My Writing Week: issue 36 of year 4

Hi all,

Last week I wrote every day for the second week in a row. But unlike the week before when it was all non-fiction, last week it was all fiction. I am still not spending anywhere near enough time writing, but some writing is better than none. Hopefully I can build on last week’s efforts this week. 

I spent a bit of time on other writing relating activities, like setting up a group’s page on Facebook for this blog.

New Article on Divine Magazine

I submitted a new article to Divine online magazine last Monday and, much to my surprise, it was up on the site by Wednesday. That’s two articles for August.

The new article is about why I love gardening. The article is an attempt at a more whimsical tone. Over the past year’s 13 articles for Divine, I have attempted different styles and tones, from serious informational, to personal accounts of tragedy, to uplifting interview based articles.

Book Sales Up in Australia

An article in the Age states that book sales rose 0.4 per cent by volume in 2010, with 66.2 million books sold. The bad news is that the value of those sold books dropped by 4.2 per cent. But with those sales not including purchases from Amazon and other overseas vendors like the Book Depository, the number of books purchased by Australians would be much higher.  

Book Depository Vs Amazon

As the two large online booksellers merged recently, the above heading could be considered inappropriate, but there are still differences in price, postage and delivery time. I recently used the Book Depository for the first time after deciding Amazon’s postage costs added too much to the cost of a purchasing a single book.

The book I wanted to buy cost $15.20 on Amazon, but postage pushed that up to $24.95. At the Book Depository, the book cost $20.19, with no charge for postage. The book also arrived in less than a week, much quicker than the three weeks or more I have waited for Amazon to deliver.

Review of Under the Dome by Stephen King

Warning, spoilers. I posted a review of Stephen King’s science fiction thriller Under the Dome last week. I did not want to have spoilers in the review so I did not say that I reckon King might have been having a go at his readers. In the book a dome was placed over the inhabitants of a small town by an alien race so they could be amused at the antics of those trapped inside. But King was inviting his readers to have similar voyeuristic intentions by enjoying the carnage wreaked on the inhabitants of the dome. I enjoyed the book, so does that mean I would make a good callous alien?

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