Congratulations to all our latest Press gems! This month, another rich eclectic mix, from the elegant abstract painterly to vocal techniques and cartoon/photo mash-ups. And thank you to our editorial staff for helping to cull these most recent gems from the very wide World Wide Web.
Painting in Oils: An Artist's Studio Diary
By Jessica Zoob Oils are so amazing to work with and my current paintings, (some I’ve been working on for eight years so far!), are thick and lavish with oils in glorious colors. I am having so much fun being ridiculously extravagant! Lilies have become a motif for my work and are featured in many of…
Recycled Art: Trash to Treasure
By Kathryn M. McCullough, MA I have a passion for transforming trash into treasure– for repurposing potential throw-aways into absolute blow-aways. And what I can find at my local ReStore often can be transformed from something ordinary into the extraordinary – like the table below, on sale for a mere ten dollars: Clearly, the piece was mid-century modern, a style…
Writing: How to Beat the Blank Page
By Shanan Haislip, Features Contributing Editor Some days, there’s nothing more paralyzing than the expanse of white paper or white Word document in front of you. The pressure! The expectations! The sheer nothingyetness of it! The unbroken marble monotony of the blank page has made me cower and back away from it many, many times. We…
The Four D’s: Part 4 – More on Depth of Character
A Special Feature Series: See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 At the welcome reception for my MFA program I was asked the following question: when my novel is published and on bookstore shelves, next to which author would I like to see it placed? I had never thought about this and found myself unable to…
Publishing: The Power of Your Own PR
By Randy Ross Blogging and social media are not the only ways to develop a platform or audience for your writing. In 2013, I spent a chunk of my book-marketing time promoting myself with special events, such as lectures and public readings. The nice thing about special events is that the venue will promote you…
The Four D’s: Part 3 – Depth of Character
A Special Feature Series: See Part 1 and Part 2. Writing craft books and writing teachers will tell you that readers read for character. Indeed, the cornerstone of literary fiction is the complex character study. At a minimum, even the most surface-dwelling, plot-driven genre novel needs engaging characters to carry the story. These characters are…
The Four D’s: Part 2 – What is Depth?
A Special Feature Series: See Part 1 here. Resonant stories have depth. Forgettable stories don’t. Literary fiction, for example, takes us deep into the lives of characters and creates complex stories that touch upon the human condition. A good literary novel may resonate with the reader long after the book is finished. Genre fiction, many…
Creative Writing and the Four D's
Dennis Lehane and the Four D’s If you are close to my age, or even a decade or so younger, you may remember a professional athlete whose career spanned the late eighties and early nineties. His name was Bo Jackson. He won college football’s Heisman Trophy in 1985, made his major league debut with the Kansas City…
Photography: Realism Digital Art
By Jacob Surland Realism Digital Art is a term I use to describe the painterly and dramatic effects I’m striving for in my photography, utilizing Photomatix, Lightroom and Photoshop. This one photo, taken in Chicago on the morning after St. Patrick’s Day, turned out as a surprise to me, as I was experimenting with…
