First Draft to Published

Barbara Ardinger, Local Long Beach resident and author of Secret Lives bases her book in Long Beach. She will be on a Virtual Book Tour this month with Pump Up Your Book and her press release appears in the Long Beach Post online edition . Visit her tour page at  Pump Up Your Book.    Follow her on facebook   Find Barbara Ardinger at her website where you can enjoy more book excerpts. Purchase her book at Amazon. Secret Lives Excerpt Now the four spoke in chorus, their voices growing with the force that was moving around the circle. Watchers above, we summon you to our work. From the starry paths upon which you dance, lend us your far-seeing wisdom. Quicken our magic tonight. Watchers below, we summon you to our work. From the dark and hidden worlds that wait beneath, lend us your powers of fertility and rebirth. Quicken our magic tonight. The air was tingling now and a palpable energy was moving around the room. Time is present. Power is here. As the invocations echoed back f

James Currie is the driving force behind Nikon Birding Adventures TV which focuses on destination and adventure bird-watching. He explores the best exotic birding destinations on the planet; the most unusual, rare and highly sought after bird species; amazing cultures and wildlife. He is the informative, passionate – and sometimes crazy! – host for BATV that portrays a unique blend of information and adventure, making bird-watching refreshing, contemporary, interesting and exciting. The program has a strong conservation emphasis and highlights the importance and urgency of preserving the planet’s incredible birdlife. LB: What got you started in this career? Was there a pivotal event in your life that brought you to being a birding adventurer? JC: I started as a birder really young. My folks owned a restaurant on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa and it was there that I first found my love for birds, wildlife and the outdoors. But the moment that really got me

“Wake up people! Find your behind and sit on it,” Captain Adam yelled over the roar of the monster wave spilling into a 20-foot hole- dead ahead. Lava Falls is the most fearsome rapids on the 227-mile Grand Canyon run. I bolted from my day-dreaming position on the warm pontoon. While drifting between walls of black porous rock once inside the cone of a volcano, I'd sunk into river time. When we floated past the enormous basalt plug in the middle of the river, I'd forgotten that it meant we were approaching Lava Falls and that I was holding a one-way ticket home. Read more here

by Linda Ballou Birding is the second fastest growing sport in America. Sixty-five million of us are rising at ungodly hours to steal through estuaries and woodlands hoping to spy the flash of a wing. Some of us spend fortunes enticing our avian friends to our back yards. Why?    (1) Birding is an opportunity for purposeful lollygagging . We must go slowly to catch a glimpse of the vast variety of birds that share the planet with us. A stroll through dew-laden meadows can garner sightings of warblers, finches, bluebirds, and meadow larks swaying on a stem. The seldom seen sora and the ubiquitous great blue heron are found in wetlands along with egrets and dabbling ducks. White pelicans that we associate with the sea migrate to fresh-water stopovers during winter like many other long distance travelers. Slowing down allows you to spot all of these wonderful variations in nature. Read more here at NABBW

  On Writing Daze we ask our visiting authors to share with us their Five Laugh About it Later Type Moments.   Nemo James, author of Just A Few Seconds, A Story from the World ofMusic and Beyond shares his moments with us.  About Just a Few Seconds, A Story from the World of Music and Beyond Nemo James dreamt of becoming a professional musician from the first time he picked up a guitar following a talent content disaster. Thought of by his friends as being the person most likely to make the big time he turned professional but was continually side tracked by the need to earn a living from music. His journey takes him all over the world from private gigs for the rich and famous to the roughest pubs. Starting in the late sixties when heavy rock was born, through to the 1980’s and 90’s when discos and electronics decimated live music dance halls. Just a Few Seconds is an amusing and heartrending story of perseverance showing how the road to success can lead us down the strangest of

On Friday’s we ask our visiting authors to tell us about the fun or laugh about it later type moments that they have endured while writing their book. Zach Richardson, author of Chronicles of the Apocalypse, Revenge, Everything is Nothing shares with us his Friday Five Moments. About Chronicles of the Apocalypse When you sacrifice the lives of your wife and children to prevent the world's most powerful clan of assassins from unleashing the Apocalypse, what does that make you? And what do you do when you learn that it was all in vain? For Jin Sakai, that sacrifice turned him into a mere shell of a man, filled only with guilt and hatred. When he learns that it was a sacrifice made in vain, he instantly sets out on a violent one-man war to tear the assassins' clan down around their ears. After all, who better to destroy them than the man who brought them together? Things soon turn down a darker path as Jin uncovers the disturbing truth behind his family's sacrifice; a tr