Below are the most recent 4 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008
mabfan	10:34a	Story Recommendation: "Unwarranted Serendipity" by Jason Sizemore Jason Sizemore (LJ: jasonbsizemore), who is the publisher of Apex Books, has a very funny short story appearing online in a contest run by the die, monday! blog. I didn't know much about the blog or the contest, but I read the story and enjoyed it immensely. Jason explains what the contest is all about in his post Rallying the troops: Unwarranted Serendipity. Essentially, "die, monday!" is a humor blog for people needing levity in their workday, and the contest was for work-related stories. The ten best stories are currently appearing on the blog, and readers are being asked to vote for their favorite. Jason's entry, Unwarranted Serendipity, is a fictionalized (I hope) account of his first convention experience. Anyone who's ever been to a science fiction, fantasy, or horror convention will find a lot of familiar humor in his story. And if you haven't been, it's an...interesting introduction. If I was asked for a tag line for the story, it would be, "See the wacky hi-jinks ensue when a brand new horror publisher attends his first convention!" Or something like that. Anyway, I highly recommend it. It'll take a few minutes to read, and it'll give you a good laugh. And if you like it, you can vote for it. And if you're interested in the rest of the stories, the list of the top ten stories can be found at die, monday!: Top 10 Stories! for the Best Story Contest. (Disclosure: Apex Books is the publisher bringing out I Remember the Future this fall.) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
mabfan	10:27a	Congratulations to Danny Burstein! Congratulations to Danny Burstein, who was nominated for a Tony this morning in the category Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Luthor Billis in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific! Danny was previously nominated for a Tony for playing Aldolpho in The Drowsy Chaperone. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 12th, 2008
mabfan	3:29p	Boston University Certificate in Publishing Program Back in December, I mentioned to some friends that I was thinking of enrolling in the Boston University Certificate in Book and Magazine Publishing program. The program consists of eight courses. My dilemma centered on whether I should have taken one or two courses at a time, and in the end, I decided to go for it and attempt to complete the program within the space of a calendar year. So far, I've completed half the program, and taken the following four courses: PUB 101. The Business of Publishing PUB 102. Publication Design & Print Production Strategies PUB 103. Editorial Principles & Practices BK 104. Book Publishing Overview This has been an extremely valuable program for me and a program I would highly recommend to others. Even though I've been working in publishing for about three years, I discovered that the courses had a lot to offer me. ( Read more... ) I received a call today to let me know that the enrollment for the July-August session of BK 107 is low, and that they might have to cancel the session and ask me to move my registration to a later offering of the class. If that happens, I'll end up having completed seven out of eight courses to earn my certificate, and I won't be able to finish up the program until next year. There's also the possibility that the next offering might conflict with other aspects of my life; I managed to carve out the time for the courses in 2008, but I'm not sure how easily I'll be able to carve out the time for even one course in 2009. So here's my plea. If anyone out there reading this has taken the prerequisite courses and is ready to sign up for BK 107 starting in July, please consider doing so. If enough students sign up, I'll be able to stay on schedule to get the certificate that I've been working very hard to earn since January. If you're interested in reading about the class, you can click on the link to learn more about BK 107 – Book Workshop. And if you decide to look into taking some of the courses in the program, tell them that I sent you.
Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
mabfan	4:15p	The Value of an Education I came across this story in the news yesterday: Country star Gretchen Wilson, at 34, finishes high school. The crux of the story is that Wilson, a wealthy award-winning singer-songwriter who had dropped out of school in ninth grade, has passed the GED exam and will be getting her high school diploma next week. The money quote that she gave to the Tennessean in their story on Wilson, which the AP article cites, explains that Wilson got her GED to be a model for her 7-year-old daughter. Wilson says, "...I certainly don't want her to think you can be this successful without an education." While I laud Wilson for both her attitude and her actions, and I agree that everyone should get an education, I find her comment a bit ironic. Because the simple fact is that Wilson became as successful as she did without an education. Later on in the Tennessean's article, she even says that she doesn't think she would be where she is today if she had stayed in school: "I don't think I'd be where I'm at today if I had stayed in school," she says. "What I mean to say is I think I would have never followed the path that I followed. I may have been in the music business, but I don't think I would have been an artist. I don't think I'd have been pushy enough. I kind of had to get out there and start fighting and clawing my way through the world, and that started really early and I think that's a lot of what it took for me to finally get that record deal." So I'm thinking that maybe the example she should present to her daughter is a different one – not that a person needs an education to be successful, but that a person ought to have an education to be complete. (5 Comments |Comment on this)