Ramblings of a Middle Aged Lunatic

Just ignore him!   I was repeatedly offered that piece of advice, from Ms. Frizz, my parents, my older sister, and Diana.   Their reasoning made perfect rational sense.   If you ignore your tormentors, eventually they would get bored when they failed to get a reaction out of you and move onto another target.                                                                                                 Shannon Heuston, The Playground                                                                                                               The worst advice you can give a bullying victim is to ignore their tormentors.   Yet this is the most common advice offered to children by adults.    This is not groundbreaking wisdom.   It’s the short-sighted observation of an adult that does not grasp the bully/victim dynamic. Adults believe if you ignore a bully, he/she will not get the reaction they’re seeking and will search for another target.  This makes perfect sens

One of the issues that has come up when I've discussed bullying, particularly with my teacher friends, is their perception that everything is being labeled as bullying. Basically, that there are times when people overreact to what is really teasing and the overreaction ends up causing the students in question more harm than good. The end result is that the students are more traumatized by the reaction of the perceived behavior rather than the behavior itself. And it also lumps extremely serious incidents of bullying in with mild playground teasing with the end result that neither is taken seriously. This is a valid concern, and after much thought I have decided to address this issue. When it a behavior bullying, and when is it teasing? The truth is the line between the two can be an extremely thin one. To make the matter more confusing, what may be bullying to one child may be merely teasing to another. There is no universal one size fits all when it comes to bullying, and I think

It’s been nearly five months since I embarked upon the adventure that is independent publishing, a decision that I made on a whim. And my, what a roller coaster it has been! I’ve learned a lot in these past few months, and I’m almost certainly going to learn a lot more. But today I thought I’d share some of the insights I had along the way, to help out all of my fellow indie publishers also new to the industry. 1) Promoting is the most difficult part of being an author. No one is immune to promoting. I’ve heard from my fellow authors that have sold the rights to their books that they are also expected to do a large part of the promoting. Even if you sell your book you still wind up doing the lion’s share of the marketing. Very few of us authors want to do it. We tend to be a shy, retiring, introverted group. Having to beg strangers to read your book is a daunting task. I think it’s fair to say none of us are entirely comfortable with it. So know you're not alone if you find the no