Month: October 2016

Categories
Rambling Uncategorized Writers Site

#why women don’t report the reality of sexual harassment

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Photo from pexels.com

 

This tweeted hashtag has been making the rounds on Twitter.

‪#WhyWomenDontReport‪

It is an angry sound that should be taken seriously. Men and woman are tired of the fear, humiliation, and loss of self, physical and mental trauma that occurs from sexual harassment.

The reality of sexual harassment is that nearly every woman has been subjected to some sort of harassment at work.

Sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

What is sexually harassment? It is:

  • Behaviors like unwelcome sexual advances
  • Requests for sexual favors
  • Direct or indirect threats or bribes for sexual activity
  • Sexual innuendos and comments
  • Sexually suggestive jokes
  • Unwelcome touching or brushing against a person
  • Pervasive displays of materials with sexually illicit or graphic content
  • An attempted or completed sexual assault

A reaction to being sexual harassed will be to laugh it off, pretend it wasn’t happening, ignore it and then laugh it off again and again, hoping it will stop, but it won’t. It is an act of violence, of dominance over another person, it will never go away. The fear level increases. The harassment increases and no one is listening when you ask them to stop. Then, you are too afraid to say anything. Petrified to be at work.  When you finally report the harassment.. you were surprised to find out, they aren’t listening to you,  all because your job is lower  on the ladder than the one doing the harassing….So nothing will change..

Employers hire people to protect their company from its employees. You know… that department its called HR. Your company probably had sexual harassment meetings, telling everyone what not to do. Most people will become nervous and laugh in these meetings. They make jokes about it. It’s not funny, stop laughing.

I in 3 women are sexually harassed at work. ~The Huffington post

Why is it so hard to get someone to believe?

Because people don’t know who to believe, people lie. They lie to say it happened, they lie to say it didn’t, they lie for the attention, they lie to protect the company, and they lie to protect themselves. They lie for money, power, control.

from Twitter
Twitter hashtag

So when the truth is told. It takes a lot of courage to keep talking. To keep pointing out what happened. You need to fight to get someone to believe you. You need to stand up to bullies. Those bullies are your employers your co-workers, even your family who will tell you not to make waves.

“…lifetime risk of having a PTSD diagnosis was significantly higher among sexual harassment victims than among non- victims.”~ The National Center for PTSD

Someone on Twitter asked, why do woman remain silent?
When you stand up and say no, someone will be there to pull the rug out and in the end, you will lose your job. This is why a woman makes a choice to remain silent… to keep their jobs, their careers. And this happens over and over. Lawyers will push the victims so they don’t stand up in court. Fear takes over and the victim will back down or never come forward.

So when someone lies, it harms the real victims. And there are a lot of them.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRyruagRub0[/embedyt]

I had to ask myself the question that had been flittering around the net…. Do I believe in what is being said about Trump?  No.. I need proof.

Do I believe when he says he loves’ beautiful’ woman? Yes, He has said that many times. But anything else, …I need more proof. it seem’s too easy to pull all this out now, just before an election.

How about Hillary Clinton…?  Yes. there is proof of her transgressions. and her husbands…Lots of it.

So are you still wondering….. #WhyWomenDontReport‪

Why don’t you ask Monica Lewinsky.

Categories
Book Review Leona Pence Writers Site

Book review Hemphill Towers by Leona Pence

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn2yZG-haQs[/embedyt] Kevin Hobson created this video promoting ‘Hemphill Towers’. You can find him on his Youtube channel. or you can send him an email  kevnessky@gmail.com

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Hemphill Towers shows us how a glass of wine flows through its pages with romantic love, family, and scammers with self-indulgent intentions.

Leona Pence is an author the author of ‘Hemphill Towers’, an intriguing romance novel. Hemphill Towers is filled with beautiful career oriented women and handsome, entrepreneur men, who will fight to keep those women safe. A sly villain, one who drags along a past of blackmail and lies, with a morally reprehensible control over anyone who comes to too close, and another who uses a business that is not his, which pulls in the Russian mafia and endangers everyone.

This novel starts running, right from the prologue. We follow along, reading how power and money in the hands of a deceitful man can destroy lives. At the same time, we watch reputable men use their power with an opposite strength. That strength turns them into kittens when they meet the heroines of this novel.

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Thirty-five chapters with multiple characters that are rich and intelligent. I noticed they don’t jump in the sack when called. They choose what they want to do and what they don’t.   This novel takes us around the world. We see the Russian mafia, vineyards, museums, painters, pretty clothes, food … Mmmm! Food.

Here’s a slice from chapter 8: “Rosetta placed a steaming cup of espresso in front of Birdie along with a plate filled with pastries that she called brioche.” ~Pence, Leona

Leona had me on the edge of my seat. Each chapter moves at a fast pace. I find myself hungry, sad, happy then thrilled. I love the Italian family. I wish I could sit and talk to the artist, and walk around JB’s home and peek into closets. Then relax and read by his pool.

Leona Pence answered a few of my  questions.

  1. Why did you choose the locale: Italy- Chicago- California-Spain?

I needed my Italian character near wineries, both in Italy and the US. A little research helped choose Italy, California, and Spain.

  1. How did you come up with the names in your book?

The three main women were based on me, and two online friends. We chose and described our own love interest. The rest of my characters were twisted names of family and friends.

For example, my brother, Lawrence Harmston, became Judge Lawrence Harmstrong. My bro-in-law, James Otts, became Dr. James Ottsman. I had people vying for me to use their names. It was fun, and they all had a laugh at finding their twisted names.

Thank you for this  Leona.  I bet a number of our readers will use your ideas when naming their characters.

  1. How did you keep your characters straight?

I did not set out to write a novel, just a short spoof for my friends. So, I wrote installments and sent them to a few people. They became hooked on the story, and for me, the words just kept coming. I ended up with fifteen installments going out to about fifty people.

I wrote character descriptions in an email format. I had fifteen emails at my fingertip, so when I needed to check out anything about my characters I would pull up those emails. Keeping them straight wasn’t a problem, but getting everybody’s names in the story wasn’t easy.

  1. What keeps you writing?

I’ve always been a voracious reader but being able to write actually came as a shock. But once I finished Hemphill Towers, I had the itch to write more. Discovering F2K and WVU made such a change in my life. All my friends there along with my large extended family inspire me to keep writing.

  1. Who edited your novel?

I joined the Novel group in WVU where we critiqued each others work one chapter at a time. After that, Mar and I exchanged chapters. Linda helped us also. Then, my publisher at MuseItUp, Lea Schizas, did the final edit.

  1. I noticed that some chapters have more than one scene. Each scene is separated by and asterisk *.   How did you decide to separate the chapters? There are more scenes in the later chapters. What was your idea to making that length, and detail instead of separating them?

Hummm! Good question.

In the novel group, we were limited to 3000 words per chapter for critique. So I combined some short chapters by using * and created scenes. After the group finished, I couldn’t remember how I had divided the chapters, so it took a while to figure it out. I know I started out with a lot more chapters than I ended up with.

  1. Where did you get your ideas for the JBs home? It is beautiful, wooded area fishing pond, an alcove off the kitchen three sides of glass “panoramic view of the grounds”.

I shut my eyes and used my imagination as to what I thought the home of a rich bachelor with a teen daughter might look like.

  1. How do you write; do you use an outline?

I’ve never ben able to use an outline.  Whatever flows through my mind is what I type.

Leona’s  favorite genre to write is Romance or Romantic Suspense; she had written some flash stories and plans to expand them into a novella.

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The author, Leona Pence is a mother of four, a grandmother to twelve and great-grandmother to seven. She started writing later in life, after the death of her husband of forty-four years. Hemphill Towers was written when she was sixty-five.

Leona is a woman that I look up to; she is the spirit that never stops looking forward. Never gives up her dreams and never ever stops living, creating and learning. She is a romantic at heart. After dating her husband for three months, she married him on her nineteen birthday.

Leona has a crippling disease: Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease, a neurological disorder. There is no cure for CMT. It has weakened Leona’s lower arms, hands, lower legs and feet. The disease took her hearing, when she was in her mid-20s. Leona types out her stories on her computer using at first the eraser end of a pencil and now a stylus pen.

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Leona is the author of Hemphill Towers.  you can buy this novel at itunes: http://tinyurl.com/mclslgs

Leona’s stories are also featured  in,  Bump off Your Enemies Anthology: http://goo.gl/T97WNW

And in The Darwin Murders Anthology:  http://amzn.to/2cL5fmu

And in Tasteful Murders: http://amzn.to/2dIJyEk

Leona is a  Blogger and an active member in Writers Village University.

You can connect with Leona Pence on Twitter and Facebook and at her Blog. I listed all her links below:

Leona Pence is also found here:

 

 

 

Categories
James Patterson online class Uncategorized Writers Site

Lesson 19 MARKETING THE PATTERSON WAY James Patterson’s Masterclass.com

James Patterson Masterclass.Com Lesson 19

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“Bizarrely, there is a Harvard case study on me. And, I think one of the things that the professors found interesting ‘IS’ that they can write about me. The way they write about Coca-Cola as a brand. I don’t partially think of myself as a brand but they at least found that angle interesting” ~ James Patterson

This lesson is on marketing and selling your book, your words with words. I am hearing ‘hook’ here. Not the first page, that first sentence ‘Hook’. But the hook that is on the back cover or on the inside flap. Something that entices your buyer, to buy your novel. The tagline.

This is from an article on GalleyCat,  “Now they teach author branding in schools” the Harvard case study on James Patterson as a brand.

“I’d never actually heard a product speak,” he recalls. “It was like listening to a can of Coca-Cola explain how it would like to be marketed.” That initial encounter inspired Deighton to write “Marketing James Patterson,” a case that uses the lens of a take-charge author, the publishing industry, and the business of book clubs to analyze the success of various modes of marketing.

“I see his success as a sublime integration of operations and marketing,” says Deighton, who taught the case to MBAs for the first time last fall in the elective course Consumer Marketing. “Patterson understands that if you want shelf space you need to publish a lot of books; that you need a production system with more than one author; and that you need to mind the brand.” ~ Harvard Business School Professor John Deighton

Brand Yourself

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“A brand is a relationship between a product, or in this case ‘me,’ and the customers- just a relationship. “~ James Patterson

Hmmm, what? When you brand yourself. Not with a hot iron, but as a writer of a certain genre. You want to make a statement, meet expectations with your tag lines.

The Kardashians have branded themselves. So has Oprah. In my opinion, anyone who uses their own name uses it as their brand.

James Patterson’s tells us his reader’s ‘expectations’ are that when you pick up one of his books, the pages will almost turn themselves.

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His novels are written as if he were telling a story, not a lot of colorful descriptions just movement of the character from start to the finish. So, let us imagine, if a reader of Mr. Patterson’s picked up one of his books and found instead, something that sounded like Faulkner, well, they would be disappointed. Similar if that reader wanted to read Faulkner and found a James Patterson novel. That tagline will give us an expectation of what we can expect inside the novel.

Taglines are to get the readers/buyers attention. They pull you into the story before you even crack open the binder or click on your e-reader.

Make your reader interested, then anxious to start reading, Delighted to have bought your novel. Taglines are the prelude to reading. A promise of things to come, possibly along with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, a comfy robe, a reading light, and that feeling that you were welcomed into the novel as you read those first sentences. This is where you fall into the story as you listen to James Patterson talking.

When you brand yourself. You can put that brand on the radio, in print, or on television promoting you and your book

“In terms of print, it’s the same thing. Here’s this space, in the newspaper, or this space or whatever the space is. That, I’m going to notice it and I am going to be motivated by it. It’s kind of that simple. There is an awful lot of stuff that shows up in the newspaper as your flipping gotta be where you notice it…what’s going to get my attention or sort of put it on my wavelength where I’m going, that sounds kind of cool I like mystery or whatever and this sounds like a really good one.”~ James Patterson

Use social Media

To get your readers to buy your novel you need to grab their attention. And you do that with your tag line. That tagline needs to be compelling.

Here are some James Patterson’s taglines you can find the books they belong to on his website HERE.

  1. Cross Kill: Along Came a Spider killer Gary Soneji has been dead for over ten years. Alex Cross watched him die. But today, Cross saw him gun down his partner. Is Soneji alive?
  1. Alex Cross, Run: Detective Alex Cross arrests renowned plastic surgeon Elijah Creem for sleeping with teenage girls. Now, his life ruined, Creem is out of jail, and he’s made sure that no one will recognize him—by giving himself a new face.
  1. Cat & Mouse: A killer named Mr. Smith begins his murder spree in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then starts terrorizing Europe. Bodies are found “gutted.” At the same time Gary Soneji taunts Cross with murders in train stations.
  1. Kiss the Girls: Alex Cross matches wits with Casanova and The Gentlemen Caller. This time it is personal. Naomi Cross, twenty-two-year-old daughter of Cross’s deceased brother Aaron, is reported missing. She is a law student at Duke University. Cross goes to North Carolina, fearing the worst.

Most important about marketing, is the passion, that excitement gets communicated to the buyer. With one or two sentences, those taglines will get a bookstore to stock your book, and reviewers to blog about it, which will get the buyer to pick it up and buy it.

How to make a tagline? Start with a feeling. If you are writing a horror novel, you will want your reader to be frightened. What image do you want to convey. Comedy, make them laugh. Romance, well they want to feel the love. I hope your getting the idea.

Great advertising taglines:

  • JUST DO IT – Nike
  • Help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up…
  • Got Milk California Milk Processor Board,

Taglines should describe the genera of the story you are writing. The purpose of your book. The theme. A tagline should make us feel. A tagline should help readers find your book using keywords

  • In 1979, we discovered in space no one can hear you scream. In 1992, we will discover, on Earth, EVERYONE can hear you scream. ~Alien3
  • Don’t go in the water.~ Jaws

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This video lesson also has an assignment, a PDF Masterclass workbook, and a comments section.

For fun, I found a link for a tagline generator: