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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Want To Dance? Guest Post & Giveaway with Author, Eric Bronson - King of Rags




Title: King of Rags
Author Name: Eric Bronson



Author Bio: Eric Bronson teaches philosophy in the Humanities Department at York University in Toronto. He is the editor of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), Poker and Philosophy (Open Court, 2006), Baseball and Philosophy (Open Court, 2004), and co-editor of The Hobbit and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), and The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy (Open Court, 2003). In 2007 he served as the "Soul Trainer" for the CBC radio morning show, "Sounds Like Canada." His current project is a book called The Dice Shooters, based loosely on his experiences dealing craps in Las Vegas.


Author Links - The link for any or all of the following...


Guest Post


When I was a kid, the first ballet I ever saw was Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker." It was too long, too serious, too dark, and much too much dancing. I wanted to go home.
When I finally did go home, I saw things. Dancing things. Maybe not toy soldiers or sugar plum fairies, but boring, mundane things in my room definitely appeared to me to be dancing.

It seems to me that's a good a reason as any to give children an education in music. I'm not the first person to write that, obviously. Over two thousand years ago, Socrates also advocated teaching young Greeks music early on in their education. In Plato's Republic, Socrates says that "musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful..."

Music can make graceful our bodies and our souls. One hundred years ago, the king of all ragtime composers, Scott Joplin wrote an opera about an African American child who saves her village from ignorance and superstition. It's a beautiful ragtime opera for children and adults. The child, Treemonisha, learns to

"Never treat your neighbors wrong,
By causing them to grieve,
Help the weak if you are strong,
And never again deceive."

And, in the end, she teaches us that

"Ignorance is criminal
In this enlightened day.
So let us all get busy,
When once we have found the way."

There are lots more important lessons in Joplin's ragtime opera. Perhaps the most important lesson for black history month is that if white adults had the opportunity to listen to more black musicians one hundred years ago, black children might have a bigger voice today.

Tchaikovsky's opera is played every Christmas. Joplin's opera was never published. And that's too bad because children can learn an awful lot when they listen to diverse voices.

We all can.






Book Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Neverland Publishing
Release Date: May, 2013
Buy Link(s): Amazon

Book Description:

King of Rags follows the life of Scott Joplin and his fellow ragtime musicians as they frantically transform the seedy and segregated underbelly of comedians, conmen and prostitutes who called America’s most vibrant cities home. Inspired by Booker T. Washington and the Dahomeyan defeat in West Africa, Joplin was ignored by the masses for writing the music of Civil Rights fifty years before America was ready to listen.

Excerpt One:

Whenever he had a difficult decision to make, Scott set himself up on the small hill with high grass and wildflowers. In the starlight he was especially careful not to disturb the patient, purple flowers. A traveling white schoolteacher once read to his class the story of the heliotrope from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses. Derided by the world and scorned by her lover the Sun God, a poor nymph keeps her eyes ever fixed to the sun. Streaked with purple, she is covered in leaves and flowers, roots that claw their way around her helplessness, forever binding her to the earth.

“‘An excess of passion begets an excess of grief,’” the schoolteacher quoted. “Don’t reach so high. You’ll be much happier if you lower your sights.”

But there was something about the nymph’s undying faith that touched him inside. She refused to be stuck here in this world, and that refusal brought hope along with the pain. Scott thought he understood the nymph’s eternal conflict. His music wouldn’t right the wrong, but it might help ease the loss. Long after the sun abandoned her, Scott sat among the heliotrope and played for her his coronet.

The hill had a further advantage: it overlooked the new train station. He was there one December day, ten years earlier, when the first Texas & Pacific railway pulled in from Dallas, on its way to Fulton, Arkansas. Since then his father had taught him to play the violin, banjo and coronet, but none of them could take him beyond his colorless world. Maybe the trains couldn’t either, but the tracks held that promise, going outwards, ever away. His mother believed the coronet was
the Devil’s instrument. Scott disagreed. Any instrument that brought relief to others was useful. It shouldn’t much matter who was dancing at the other end.

Under the wavering light of a half-moon, Scott played with all the sounds of the night: the high-pitched melody of cicada bugs over the running bass line of lumber cars and freight trains, garbage crates and short hauls sounding their syncopated iron rhythms: boom-chugga boom-boom: boomchugga boom-boom. The music of the night trains was the sound of waiting—waiting and waning and wasting away. The greatest secrets in life, Scott knew, lay not in the music or the

people who played it, but in the short, silent spaces that sometimes fell unexpectedly off the beat. The Stop Man taught him that without hardly even saying a word.











Saturday, February 8, 2014

#Romance Is In The Air Blog Hop & Giveaway! (February 8 - 14)



A BIG Thank You To Our Hosts:


Romance is in the Air Giveaway Hop

Featuring Young Adult & Clean Adult Romance

February 8th to 14th


Cohosted by Rachael Anderson



I am so pleased to welcome you to my corner of the cyberworld!

 Today I will be giving you all a chance to win

Immortyl Kisses: Rise of the Phoenix by BK Walker

in your choice of format

 (.Mobi or PDF)


I'm also going to Kindle Gift a copy of

Michelle Cornwell-Jordan's first novella in her

Night School Vampire Hunter Trilogy!

Open Internationally!


To Enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter below :)

 then be sure to visit the other blogs

participating by clicking the links in the linky at the bottom.



Good Luck & Happy Hopping!






Fifteen year old Dasheen Bellamy’s world is turned upside down, when she is accused of killing her father and godmother. Dasheen cannot remember the events of the night her world is destroyed, but she feels inside that she is innocent; due to lack of evidence against her and with no other family; Dasheen and her younger brother Jordan, are sent to the elusive and mysterious Ame’ Academy ; a residential school where all is not what it appears. There all goes well, until Jordan, begins to become distant and behave strangely as if he is afraid of something or someone. Jordan is transferred to Ame’ Academy’s Night School track, which is usually only open to special cases. In order to discover what is happening with her brother, Dasheen is finally allowed to also transfer, attending classes in the evening while the rest of the world sleeps. Soon Dasheen’s world changes again as she discovers that things out of fairytales and horror stories exist, that she has ancient powers and is the major player in a mystical prophecy; and then she falls in love with a boy, whose mission is to see that she is destroyed before her destiny is fulfilled…




It all begins at the Halloween Dance... 

Always the black sheep, not caring what anyone thinks, and not a very good dancer, Raine is forced to attend the high school dance with her best friend, Shania. The last thing she expected was to meet Tristan, the gorgeous new kid in school, or experience her first kiss. Envious she wasn’t the one that caught Tristan’s eye, Shania watches Raine leave to spend more time with him, but both girls have no idea that there is much more to him than beautiful green eyes and electrifying kisses. 

The heat ony begins with the kiss, but flames soon ignite when Tristan’s old nemesis, Logan, shows up. Not only must Tristan keep him from stealing his girl, but he must ensure that their secrets remain buried. When they rescue Raine from a rogue vampire, both boys must put their differences aside to protect her from the evil that hunts her. None of them expected she would have a secret of her own, including Raine. 

“You are a warrior, you just don’t know it yet.” 

Born into a destiny she knew nothing about, Raine soon learns that life is much more than it seems. She is a Shijin Warrior and it is up to her to save immortal kind from the very thing that is trying to end their existence. Hearts desires may get in the way, but the Immortyl Kiss may be just what can save them all.


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