An International PDF Literary Quarterly

All Blog Posts (44)

Book Trailers, Anyone?

Degrees of Freedom book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbBE1BWxHXs Have any Cantarabooks authors created book trailers? If so, please let me know as I'd really like to check out more of what's out there. I just created one for my novella Degrees of Freedom and posted it at the above link on YouTube. I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions, thanks! -Lori Continue

Added by Lori Gordon on September 30, 2009 at 12:36pm — No Comments

Doomed Couples

Reposted from fredbubbers.com In 1960, Philip Roth’s Goodbye, Columbus won the National Book Award. The title story of the collection is a novella that tells of the doomed romance between Neil Klugman, a recent class college graduate who works in a library and lives in a working class neighborhood in Newark, and Brenda Patimkin, a Radcliff student from an affluent family. The differences in class, family pressures and the two young lov… Continue

Added by Fred Bubbers on September 26, 2009 at 9:23am — No Comments

Art in a Museum: How Do YOU See It (Better Yet, How Do You WRITE About It?)

Re-post from Art & Degrees of Freedom blog: Friday morning, while navigating a stream of rush-hour traffic, a bus whizzed by. Usually rattled by anything five times the size of my car, I grumbled and looked up. But what I saw on that big ’ole bus made my day! Why? Splashed on the side was a huge banner (above) advertising the Cleveland Museum of Art’s new East Wing (fabulous, by the way — all glass, glossy floors, and a bow to th… Continue

Added by Lori Gordon on September 13, 2009 at 1:39pm — No Comments

Sense Memory and a Boy Scout Camp

Reposted from fredbubbers.com I have always been envious of writers who are able to effectively render the natural world. I grew up in the city so in some sense, nature is a foreign land to me. It is, however, a foreign land in which I have travelled. As a boy, I was a member of Boy Scout Troop 17 in Elmhurst, Queens. There were camping trips every month throughout the year, two weeks of su… Continue

Added by Fred Bubbers on September 12, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

displacement

As with most women I meet these days, there is always a thread of tragedy, a ribbon of calamity, and a few strings artistic inclination. All sealed up of course in a satin blanket of incredible sex appeal think that some where in a cosmic corner of decisions, these elements combined make the irresistible woman. More often than not, you will find these exact elements in a girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark past. This past they will hint at occasionally in a car and then look far off over… Continue

Added by William Terry on August 29, 2009 at 1:47pm — No Comments

Poem for the Rooftops of Iran

From a video on YouTube: Friday, the 19th of June 2009 Tomorrow, Saturday, is a day of destiny Tonight, the cries of Allah-o Akbar are heard louder and louder than the nights before. Where is this place? Where is this place where every door is closed? Where is this place where people are simply calling God? Where is this place where the sound of Allah-o Akbar gets louder and louder? I wait every night to see if the sounds will get louder and whether the number increases. It shakes me. I… Continue

Added by Fred Bubbers on June 21, 2009 at 12:21pm — No Comments

BAGHDAD KATE excerpt

I'd appreciate any comments from other writers on this excerpt. Thanks. Continue

Added by Richard Hilary Weber on April 25, 2009 at 6:57am — No Comments

HI, everyone. I'm a newbie. Just joined, and haven't yet read everyone's stories. (I wrote "Singular…

HI, everyone. I'm a newbie. Just joined, and haven't yet read everyone's stories. (I wrote "Singular") So far, I've published eight stories and two novellas. But what I am REALLY trying to do is get one of my five screenplays produced. I've been trying for years, with absoutely no luck. I suppose the reason is that no one want to sink millions of dollars into the writings of an unknown. Be that as it may, I'm happy to be here at Cantaraville. Seems like a nice place. John Green (aka Johnny Do… Continue

Added by John Mark Green, Jr. on April 23, 2009 at 6:49pm — No Comments

When a Soldier Makes it Home

Reposted from fredbubbers.com: One afternoon when I was eight or nine, I was playing stickball in the street with some neighborhood kids and a fight broke out. Hearing the commotion, an old man who had been sitting on his front porch watching us play came down into the street to break up the fight. “Stop fighting,” he yelled. Then, more quietly, he admonished us, “You shouldn’t be fighting here at home while our boys are fighting and dying in Vietnam… Continue

Added by Fred Bubbers on March 7, 2009 at 11:00pm — No Comments

Idea #5

Intro: I cannot help but laugh out loud every time I think about this particular idea. I'll be the first to admit that it isn't brilliant, that it won't shake the foundations of modern literature and that many people will find it moderately offensive. The good news is that this is exactly what I've always thought good satire should be; but since I'm not a very good satirist - I'm far too literal for that - this idea hasn't gone much beyond a few notes and paragraphs of introduction. At first I… Continue

Added by John Griffin on February 26, 2009 at 11:24am — No Comments

RE: Erase the Books

This is my response to Adnan's blog post, originally meant as a comment: In the end, I think information transferal is all abstract. Whether you visually "upload" something from a printed page or a computer screen, or receive a verbal "transmission" through your ears, all information is eventually rendered invisible and immaterial. I do not see how there is a qualitative difference between oral, printed, and electronic writing, because in the end what form the delivery takes is inconsequential:… Continue

Added by Maxwell James on February 23, 2009 at 9:36am — 1 Comment

Literature in an Age of Cyborg Technology

In response to Adnan's discussion of literature evolving from the oral to the electronic, we should also focus on the strange new world of cyborg technology: We now have technology that lets fighter pilots think and their planes veer to the paths of thoughts. Soon, we will have more and more computer chips inplanted, for saving eyesight, eliminating Alzheimer's, and enhancing memory ... and Will this not lead to implantation of texts and images ... a whole library of information that can be b… Continue

Added by Chris Bays on February 21, 2009 at 1:30pm — 2 Comments

Erase the Books

Yesterday we had test lectures by candidates for professorship at my department. One of the contenders talked about the materiality of books, how printing something has a different social impact that transmitting a story orally, or on the net. It is interesting how we went from mainly oral cultures, to print worship, and now are moving to electronic, world wide delivery of books. What is more interesting is how does this affect the phenomenon of protest against books as well as in books. When st… Continue

Added by Adnan on February 19, 2009 at 3:23am — 2 Comments

An Old Building and a New Paradigm

On an unseasonably warm afternoon in early December of 1982, I was pounding the pavement in Manhattan, trying to find my first job after graduating from college the previous spring. I had a fresh haircut, my shirt collar itched me, and I was baking inside my new moderately-priced Hagar suit of unknown fiber, and my even more mode… Continue

Added by Fred Bubbers on January 24, 2009 at 11:00pm — 1 Comment

Two Presses

Somewhere on the internet I’ve mentioned that Cantarabooks-Cantaraville was inspired by Hogarth Press, founded in 1917 by the writers Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Like authors before them—and certainly authors after—they began their small press as a way to ensure that their own works, and the works of their friends, would always find publication. As far as Hogarth Press’s scale of operation, the Woolfs’ ambitions were modest: a tabletop handpress, tools, lead type and a how-to pamphlet on… Continue

Added by Cantaraville on January 1, 2009 at 12:00am — No Comments

Idea #4

Intro: I've always wanted to be a criminal mastermind. The overly-intelligent, engaging, charismatic kind, capable of the sort of high-end jobs you see in classic heist films like Heat, The Usual Suspects, Oceans 11 and 13, and The Great Muppet Caper; the kind you only hear whispers about in the news because if we knew how often they were successful there would be anarchy in the streets with everyone thinking they could be a criminal mastermind... So I thought to myself, what hasn't been done?… Continue

Added by John Griffin on December 19, 2008 at 11:17pm — 2 Comments

A Piece of the Screenwriting Pie

Imagine spec scripts sales divided into a pie chart of sale probability and potential. The biggest slice of the pie would go to Hot New Writers With a Unique Concept, Great Rep and Attachments. I’ll translate to, say, 75%. The next slice is much smaller: Promising New Writers With a Unique Concept, Good Rep, No Attachments but Fans of the Work. Let’s call this 15%. Then, much, much smaller slices would be evenly divided among Risky/Provocative Passion Projects With Influential Fans and Freaki… Continue

Added by Cantara Christopher on December 12, 2008 at 2:00pm — No Comments

How to Save Literature

Temporary Roots George Whitman, that irascible old legend, held the flyer and read it carefully while I waited at the counter of Shakespeare and Company. “So let me get this straight. You’re not charging any money for people to join your writers group?” he said finally. No, I answered. “Okay,” he said, “go ahead and post it for free.” And that was how PariSalon4665 The International Writers Support Group began—with a notice soliciting for members on the bulletin board of the most famous Ameri… Continue

Added by Cantaraville on December 1, 2008 at 12:00am — No Comments

Excellant overview

Very strong emphasis on the details that provided an excellent overview - also - connecting the personal histories with the political and cultural events going on was extremely important - and a very stroing sense of action - always providing the reader with moments and events that kept us involved in the flow of things - Continue

Added by Armand A. Ruhlman on November 28, 2008 at 10:34pm — No Comments