writer, photographer, web person from Washington, DC.
Flying, especially on USAIR, is hellish. Sometimes, however, you get lucky and end up in seat 5F when your flight returns to DCA via the winding western route along the Potomac. It’s like a roller-coaster ride as you turn and bank along the river in the approach to the airport. The plane made a banking right turn, allowing me to capture this shot of Rosslyn from above. I shot this with an iPhone 4 on the HDR setting, then used the “punch” preset in Adobe Lightroom to make it more contrasty.
New Smyrna Beach, FL. It’s a beautiful wide beach, with sand hard enough that you can ride a bike on.
It’s hard to imagine but booze was once outlawed in DC. The Prohibition era is the subject of a fascinating new book by local author Garret Peck.
He’s an excellent speaker with an encyclopedic knowledge of the city. I wrote an article for the Pink Line Project about his book talk, where he shared what life was like when Washington was “dry.”
Recently, I had the opportunity to be a judge for the American University VISIONS Short Screenplay Competition.
As an AU grad myself, I was glad to help out. VISIONS is an annual competition that seeks the best in documentary, fiction, digital/new media production, screenwriting and photography from AU students and recent alumni. The theme for this year was, “Media That Matters.”
Joining me in the judging the short screenplay portion of VISIONS were Jon Gann (DC Shorts) and Sheri Ratick Stroud (Women in Film and Video). We read more than 30 scripts, ranging in length from ten to 40 pages. Every script was reviewed by all three of us. We judged the scripts on the following criteria:
We selected Liberty Road by Jason Fraley as the winner. Set at a crab shack on the Eastern Shore, it’s a timely story about people on the margins of life. With its depiction of the economic struggles of ordinary folks, it fit in well with the “media that matters” theme. I liked the strong characterization in the script – these were real people – as well as the dialogue, which was punchy and original.
I was glad to give back to my alma mater, as well as help out the “AU mafia” of filmmakers, several of whom have been finalists in DC Shorts. It makes this International Relations major happy to see AU students doing something fun and creative.
The Great Recession has changed the lives of millions. Jobs have been lost, people have been kicked out of their homes, retirement nest eggs have disappeared. Worse than the economic damage, however, has been the loss of hope in the future. Optimism has been replaced by worry and fear.
Which is what my short story, Cheating at Golf, is all about. Published in Story Bleed Magazine, an online literary journal, this is a dark tale set in sunny Florida. In it, an escape to a golf course brings no relief to a man’s troubles.
The Public Relations Society of America defines public relations thusly:
“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”
Which is just an awful definition, reeking of the stale conference room and whiteboards crowded with b-school jargon. Merriam-Webster has a slightly better explanation:
the business of inducing the public to have understanding for and goodwill toward a person, firm, or institution
PR is about getting the word out about your product, cause or service. I’d consider myself a semi-professional PR practitioner, busy trying to “induce” the public to do something increasingly unknown in 21st century America: read a book. And not just any book. My book, fiction, of all things, by an unknown author.
So, I’m always interested in new ways of “inducing” (why not just say “persuading”?) the public. I attended a session on movie marketing put on by the DC Film Salon. A pair of PR stars gave a presentation on how they got the word out about indie films, including some creative tactics like having screenings for “tastemakers.”
But the room was filled with cash-poor independent filmmakers. How could they afford these PR services? And, moreover, would this be a good use of their limited funds? I asked if there was any way to connect the parties and screenings to the most important metric of all – ticket sales. But there’s no way to accurately measure the impact of PR.
Which is what inspired me to write How Do You Measure PR? It’s on the blog FlackRabbit, published by my friend Margie Newman, who is perhaps the smartest PR person I know. We’ll see what answers her readers come up with.
There’s something really sweet and joyful about people dancing outdoors to old-time swing music. This Dupont Circle dance craze was part of an organized event put on by the Washington DC Lindy Exchange. Also check out this video from the day.
My book Murder in Ocean Hall can now be found in the Kindle online store in Germany. For less than a euro, readers in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg or elsewhere in the country can download this DC mystery.
What did I have to do to publish my work in Germany? Nothing. I had already published my book in the USA with Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon did the rest, creating a new Kindle store for German users.
If a few years ago you had told me that I would write a mystery, publish it electronically, and that people would actually read books on e-readers, and that my book would be available in Europe…. That sentence involves so many improbabilities, but all of these things are now true. Makes you really hopeful about what comes next.
Think the Polaroid is dead?
New media doesn’t replace old media; it complements it. While millions of people are snapping photos with iPhones, a select few carry on with the cameras your grandparents once employed.
The results can be seen at The Polaroid Retrospective II show at the Lamont Gallery. Running until the end of April, this is a fascinating exhibit that demonstrates the artistic possibilities of low-fi cameras. The little square photos which line the brick walls of this gallery aren’t perfect, their not crisp, they don’t have the slick sheen of digital photography – and that makes them all the more charming and personal.
Update: check out my article on this great show.
My book, Murder in Ocean Hall, is now available on the Nook. Owners of the Barnes and Noble Nook and the Nook Color can pick up a copy of this novel for just $2.99.
In my book, the world’s most famous ocean explorer is killed at the Smithsonian. It’s up to a cynical DC detective to solve this high-profile case.
Murder in Ocean Hall takes place in a Washington “beyond the monuments”, in the real neighborhoods of the city that most tourists don’t see. Set during the summer before the 2008 presidential election, we follow Detective Thomas across the city as he encounters the powerful and the powerless in his quest to solve this case. He’s grown bitter from decades of investigating bloody mayhem on city streets. Despite the new condos and gentrification, has the city really changed? Or is it doomed to dysfunction?
A reviewer wrote about Murder in Ocean Hall that it:
will take you behind the scenes of places you’ve been and tell you how they function then give you insights into people in power and how they fail to function.
Murder in Ocean Hall is available on the Nook thanks to Barnes and Noble’s PubIt, an online service that allows authors to easily publish e-books.
Powerful tools like PubIt, Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace allow independent authors like myself to connect with readers worldwide. They’ve enabled me to publish Murder in Ocean Hall in print, Kindle and Nook editions.