Love and the 5 Year Plan, However Love Is Not Logical

You have worked hard all your life—got into a good university, paid your dues and worked your way up the corporate ladder or in a field in which you are passionate about.  You have supportive family and friends and an active social and dating life.  You are finally at a place where you are building a solid foundation for the life you desire—the husband, wife, home, and kids.

While you are out there in the dating world, you may not be ready for the “happily ever after” yet so you create a 5 year plan to make to pay off your student loans, safe for a down payment on your dream home, and achieve a bit more professional success—then you will be ready for love—the only problem is that love in not logical.

When you meet the person—the one who makes your head spin, your knees weak, and your heart race every time they walk in the room, your sturdy 5 year plan may need to be reworked.  This is a common struggle, especially when our head hasn’t come to terms with the place are heart is in; even more so if the one who has swept you off your feet, is not the one you expected you would end up with.

There is a difference between lust and love, but sometimes you find both in the same person.  While this kind of powerful connection can take you by surprise, its undeniable electricity can’t be ignored.

Whether you like it or not, or it is in your 5 year plan or not, love is not logical and can take you by surprise at a moment’s notice.  When love sneaks up in the most unexpected of places you have to determine whether it is a risk worth taking.  Is it worth letting the electricity you feel for someone pass you by because the “time” is not right?  Or because they aren’t who you “see” yourself with?  Is it better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all?  Will you have regrets if you don’t even try?

These are all difficult questions to answer—all of which are explored in the latest novel by author Ju Ephraime “A Wonderful Pieceof Dark Mahogany”.  In this book tells the tale of Melissa and Craig, two successful individuals who had a plan for the next few years of their lives—that is until their paths crossed taking them down an unexpected path of love, passion, and jealousy.

Amazon Kindle the Next Link in the Age of Creativity Fueled by Platforms

Contemporary media—be it books like 1984 or movies like HAL, Terminator or Matrix—has projected our world’s growing use of computer and Internet technology to have disastrous consequences as computer networks take over the world and dehumanize it.

Fortunately, the human race is shaping up quite brightly in light of these technologies– in place of destroying humanity, emotions and creativity, the tools, platforms and applications enabled by ubiquitous connectivity and the cloud have enabled the democratization of human creativity and it’s expression at an unprecedented scale.

First, easy web publishing led to the rise of the home journalist/ eZine publisher via blogs, allowing practically everyone who wanted to share his or her expertise or opinion to do so. Blogs are your personal online portal of verbal expression, where you can share your creative or journalistic writing talent with the world.

The next advent in the acceleration of creative expression via digital platforms was around videos led by YouTube, Vine, and other video sharing websites. These allowed people to share their funny and crazy videos, thoughtful videos, educational videos, music, dances, sketches – allowing connection from the artist to the admirer – be it the rare wildlife caught on camera in “Battle of Krueger” or the bizarre top hit “Gangnam style” or even stranger subject matter where young women post a short video clip of their pretty feet to be admired by thousands of foot lovers with foot fetish.

Apple, followed by Google, fueled creativity among people with some software skill, allowing downloads of cheap apps via their app stores.  

And last but not least, eBook publishing platforms, such as Kindle and Nook have given unbounded power to the millions of us who feel we have an interesting story to author, but are too busy to take years of manuscript propositions to high brow editors at established publishing houses only to be rejected. Kindle, Nook and other e-publishing platforms allow pretty much any one with writing talent to share their book with hundreds of millions of readers across the world.

Recently, I stumbled across “Private Emotions” erotic romance trilogy by a new British author Elize Amornette that is an extremely good example of the power of platform. This new author has already won the hearts of thousands of readers across the world, her erotic series both appeals to our emotional side and sensual sides, whetting and fueling our passions. 

The author and her series was covered at Boston Globe’s Boston.com news website last month. With her book getting to the coveted top 0.25% sales rank recently, I am sure Elize Amornette is another star in making, powered by the benevolent matrix that connects the creator, the artist, the author with his or her audience. Long live the platforms! 

The Causes of Racism

Racism, defined as prejudice or discrimination aimed at an individual of another race or a whole race in general, has brought much depression and hate in our society. You would think that an attitude that is this “primitive” would be gone by now, but no – it is still around, taking many different forms, still in the mind of some people.

What causes this hurtful attitude to form within a person? 

• Ignorance. Ignorance is being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed. Racism stems from ignorance because the person just doesn’t know that what he or she is doing is wrong, probably because the people around him or even the whole society that he grew up in has such an attitude. Ignorance drives racism to be a habit, not just a one-time act.
• Fear of loss and displacement. When some people encounter people of another race, they become afraid that these people would take over their jobs, territory, status, and even personality. They are threatened that they would be replaced, and so they attack the other person of another race as they believe that doing so help them stay where they are.
• Lack of self-love and the need to feel superior. The most racist people are those that do not have love for themselves, continuously enveloped by negativity. They pass on their negative feelings to those of other races, which makes them feel superior because they ridicule and insult others based on what they feel they can do better or what others do worse.

Unfortunately, these causes are still prevalent in society. Racism feeds on them and continues to live – though not as outspoken as times past, but certainly no less hurtful or vicious.

“Sister Josephine” by Joanna Traynor is an award-winning story of a strong young woman that is challenged by racism every day of her life – a black girl fostered by a white family, living in a society where she is the only black person. She doesn't know her birth family and doesn't meet anyone else who is black until well into her teenage years. She is neglected but resilient and goes onto become a nurse - a profession that comes with pressure that is difficult for her to bear.

This book, originally published by Bloomsbury, won the Saga Prize in 1997. The Saga Prize was organized by Marsha Hunt, to raise the profile of black British writers. Marsha Hunt's daughter by Mick Jagger lived in England at the time and Marsha realized there were very few books written by black British writers to give to her to read, so she set up a literary competition to find new writers. Joanna Traynor won the second Saga Prize offered and was published by Liz Calder, then the Director of Bloomsbury Publishing.

"Sister Josephine" is current available in Kindle format at Amazon.com. Click on the link to preview the book or download your own copy.

Amazon.com Went Down For Almost an Hour, Now Back Up

Breaking News: 
Amazon.com finally is up after being down for 30 - 40 minutes. There is still no word on the cause, but twitter was buzzing with comments. here is our favorite: 

Kathleen Schmidt ‏@Bookgirl96
AMAZON IS DOWN. Go hug an author.

Here is a link to some more twitter humor. 




Update Earlier Today: 

 Amazon.com is down. There’s no word on the cause, so of course rumors abound the internet ranging from hackers activity to problems during system updates. Users trying to login to Amazon.com from San Francisco to San Diego, Los Angeles to New York saw this page: 

This is the second time this year when Amazon.com front end website has gone down. There were reports of widespread unavailability on January 31st as well.