|
New Video: Jocelyn Elder & The Cancer Wheel |
|
Monday, 05 March 2007 |
Jocelyn Elder's The Cancer Wheel focuses on the three dimensions of life: the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual. Elder says that the audience for her book are both medical professionals as well as cancer patients themselves.
As both a cancer survivor and a Registered Nurse, she has unique perspectives to add to the book, which deals with prevention, assessment, and treatment of the disease.
Elder has been in the medical industry for over 25 years, in various fields. In this 2-minute video, filmed in Santa Fe, she describes how working in health service at the Zuni Pueblo inspired part of her book.
|
|
|
New Video: Ningay Sing & Conversations With Gaia |
|
Friday, 02 March 2007 |
Ningay Sing believes that she was called upon to write Conversations with Gaia. In this 2-minute video, filmed in Santa Fe, she describes the moment that she heard a voice instructing her to write the book. She considers her book to be the feminine response to Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch.
Sing is passionate about rediscovering the forgotten feminine wisdom of the Earth. She ponders the possibilities of partnering that "deep, old feminine wisdom" with the power of modern technology.
Watch the video to hear Sing’s ideas for how we can all get away from our self-centeredness and become more global-centered instead.
|
|
|
New Video: Richard Harris & the New Mexico Book Association |
|
Thursday, 01 March 2007 |
The New Mexico Book Association is an organization that extends membership to anyone involved with the book industry in that state. Last summer, during our visit to Santa Fe, we spoke with the Association’s president, Richard Harris.
In this 2-minute video, Harris explains how organizations like the NMBA are a boon to self-publishers and small publishers. He uses Sankara Saranama’s book God Without Religion as an example of a successful title that came about because of the Association’s network.
Harris also compares the opportunities for contemporary self-publishers to the limited capabilities of the past. Watch the video to hear his simple rule that small publishers must follow to be as successful as big publishing houses.
|
|
|
New Today: Elizabeth Underwood and Art In Action |
|
Monday, 12 February 2007 |
Artist Elizabeth Underwood is no stranger to AuthorViews. She has contributed three videos to the site: an unsettling interview from the 2005 New Orleans Bookfair and two videos from Austin, Texas, where Underwood lived during her evacuation and where she hosted the AuthorViews film crew on our 2006 summer tour.
Underwood is back home in New Orleans now, living in a trailer and painting the town pink. Literally. Okay, not the entire town, but at least one tree:
"Pink Tree" is part of "Art in Action," a multi-disciplinary art project that strives to reanimate New Orleans through creative outpourings all over the city. The program is sponsored, in part, by a grant from the University of New Orleans anthropology department.
For more pictures of the Pink Tree and other creative projects ranging from stenciling "Croatoan" all over the place to a snake charming ceremony, please visit the Art in Action blog.
|
|
|
AuthorViews Filmmaker George Ingmire & "Think of Me First as a Person" |
|
Friday, 09 February 2007 |
We are very pleased to share with readers news about AuthorViews' video production manager, George Ingmire. A documentary short that George assembled using 16mm film shot by his grandfather, Dwight Core, was one of only 25 films installed in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 2006.
The film, "Think of Me First as a Person," is a loving portrait by a father of his son who has Down's Syndrome. The original footage was shot in the 1960s and 1970s. George recently discovered the footage and restored it, edited it, and improved the soundtrack. The Library of Congress was moved by the way the film captures amateur filmmaking at a time when that was unusual.
In his release announcing the awards, the 13th Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, said, "The selection of a film recognizes its importance to American movie and cultural history, and to history in general. The Registry stands among the finest summations of more than a century of wondrous American cinema."
The National Film Registry tries to select films that represent the many ways cinema impacts our lives. Films must be at least a decade old to be considered, and only 25 movies are added to the Registry each year. Films added to the Registry in 2006 besides George Ingmire's "Think of Me First as a Person" include Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious," Steven Soderbergh's "sex, lies and videotape," "Groundhog Day," and "Fargo."
George Ingmire is a radio and film documentary maker and is AuthorViews' video and production manager. You can find more information about George and his far-flung activities at these sites:
Mi Abuelo Productions
New Orleans Narratives
National Film Registry News Release
Congratulations, George Ingmire, on a rare and much-deserved honor!
STEVE O'KEEFE
President, AuthorViews, Inc.
|
|
|
New Orleans: Remembering Helen Hill |
|
Thursday, 08 February 2007 |
I arrived in New Orleans on Friday, January 5, the day after filmmaker Helen Hill was murdered in front of her husband, Dr. Paul Guilianus, and their two-year-old son, Francis. One week earlier, drummer Dinerral Shavers of the Hot 8 Brass Band was murdered in front of his wife and two children.
These two murders -- along with about a dozen others in the first week of the New Year -- shocked New Orleans, leading to a March on City Hall where all the city's neighborhoods flowed into one huge crowd of grieving, pissed-off people.
I've written about D. Shavers elsewhere. I would like to take a moment to introduce you to Helen Hill. I've attended two memorial services for her, including a Tea on Super Sunday at the Zeitgeist Arts Center. At both services, Hill's films were shown.
Helen Hill was an animator, a film buff, and an accomplished teacher of the film arts. She could create three minutes of video as compelling as any you will see anywhere. She worked in stop-motion animation a great deal, and preferred real film over digital videography. Her films are colorful, humorous, and just plain fun.
Unfortunately, I cannot find any of Helen Hill's films online -- maybe because they are films and not files? But you can find numerous videos about Helen Hill -- and videos of the many memorial services held in her honor throughout the United States and Canada -- at the Helen Hill Memorial Site, http://www.helenhill.org.
A jazz funeral is being planned for Helen Hill on Saturday, February 24 -- the first Saturday after Mardi Gras -- at Helen & Paul's previous residence: 3438 Cleveland Ave., New Orleans, LA 70119.
I have received permission from New Orleans poet Lee Grue to reprint her memorial for Helen Hill. We filmed an interview with Lee Grue at last year's Tennessee Williams Festival (we'll be filming there again this year -- see our Tour Schedule for details). The loss of Helen Hill and D. Shavers has renewed our desire to film as many authors as possible, as fast as possible, at no charge. It is an ambitious project, but as these images of Helen Hill show, videos are often all we have left of lives snuffed out too soon.
STEVE O'KEEFE
President, AuthorViews, Inc.
Helen Hill
by Lee Meitzen Grue
To lose this person is like losing a vertebrae.
Today's paper said, "The city falls to its bloodied knees."
Some people glow from the inside
with a small steady flame.
They go about what they do
with certainty.
They choose well. Marry for life.
Children learn from them.
They are not charismatics who draw us into flames.
Helen's fire was banked low to last.
Close to us she was only one in a list of dead
three days since New Year's Eve.
We are losing a whole generation.
Displaced young men without education, without jobs.
Their only commodity crack on somebody else's corner.
New Orleans is the new frontier.
Territory for people who have nowhere else to go.
There is promise here.
We are fighting the war of the Old West.
How was that won?
By homesteaders who persevered
and finally brought order at great cost.
|
|
|
New Book: SUGAR SHOCK! by Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. |
|
Wednesday, 17 January 2007 |
Today is a big day for Connie Bennett, author of the stunning new book, SUGAR SHOCK!: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life -- And How You Can Get Back on Track. Today is Connie's "Amazon Bestseller Day."
Connie is a client of AuthorView's parent company, Patron Saint Productions, but we are not handling her "Amazon Best Seller" campaign. The campaign is being run by Warren Whitlock, Marketing Results Coach. It's a great idea -- wish I'd thought of it: a concerted effort to get as many people as possible to buy a book at Amazon on the same day, thus propelling the book -- even for one day only -- into the top 10 bestsellers on Amazon. Today is SUGAR SHOCK!'s day; if you buy the book *today* through this site, you'll get over $1000 worth of free gifts from a variety of vendors.
SUGAR SHOCK! is truly an impressive book -- one of the finest research jobs I've ever seen. Connie tells the story of how Americans have been systematically poisoned with sugar for decades through a combination of greed and ignorance. Reading her book is like watching workers piece together a crashed airliner -- the ugly truth finally revealing itself.
The campaign appears to be working. Early today, the book was already in double digits on the Amazon bestseller list. I'll have more about SUGAR SHOCK! next week, when I hope to offer you an excerpt from the book. But you might want to pick up a copy TODAY -- along with a ton of free gifts.
|
|
|
Today's New Video: Ken McCarthy & The Hot 8 Brass Band |
|
Tuesday, 16 January 2007 |
Ken McCarthy is an Internet marketing expert, colleague, mentor, music lover, and longtime friend. We stumbled upon each other in the jazz discussion threads at The WELL -- The Whole Earth's 'Lectronic Link -- back in about 1994. He was living in San Francisco at the time and was involved in producing Ornette Coleman's web site.
Ken is also a pioneer in online video. He is the blogmaster for System Video Blog, which tracks the online marketing uses for video. About a month ago, Ken took the helm of IAOCblog.com to lead a discussion of the public relations uses for online video. Ken lives in New York now, but he ended his week at IAOC with a plea for awareness of the situation in New Orleans.
This week, Ken is here in New Orleans. A novice camera man, he arrived with a $99 video camera that uses no film and holds up to 30 minutes of video. He used the same camera on a previous trip to New Orleans to film a funeral second-line featuring the Hot 8 Brass Band. Check it out.
Two weeks ago, the snare drummer for the Hot 8, Dinneral Shavers, was gunned down in front of his family. Along with the murder of filmmaker Helen Hill, who I'll blog more about soon, the Shavers murder galvanized New Orleans, culminating in the March Against Crime on January 12. And it led Ken McCarthy to create yet another blog to help focus attention on New Orleans:
Food, Music & Justice
http://www.FoodMusicJustice.com
Please join Ken on his blog for dispatches from New Orleans all this week. Thank you, Ken McCarthy, and welcome back to AuthorViews!
STEVE O'KEEFE
President, AuthorViews
|
|
|
What Is New Orleans? Good Enough. |
|
Friday, 12 January 2007 |
I arrived in New Orleans last Friday, just as the crest of a wave of violence came crashing down on my neighborhood and friends. I attended a memorial service, a wake, a rally, a sign-painting party, and, yesterday, a march on City Hall.
The march was beautiful -- rivers of people from throughout the city coming together to vent their anger and frustration and outrage and to plead for a higher standard of criminal justice. "Enough is Enough" the signs read, and the media mostly got the message right. This clip from YouTube captures the feeling pretty well:
New Orleans March Against Crime, January 11, 2007
In that video, you'll see a lot of neighbors and friends. One is march organizer Ken Foster, co-star (with his dog, Shula) of one the most popular videos at AuthorViews. You'll also see Lance Vargas, who used to work here, and George Ingmire, our Video Production Manager. I'm in there somewhere, too.
While I'm no fan of football, I have to say this thing with the New Orleans Saints is bringing the city together, too. It's great that we can be a party town, and enjoy our sports, and still have the courage and resolve to address such serious issues. It's good. And it's enough.
Tags:
Click to add your tags...,
|
|
|
New Video: Jennifer Adams & Wedding Showers |
|
Monday, 11 December 2006 |
In addition to her book on baby showers, which we recently featured on AuthorViews, Jennifer Adams has also written a guide to hosting spectacular wedding showers.
Wedding Showers includes themes, games, and 50 recipes. In this 2-minute video, filmed in Salt Lake City, Adams gives some tips on how to make your shower favors stand out.
By keeping both of her shower books under $10, Adams has provided wonderful guides at very low cost for future brides and mothers.
|
|
|
New Video: James Tormey & John Rolfe of Virginia |
|
Monday, 04 December 2006 |
With John Rolfe of Virginia, James Tormey is the first to publish an account of the Jamestown colonization from Rolfe's point of view. The tale is usually told from the perspective of John Smith or Pocahontas.
Tormey's historical novel begins in the year 1609 and covers a 13-year period until Rolfe's death in 1622 at the age of 37. Rolfe's life was "crammed full of adventure," Tormey says, including shipwreck, mutiny, and death. It also covers Rolfe's cultivation of tobacco and his marriage to Pocahontas, which brought a blessing of peace to the colony.
In this 2-minute video, appropriately filmed at the 2006 Virginia Festival of the Book, Tormey describes some of the things he learned during his research for this novel.
|
|
|
New Video: Jennifer Adams & Baby Showers |
|
Thursday, 09 November 2006 |
Jennifer Adams' book, Baby Showers, "gives you everything you need to know to throw the perfect baby shower," according to the author.
The book includes ideas for invitations, decorations, activities, and favors, as well as 50 recipes for snacks. "The little things make a big difference," says Adams. She also includes a timeline for planning a shower and a list of children's books that make appropriate gifts for the expectant mother.
In this 2-minute video, filmed in Salt Lake City, the charming Ms. Adams describes her idea of a perfect baby shower.
|
|
|
New Video: Betsy Burton & The King's English |
|
Thursday, 02 November 2006 |
If you've seen the movie You've Got Mail, you're familiar with the plight of the independent bookstore in contemporary times. Betsy Burton has written The King's English about her own experiences and obstacles running a community bookstore -- called "The King's English" -- over the past 29 years.
Burton shares tales about the authors and customers who have come through her doors, along with stories about the booksellers who work there and insights into the books themselves.
The King's English also describes the obstacles –- financial, legal and otherwise -- independent bookstores face to stay afloat. In this 2-minute video, filmed in Salt Lake City where The King's English is located, Burton describes a life-and-death battle for her store and how it led to a renaissance for both The King's English and the community.
This book demonstrates the importance of an independent bookstore to any community. "I really believe what we do is very important," says Burton. We heartily agree!
|
|
|
Home 
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
Click for Video
