Musicians and artists might need talent to succeed, but writers don't, says Jerry Cleaver in Immediate Fiction. Cleaver allows that talent is needed to win a National Book Award, say, but otherwise, any of us can do it. All we need is the ability to "develop and exercise sadistic license." The operative word is conflict. As Cleaver puts it, "Happy lives make lousy novels.... If the characters are having a good time, the reader is not." He takes the mystery out of fiction writing. You don't have to write about what you know, he says; write what you can imagine. .
THE RIGHT PHRASE FOR EVERY SITUATION . . . EVERY TIME The secret to business success today is employee and talent development. Companies that invest in branding and creating smart, self-reliant, "upgradeable" talent are the ones that will lead their industries in the future.
The glittering tradition of sword-and-sorcery sweeps into the sands of ancient Arabia with the heart-stopping speed of a whirling dervish in this thrilling debut novel from new talent Howard Andrew Jones.
Meadowbrook Middle School is an ordinary school with ordinary students - queen bees, jocks, nerds, brains, all the usual suspects. With nine exceptions. These students look like the others, but they're not. You could call it a skill, a talent or a disadvantage, but each of these students is unique - they're gifted.
"The dead don't talk. I don't know why." But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn.
