Sunday, July 31, 2011

and more cool sites now I know how to do this

Please check out Komal Mansoor's excellent review of Ita Willen's book The Gift on her blog @:

http://komzreviews.blogspot.com

and if you'd like to watch a cool documentary film go to:

http://www.hulu.com/studio/cinema-guild 
and look for the film titled SPRAYMASTERS

Manny Kirchheimer who made this doc about grafitti artists is married to Wessex Collective author Gloria DeVida Kircheimer (Amalie in Orbit). What a talented couple!

almost forgot

www.thewessexcollective.com

Visit our site to read about our 18 titles by 11 authors. And soon we'll be adding three more books to that list.  

ANOTHER GREAT BLOG from Wessex Author Bob Sommer

and here is another blog site from wessex author Bob Sommer, he is really good at this and writes some great stuff:


http://uncommon-hours.blogspot.com/

When readers download Where the Wind Blew from our digital content site, donations will be made to the Francis D. Sommer Memorial Fund for Homeless Veterans.  So again, for $5 you can accomplish two important things: read a good book and contribute to a good cause.  Download one of my books and the donations will go to animal rescue workers to help with gas for transport, food and vet care. Each of our authors can specify where they want proceeds from their ebook sales to go, and that could change from time to time but bottom line, we are trying to fix our broken world bit by bit which is perhaps all any of us can do.

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

SOME REALLY COOL LINKS

Hello again,
It is raining, coming down really hard so not taking the hike I planned and I'm back. I just checked my email and got the new blog from Healing Muse. This is a GREAT blog. I really like this literary journal of work by nurses and doctors, healers. I really like the concept of writing out of that kind of experience. I feel honored to have been included on the blog last month and to have had a story published in the print journal a few years back. Check it out:  www.thehealingmusecafe.blogspot.com

While I am talking about links to other great sites I had a couple others I wanted to point out but first wanted to write about two of our Wessex authors: Pete Burnham and Helen Hudson. Both have written about very vulnerable characters in the hopes of making readers more aware of the people among us who are lonely, oppressed, hungry even homeless in the hopes that awareness leads to empathy and compassion. This is why I love their fiction. I've said before and really feel it is true: non-fiction can make us aware of the problems in our world, but fiction makes us really CARE about the problems in our world.   It is not so coincidental that each of these accomplished writers has made time in their busy lives to volunteer at soup kitchens. Helen interviewed clients where she worked and put together a book called Dinner at Six: Voice from the Soup Kitchen and when you order copies all the sale proceeds are contributed to organizations that help the homeless. Peter has dedicated countless hours over the past thirty years to another labor of love: publishing a much admired annual literary journal:  The Long Story, check out the TLS link:http://web.me.com/rpburnham/Longstory/Longstory.html

Now I'd like to ask that you check out our page at a site that sells ebooks in various formats. Pete surfed that wave of the future that threatened to drown the rest of us and converted all our wessex books to three different kinds of ebooks. They can be found at:
https://secure.digitalcontentcenter.com/shop/627321/shop

and here is the best part: unlike print copies we don't have to pay for more and more digital copies so we can afford to donate most of the sale proceeds from those downloads ($5/per book) to worthy causes after we've covered our web rent and the paypal commission. When you purchase ebook versions of Night Voices by Helen Hudson, Envious Shadows, The Many Change and Pass, On A Darkling Plain and/or Robin Redbreast in a Cage you will be buying a good book and contributing to soup kitchens and shelters that  aid the homeless. Other causes which we will contribute to when you purchase other titles by other authors (which I'll write about another day) include an organization that specifically helps Homeless Veterans and some animal rescue organizations.

Thanks for stopping by, let me know about other links I should be including in these posts.

Welcome Mary

Welcome to our first member and a wonderful friend, Mary Saracino, author of some fine books. check out her blog at:  marysaracino.blogspot.com  and enjoy some really fine poetry. Come back and chat! Sandy

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Wessex Authors

Please check back from time to time as each week or every few days I will post a blog about one of our authors, all interesting people, talented writers and maybe I'll even quote a few lines of their poetry or prose. And I might copy and paste some reviews hereon. thanks for stopping by.

Recognition

Peter Burnham and I started the Wessex Collective back in 2005 with a mission. That mission was to publish work that perhaps could be called "socially responsible" insofar as we wanted to publish work that inspired and encouraged empathy for individuals who were not always recognized and respected in mainstream society, to draw attention to social problems and create the inspiration in readers to want to make our world a better place.  We've since been honored to publish wonderful books by very talented and distinquished authors and the mission has expanded to include gaining recognition for authors who deserve it because they have applied their considerable language skills to convey important messages. Some of these authors were once "critically acclaimed" as the saying goes in such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker magazine and even Time magazine. That was a while back. Now I'm not finding readers who have heard the names Helen Hudson or Jack Wheatcroft for example but I did recently get a thank you from a reader who was able to find Helen's first novel at a branch library and thanked me for introducing her to such a fine writer. We published Helen's last novel, Night Voices and you can purchase a real copy by emailing me or you can download it as an ebook
at:   https://secure.digitalcontentcenter.com/shop/627321/products
but I ALSO recommend ALL of Helen's books published years ago by Putnam or Dutton and now only available on used book sites. Check them out:  Tell The Time to None, Criminal Trespass, Temporary Residence, Farnsbee South, The Listener, Meyer, Meyer.  She deserved every word of praise she got thirty, forty years ago and she deserves continued recognition of her fine opus.

Jack's list of published poetry, fiction and dramas is too long for this post. Google him under John Wheatcroft  and watch the video we made of an interview with Jack and his lovely wife Kathryn at their home in PA:  http://vimeo.com/25802199

In their eighties, these authors continue to write beautifully crafted and deeply meaningful work.  And, if you are interested,  find out more about the rest of us at: www.thewessexcollective.com We are a "one for all and all for one" group of people trying to preserve and distribute literature we cherish. And if you have the time and inclination, post a comment here and let us know what you think.

Jack Wheatcroft

Meet one of our Wessex Collective authors, Jack Wheatcroft, poet, novelist, dramatist, professor emeritus.