Readers Choice: Top Ten

viernes, 17 de febrero de 2012

Time Never Stops: Die Zeit Hält Nicht An – #Rap #Book #Music #Author #Writer #Selfpublish




[caption id="attachment_7763" align="alignleft" width="218" caption="Thomas Jerome Baker, Jr. (the Rap Artist "J-Zwok")"][/caption]

How's Your German?

Don't worry, mine isn't very good either. It's been 16 years since I last spoke German. I can still read, still write, still understand, but to speak German takes conscious thought now.

I'm out of practice...

But I'm discovering something about language in general. With music, it doesn't matter. If the music is good, and the lyrics memorable, and an image is evoked in your mind as you listen, then the words will take on meaning for you.

Time Never Stops / Die Zeit Hält Nicht An is this kind of song: you feel it, the emotion, the dreams, the hopes, the disappointments, the triumph, the love, all this becomes yours as you listen, again and again...

I like it so much I built my Book Trailer around it, for my first self-published book, Celestial Games: The First Pot of Gold around it.

The style is what I'm going to call "smooth rap", a jazzy kind of rap that isn't about angry lyrics, violence, guns or drugs.

What is it?

It's the kind of stuff you would want your kids to listen to, because it's inspiring.

The message is a truism: Time Never Stops (Die Zeit Hält Nicht An). So there are things you must do now, now, or time will pass you by, leaving you with a memory of things you never did, because you thought you had time...but didn't...

It's about growing up, about coming of age, about hopes, about disappointment, about dreams, about first love, first disappointment, about being in the wrong place in the wrong time, about talking, about going beyond your personal limitations, about the passage of time...

It's a song about life, about having enough faith in yourself to chase an impossible dream...

It's a song about friendship, about brotherhood, about sisterhood, about family.

It's about fathers and sons, about mothers and daughters...

It's about relationships, with oneself, and with others.

It's special, and maybe, just maybe, you will get a different look at what rap music has the potential to be...

Why?

It's about redemptive love, and it sticks with you, because it's about being good, because in a larger sense, you and me, the listener, the reader of the music, the hearer of the book, well, we ARE good...

It's the kind of song you would really like your children to listen to, and better yet, it's the kind of song you would like your son or your daughter to sing...

By the way, my son IS singing this song...

I'm really proud of him...

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwBYtgDoTH0&w=640&h=480]

miércoles, 15 de febrero de 2012

Celestial Games: The First Pot of Gold (#Song: Time Never Stops) #Musical #Book #Trailer


YouTube Book Trailer:


ON SALE NOW!




This book trailer, music slideshow is unique: it breaks all the rules, recreating the genre of book trailers.

Celestial Games: The First Pot of Gold is a personal story. It's true fiction, contradicting itself every step of the way. A father and son weave their stories of family, of fortune and misfortune, of loss, of destruction, of death and rebirth of a planet and of mankind, recreating the creation myth in a mystical prologue to the coming novel, Celestial Games: The Philosophers Stone.

** The Storyteller tells the tale of Aquarians and Leprechauns, of the first pot of gold, of football and of goals, of birth and of rebirth.

Once upon a time, on a cloud far, far away, overlooking the Earth (I think it was Cloud Number Nine if memory serves me well) there lived incredible beings.

They were celestial beings, who, in accordance with their name and purpose, which we shall discuss in detail later, overlooked the joy and happiness of the inhabitants of the Earth.

As long as these celestial beings were there, happiness and joy reigned upon the Earth...

About the Author

Thomas Baker is a storyteller by night and a teacher of English by day. He has lived in Chile since 2001 and is determined to stay in this strange land at the very end of the Earth that has stolen his heart.

He has married himself, quite happily, to the land and to the people, and in particular, to his lovely Gabriela, to whom he dedicates all his stories...

**Contact the author at:







***
Song: Die Zeit Hält Nicht An / Time Never Stops

aus dem MP4Life Vol3 Mixtape2010
(MPR)

Singers / Artists: Phenom, Erika, J-Zwok & Chriz

Die Zeit hält niemals an (MPR)Phenom,Erika,J-Zwok&Chriz


[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwBYtgDoTH0&w=640&h=480]

Die Zeit hält niemals an

(MPR)

Phenom,Erika,J-Zwok & Chriz

aus dem MP4Life Vol3 Mixtape2010

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saTAfGAVIO8&w=640&h=480]

sábado, 11 de febrero de 2012

#Indie #Author Interview: Celestial Games: The First Gold by T. Jerome Baker



1) Who are you? What do you do?

Thomas: I'm Gabriela's husband, first and foremost. Her love is a defining issue in my life, because that is where I draw the inspiration for my writing from.

I am a reader. I've always enjoyed reading. I was taught to read by my mother and brother when I was four years old. It is one thing that has been the one constant in my life, reading. Whether reading for pleasure or reading for information, I enjoy the act of reading.

I am also a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a country that has a desperate need to attain a higher level of national proficiency in the globalized world in which we use English as a lingua franca. Those two roles, husband and EFL teacher, define my life.

2) What is your writing process? Do you follow a regular routine?

Thomas: Great question. My writing starts in my head, as I visually begin to "see" a story develop and take form, before I begin to write. However, I begin to write before the story has reached full clarity, because it is in the writing itself that I will know where the story should go, based on what emerges as I write.

I write continuously, just getting the initial story written. I go like that until I finish, just writing, until I'm finished. That's when I go back and read the story, again trying to see if the story is the one I wanted to tell. When I'm happy with the story, I finally turn my attention to editing.

3) What are the most important elements of good writing? According to you, what tools are must-haves for writers?

Thomas: When I'm being a good writer, I'm a Storyteller, an African "griot", someone who has verbal knowledge of a story that needs to be passed on to another generation. Thus, my writing resembles a spoken story, which makes it easier for me to write and a reader to follow. In essence, it is essential to have a story that needs to be told, and you are passionate about telling that story as best you can.

A must-have for a writer is support, as writing is a lonely, time-consuming process. In my case, I have the love and support of my wife, Gaby, who understands me and lets me transform her support into perseverance, to stick with what I'm doing.

4) What motivates you to write?

Thomas: Fame, fortune and glory are secondary. Primary is that I offer someone a story which helps them to enjoy a moment of tranquility and peace, caught up in a story that I've written so well, that it seems like the story was written only for that individual reader.


5) Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?

Thomas: When I start writing too soon, before enough of the story has materialized in my inner vision, I "get stuck". So I try to "see" the story, revisualise it, and that usually works for me. If I'm not sure about it, I just stop writing and listen to some music, usually something by Celine Dion, for a while. As I said before, for me, the challenge is getting started. Once I'm writing, I usually get in a flow from that point on.

6) Do you have any advice for other writers?

Thomas: Write about what you know and like, your own experience of life. And then let people read your work. Many people. Experts and friends, strangers and co-workers. Accept all feedback you get, try to learn and grow from it. Always be trying to write the perfect story, the perfect book, the perfect novel. You'll never achieve that goal, but you will have lots of improvement that way.

7) What is the message in your book? What are your readers’ reactions to it?

Thomas: Celestial Games is really, at its core, the story of an old man and his son, in a time and age when everything was possible. For this, the rebirth of life on Earth was necessary, to metaphorically represent that life sometimes gives you second chances, both the deserving and the undeserving.

Sometimes your decisions are wise ones, and people prosper, and sometimes we fail to thrive and prosper due to bad decisions. It's never the failure that's important, but the fact that you get up and continue to try, again and again.

That's the message: never give up - keep trying. If you do that, the ultimate victory will always be yours.

8) Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?

Thomas: I had fun doing some research into "creation myths". Every society on Earth tries to explain where we came from, how life on Earth began. Nowadays, our beliefs are scientifically grounded on the one hand, yet peacefully co-exists with the religious vision we are given in our various religions on Earth.

In other words, we hold incompatible, contradicting explanations for life on Earth in our minds simultaneously. This allows me to offer a mystical, mythological world view as a triangular piece to these contradictory concepts. The reader then is given a question to consider: why not? In the end, it becomes more of a, "How do we know, what we know?" kind of philosophical encounter.

9) What are your current / future projects?

Thomas: From here, Celestial Games will become a novel, using this first story as a Genesis-like prologue. With me, past is prologue, and Celestial Games: The Philosopher's Stone will require the reader to have knowledge of what happened in Celestial Games: The First Gold if they are to make a connection between lost gold and the alchemy that the Philosopher's Stone will be dealing with.

Broadly speaking, I hope to be finished in another three months. I confess the novel is not yet clear enough for me to make much progress, but a lot of charachters are appearing to me almost daily. The challenge will be bringing work and writing into harmony, as this is a rather complicated story, and I want to tell it well.

10) What book(s) / author(s) have influenced your life and writing?

Thomas: Dickens and Shakespeare are the writers I admire. Dickens had a story to tell, a wrong to right, something dark to bring to the light. I admire the way he treated the social topics of his time.

Shakespeare found ways to say things that had never been said. He was well-read, and always did his research, so much so, that even today we still debate if he was one man, a different man, or many men.

That's good writing. It keeps me from always taking on the same genre, because diversity makes you unpredictable in any genre. Unpredictability means that you have a possibility of telling a common story in an uncommon way, and that is enjoyable for both reader and writer.

Interviewer: Thank you, Thomas.

Thomas: You're welcome.

Interviewer: Where can readers get your book, Celestial Games: The First Gold?

You can get it at www.createspace.com. On February 16 it will be available at Amazon.

**End of Interview

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