Currently on a ten percent off sale for the summer at a variety of locations, ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love, recently joined the line-up of books featured on the G.R.I.T.S. Online Reading Club for the month of July 2008.  

A showcase of award-winning art by Luther E. Vann, whose work is currently on exhibit at the Jepson Center in Savannah, Georgia, and writings by well-known author Aberjhani, ELEMENTAL has become one of the most acclaimed gift books on the market since its release in May.  The weekly newsmagazine Connect Savannah described ELEMENTAL as, “a beautiful book…the reproductions of the paintings are outstanding. The poems were inspired by the paintings, and make perfect companions for the reproductions… a real delight and was definitely worth the wait.” Art critic, author, and collector Ja A. Jahannes called it “A wondrously amazing book.” 

The more the fate of books in the world are called into question ––as they compete with the ever-increasing domination of techno gadgetry–– the stronger and more enduring their impact seems to become.  There is, apparently, no such thing as a permanent substitute for the written word adorned by human imagination and artfully bound in hard or soft covers.

This observation is particularly evident in April 2008 for three strong reasons. Number one: this is indeed National Poetry Month and celebrations of it are in full swing, complete with the first “Poem in Your Pocket Day” observed on April 17.

I recently talked to a friend who was having an article published in a well-known, highly competitive magazine. She hasn’t yet taken the jump to have a web presence. I tend to forget that I spend thousands of hours online, receive hundreds of newsletters each month and answer over 1000 emails a month. I don’t realize that the words “blog,” “SEO,” “keywords,” “meta tags,” and even “book marketing” are not terms most people go to bed thinking about. Or get up at 2 a.m. when you can’t sleep and read articles from an online business school giving advice on internet article marketing.

Savannah, Ga., USA––The young adult novel, Blood Kin A Savannah Story, written by Robert T.S. Mickles and featuring a foreword by Aberjhani, debuted at number four on ESSENCE Magazine’s Best Seller Book List for paperback fiction in the March 2008 “Hollywood Issue” of the publication.

A native of Savannah, Georgia, Mickles said his surprise best-selling novel is based on stories passed down to him by, “My grandmother, Beulah Tremble. She was born not too long after slavery ended in the United States and her parents had actually been slaves. She lived to be 100 years old and at the time when she passed on to me the stories that had been passed on to her, I really had no idea what a powerful legacy they would turn out to be.”

Plagiarism - How to Find Out if Someone is Plagiarizing Your Work
By Robert Nahas

With the infiltration of Internet venues that harbor and propagate pseudo professional and fraudulent “writers” - even encouraging it by “looking the other way” - there has been a significant rise in plagiarism of the protected works of professional writers. Though hard numbers have not yet been established, this writer, after a great deal of research, estimates that it has risen by as much as 42 percent over the past five years.