s Expert”
Scott Hoffman
Folio Literary Management
Berny Dohrmann
Craig Duswalt
RockStar Speaker and Author






Loren locum
Master Trainer
Tom Antion
Internet Marketing Expert
Mike Koenigs
Brendon Burchard
Best Selling Author, Speaker and Coach
Gary Spirer
Entrepreneurial Leverage Expert


Are you curious about what publishers like Harper Collins, Morgan James, Adams Media, Wiley, Random House, and Simon & Schuster are looking for? What is the best way to get your manuscript read when you're an unpublished author? Want to know the biggest mistakes to avoid when writing book proposals? You'll be engaged as these top pros share their expertise, reveal the inner workings of the publishing industry, and discuss various approaches to common marketing and publishing challenges.

Additional bonus after hours cocktail party where you'll have the opportunity to network with speakers from the day, industry experts and other attendees.


This is a small intimate event and will sell out quickly

SPACE IS LIMITED - ONLY $399

VIP PASS $149 INCLUDES PREFERRED SEATING, SPECIAL ACCESS TO AGENTS AND PUBLISHERS, FREE DRINKS AT THE EVENING COCKTAIL PARTY, AND AUTHOR 101 2008 7 CD SERIES - A $200 VALUE


Register yourself and a friend and save!!
Only $399 plus a $50 reservation deposit refunded at the event.

Some of the key topics that will be covered include:

  • How to write and present your book proposal to an agent so that your book can be sold to a publisher.

  • What are publishers looking for in a new book? What separates "yes" from "no" and what you can do
    to get the best advance.

  • What do you need to do to make your book a best seller.

  • How to promote yourself using low-cost means online to catapult your sales and exposure into the stratosphere.

What you'll learn

How to create "hooks" for yourself and your business that will make you virtually irresistible to every media outlet and make coverage for yourself a virtual certainty.

How to get rich and become famous by being a guest on radio show without spending a dime on advertising.

How to create promotional materials (media kits, etc.) that will have the media running to you for your opinion every time a story in your area pops up

How to quickly and easily create an automated process to capture leads and sales and to up-sell and cross-sell these people with a minimum of effort.

How to make any book you write or publish an Amazon best-seller with a system that has been PROVEN to work.

If you'd like to learn the secrets of getting your book published or how to turn your book or publishing business into a money machine, this course is for you. Keep reading to find out more.

You'll get more out of this $399 seminar than any event this year offered at any price in the publishing industry. http://www.author101university.com

UK's Wide World Features The Thrillionaire











http://www.wideworldmag.co.uk

Titanic Journey

Visiting the world's most famous wreck


By Nik Halik

It was a moonless night, and quite foggy. Visibility was terrible. It was just as the conditions would have been on the fateful night of April 15th, 1912. I slept lightly that night, thinking about the lives lost, and the ghosts of that catastrophe.

Next morning, the carefully choreographed MIR support teams of the Akademik Keldysh hoisted our eighteen tonne submersible over the side, into the water with apparent ease. Victor opened up the ballast tanks, the submersible took in the seawater, and we started to dive and sink down to the murky depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Within ten minutes, the ambient light from the portholes disappeared. As we dived, we felt a surreal experience, as if we were travelling through outer space. As aquanauts, we were descending into an alien environment so potentially hostile, with close to zero chance of assistance from the outside world if we required rescuing.

PILOT GUIDES

We had some guides for the early part of the journey. Victor illuminated the pitch-black environment with the piercing lights of the MIR. A pod of pilot whales swam alongside our craft. They were attracted by the sonar navigation of our submersible. The pilot whales escorted us down to about 300 metres – like caretakers of the ocean – giving us a personal tour of their domain. It was fantastic. But, as we went below 300 metres, they ditched us, as if to say: ‘You guys are going far too deep.’

To conserve power, the MIR submersibles run without external lights. However, Victor occasionally switched them on to allow us to observe passing marine life. The dive down into the abyss took under four hours. The sea life was unlike anything I’d ever seen. When we descended below 1,000 metres, the bioluminescent creatures started to come into view. They virtually lit up themselves, like Christmas trees, becoming transparent.

TITANIC PRESENCE

After three and a half hours, we finally observed it on the radar screen. My heart was rapidly pounding. It was an outline of the most awe-inspiring structure I have ever witnessed in my life. We were still twenty-eight minutes from reaching the ocean bed, yet the bow of Titanic was clearly visible on the Titanic was clearly visible on the radar screen.

The image grew more vast and clearer. Exactly twenty-eight minutes had passed and then, in a moment of sheer ecstasy, we came upon the bow of Titanic. The bow looked even larger than I expected. As we motored around it, up and down, I was struck by just how vast it was. And yet we were seeing only a third of the bow. The lower two thirds are embedded into the sea floor.

Titanic was over 300 metres long. Every metre that we travelled, we came upon some relic, some treasure. We saw an old chest, suitcases that once belonged to immigrants, china cups, mugs, plates, wine bottles, ceramic tiles, toilets, bathtubs, light fixtures and shoes. We saw pairs of shoes, side by side, seemingly trapped together. At that depth in the salt water, bodies and bones would have decomposed within a couple of years. Those shoes, I realised, were what remained of human bodies.

THE ROCKS THAT STRUCK

Thousands of small rocks are littered around the wreck of Titanic. They are called Ilulissat rocks because of the town of Ilulissat on Greenland’s west coast. Experts believe that these rocks beside the wreck were part of the iceberg that the Titanic struck, and that the iceberg most likely travelled all the way from the polar ice caps of Greenland. In effect, Titanic hit a gigantic mass of stones glued together by Ilulissat polar ice cap.

As we skimmed the ocean floor, the two MIR submersibles stayed reasonably close to each other. The amazing sights we saw teased us. We came across Captain Smith’s cabin, with its own bath. We knew where it was located from drawings of the wreck, and the contents confirmed it was indeed the captain’s. We cruised past his marble bath and all the copper piping, still connected.

A CHAOTIC RUIN

Travelling the length of Titanic, we moved from the bow section through the debris field until we eventually came to the stern. It’s quite hard to work out which pieces belong to the stern. It looks like the entire stern had gone through a food processor.

The chaos actually surprised me. It’s obvious the stern imploded on impact. When Titanic hit the iceberg, the ship buckled, and thousands of rivets came undone. The impact was on the starboard side. Resting on the ocean floor, the bow and stern lie about 600 metres apart, facing in opposite directions. The stern must have twisted on the way down and imploded. There are thousands of items shattered all over the place.

At the stern section, when we were viewing the propellers, we had a very close call. In order to get down to the propellers, we went deep into the aft section of the stern, beneath the overhanging promenade decking which – at any time – could have entombed us. No-one mentioned the risk. A piece of promenade decking dropped on our MIR, smashing into pieces because of its decayed state. We were forced to use the manipulator arm to wrestle off the remaining piece of promenade decking

THE AQUANAUTS RETURN

After a late lunch, Victor blew the ballast tanks using compressed air, and the MIR became positively buoyant again, allowing us to rise to the surface. Victor was quite relaxed about everything. So calm in fact that he and Reda both seemed to nod off to sleep during parts of the slow journey ascent to the mother ship. Reda was exhausted. I was wide-awake, kicking back and listening to music on my iPod

I sat there thinking about all the marvellous sights I had just witnessed, and staring at the luminescent fish, flicking the lights on myself.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Nik Halik is a professional adventurer and author of The Thrillionaire (buy it here). He has climbed the highest mountains in four continents, trained for spaceflight and chased tornadoes.



Visit The Thrillionaires website: thethrillionaires.com



JOIN ME AT AUTHORS 101 LAS VEGAS OCTOBER 31st WEEKEND


"Top Publishing and Marketing Experts Reveal Tools and Techniques to Get Your Book Published and Double or Triple Your Income as an Author or Publisher."

Author101 University is coming October 30 & 31, 2009 to Las Vegas





Join Mark Victor Hansen, Rick Frishman, Ken Atchity, David Hancock, Alex Carroll, and more... (read more below to see why you won't want to miss what they have to share with you)

Mark Victor Hansen
Mega-Best Selling Author

Rick Frishman
Public Relations Expert and Best Selling Author

Ken Atchity
Literary Manager
David Hancock
Morgan James Publishing, Author and Speaker
Alex Caroll
Best Selling Author, Radio Interview Expert





James Malinchak
"The Big Money Speaker™"
Stefanie Hartman
“The Expert’s Expert”
Scott Hoffman
Folio Literary Management
Berny Dohrmann
Craig Duswalt
RockStar Speaker and Author






Loren locum
Master Trainer
Tom Antion
Internet Marketing Expert
Mike Koenigs
Brendon Burchard
Best Selling Author, Speaker and Coach
Gary Spirer
Entrepreneurial Leverage Expert


Are you curious about what publishers like Harper Collins, Morgan James, Adams Media, Wiley, Random House, and Simon & Schuster are looking for? What is the best way to get your manuscript read when you're an unpublished author? Want to know the biggest mistakes to avoid when writing book proposals? You'll be engaged as these top pros share their expertise, reveal the inner workings of the publishing industry, and discuss various approaches to common marketing and publishing challenges.

Additional bonus after hours cocktail party where you'll have the opportunity to network with speakers from the day, industry experts and other attendees.


This is a small intimate event and will sell out quickly

SPACE IS LIMITED - ONLY $399

VIP PASS $149 INCLUDES PREFERRED SEATING, SPECIAL ACCESS TO AGENTS AND PUBLISHERS, FREE DRINKS AT THE EVENING COCKTAIL PARTY, AND AUTHOR 101 2008 7 CD SERIES - A $200 VALUE


Register yourself and a friend and save!!
Only $399 plus a $50 reservation deposit refunded at the event.

Some of the key topics that will be covered include:

  • How to write and present your book proposal to an agent so that your book can be sold to a publisher.

  • What are publishers looking for in a new book? What separates "yes" from "no" and what you can do
    to get the best advance.

  • What do you need to do to make your book a best seller.

  • How to promote yourself using low-cost means online to catapult your sales and exposure into the stratosphere.

What you'll learn

How to create "hooks" for yourself and your business that will make you virtually irresistible to every media outlet and make coverage for yourself a virtual certainty.

How to get rich and become famous by being a guest on radio show without spending a dime on advertising.

How to create promotional materials (media kits, etc.) that will have the media running to you for your opinion every time a story in your area pops up

How to quickly and easily create an automated process to capture leads and sales and to up-sell and cross-sell these people with a minimum of effort.

How to make any book you write or publish an Amazon best-seller with a system that has been PROVEN to work.

If you'd like to learn the secrets of getting your book published or how to turn your book or publishing business into a money machine, this course is for you. Keep reading to find out more.

You'll get more out of this $399 seminar than any event this year offered at any price in the publishing industry. http://www.author101university.com/