Uncle Rock, also known as Robert Burke Warren, is one of the newest members of this family of hip musicians. He stands alongside Dan Zanes, Justin Roberts, Recess Monkey and The Harmonica Pocket as a kids’ artist you might be willing to listen to even if your kids aren’t in the room. Uncle Rock’s newest CD, The Big Picture, is filled with hook-filled songs about Bigfoot, bees, when the lights go out, and Buddy Holly. Yes, I said Buddy Holly. “Buddy Holly’s Got the Hiccups” brilliantly explains how Buddy Holly made it big with his signature “hey-hey” combined with hiccups and incorporates Holly’s rockabilly style to a T. Other musical styles in the CD play homage to The Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, and even David Bowie.

Not convinced yet? Get a FREE download of Uncle Rock’s song “There is No Away” at www.unclerock.com.

If you have kids, or even know some, and you’re looking for some new music to put some zing in your step and a smile on your face, you can’t go wrong with Uncle Rock’s The Big Picture.

Without further ado, here’s Anne.

The Marketing Conference for Creative Freelancers:
Finding and Keeping Work in a Tough Economy
Saturday, March 27, 8 am – 5:30 pm

This one-day marketing conference for freelancers, held at Bastyr University, was full of useable details and friendly people in allied industries. The organizers are planning future conferences of this type, and I recommend attending.

There were about 17 people in attendance, including the speakers, so it was a small group. Attendees included editors (several other Guild members), technical writers, copywriters, designers, a cartographer, and some indexers … and a few of those people wore multiple hats.

The small size turned out to be an advantage for networking in that nearly everyone met and talked with everyone else. I came away with a sense of who people were, what they do, and what they’re looking for. I’m a networking-event newbie and somewhat introverted, and even I found it easy to talk with people.

If you’re not an extrovert, consider bringing a friend to networking events; I went to this event with a friend and we both noticed it was far less exhausting than going alone because we could periodically take breaks from chatting with strangers.

Michelle Goodman (of Anti-9-to-5 Guide fame) spoke on diversifying to stay busy in a tough market. She offered some advice on how and why one might do this, but one of the most useful tidbits was her comment that Twitter, because of its low-commitment, 140-character, casual format, can be a way to connect with high-level managers who are otherwise hard to reach. And it can take some of the chill off a cold call. She also reiterated the oft-heard, seldom-heeded advice to read industry news, in part to get ideas about directions to branch into, but also because it gives you something to tweet about.

Did you know that Alyssa Milano (remember Who’s the Boss?) is known for tips and tricks on using Twitter effectively? Neither did I until Ed Marshall’s talk, “Effective Job Search Techniques for Social Networking.” His talk and notes were densely packed with details on how to use social networking tools and insights on why a freelancer would use them. While he offered enough step-by-step info to help a newbie get off the ground, the most valuable parts were his own observations and experiences on etiquette, security, and effective uses for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites.

Some other highlights:

• TweetDeck: filter and manage feeds from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sources.
• Résumé tips: how to secure the PDF version and optimize the text-only version.
• Give Your Elevator Speech a Lift!: Lorraine Howell’s highly regarded handbook on the topic.

Staffing companies employ 2.01 million people every business day, and the field is growing. Cheryl Landes, one of the conference organizers, had extensive experience working with contract agencies, and she offered an abundance of practical advice for navigating this confusing (sometimes even Orwellian) world. Her talk covered types of contracts, reaching agencies and keeping your résumé out of the black hole of online application forms, red flags in your recruiter relationship and how good recruiters operate, and what to expect at the work site.

“Price Negotiations and Personal Brand Value” was the last formal talk of the day, and we were all starting to wane. But the room perked up noticeably as Jeff Barlow launched into a talk that was both about personal branding and a demonstration of personal branding. Within the first 15 minutes or so he

• read us an allegory,
• engaged us in a quick exercise, and
• told us about his own branding.

And by the end of those 15 minutes, everyone in the room had gotten it: the magic of branding. Next up? Okay, let’s talk about money: these (scary) words from the book The Designer’s Guide to Marketing and Pricing were the focus of the remainder of the talk. Using an example from his own design business, Jeff walked us through the steps described in the book, steps that change the client-freelancer dynamic from an adversarial one (client wants low rate; freelancer wants high rate) to a collaborative one (client wants business to grow; freelancer also wants client’s business to grow). Building brand builds your value and, combined with money-talk skills, it frees your work from being only about the money.

We wrapped up with more networking, this time facilitated by Nancy Gerth (an indexer who once sent 20 cold emails to prospective clients every day for months on end!). We had a chance to talk one-on-one with other freelancers in the room, learn about marketing techniques that worked for others, and get feedback on our own marketing plans. The One Page Business Plan for the Creative Entrepreneur came highly recommended.

It was a long day, but productive: the tips above are just a smattering of what I learned, and I now have a dozen more connections—on LinkedIn and in the real world.

Anne Moreau is a freelance editor and proofreader. She is also the administrative Pooh-Bah for the Northwest Independent Editors Guild.

For many readers, this book will seem as if it were written just for them. That’s how it seemed for me. The high school senior protagonist, Quentin, is enamored to an extreme degree of the Fillory series of books in which siblings went through a grandfather clock into the magical world of Fillory, and were thrust into quests on which the fates of the world hinged. Sound vaguely familiar to anyone? I know that I reread the Narnia books and The Dark is Rising series on a yearly basis even into my adulthood, and still reread them when I’m sick and in bed. Comfort food for the soul, indeed. Unlike me, however, one ordinary day, Quentin finds himself thrust into the magical grounds of Brakebills College, a college for magicians, wherein he takes classes and meets his Ron-and-Hermione-ish circle of friends and compatriots.

The Magicians goes way beyond the J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, taking up the question of what a magician (or wizard or whatever you want to call him) actually is supposed to do after graduation, once back within the world of humans and the daily grind. But just as you’re becoming accustomed with that life, the magic comes back, stronger than ever, punching Quentin and his friends into a new world that calls upon their skills as magicians and makes them own up to their weaknesses as humans.

This is a crazy good book, and one that I will probably add to my pile of books that I re-read on a yearly basis.

Three Junes

So I happily dove into her latest novel I See You Everywhere and am happy to say, she’s still got the touch. I See You Everywhere follows the lives of two sisters, Louisa and Clem. Like many sister relationships, this one has moments of petty jealousy, misunderstanding, and unequivocal support when the chips are down. Rather than provide a purely chronological story line, Glass instead jumps years between chapters, focusing in detail on critical moments in the sisters’ lives and the ways in which they do – and don’t – provide support for each other during these junctures. This device of giving in-depth detail to discrete moments in the sisters’ lives proves very effective and, at time, very moving.

One of the reasons I love Glass’ writing is that her writing has a quiet elegance to it.  Listen to this passage in which Clem describes the last days of her aunt Lucy:

I looked over at Lucy, to express to her what I felt more than what I had learned, but she was asleep again. Her body was getting ready to sleep for good. A few weeks later, before the rest of the clan arrived to divvy up the spoils, Dad and I managed to get ourselves into a canoe without tipping over, to scatter her ashes on Lake Champlain. I had this image of Lucy flitting weightless over the water, that gold hippie sash like a peacock’s tail: Lucy, up there invisible, finding out what it’s like to kiss the sky.

If you want to settle into a book without car chases, that will leave you enmeshed in characters as if they are in your living room, the dive into I See You Everywhere. You won’t be disappointed.

I don’t want to spoil the premiere with too many spoilers – part of the fun of the series is meeting the characters and seeing them act and react against each other for the viewer’s first time. Let me just tell you that the series takes all the stereotypical cliches  of every other family show from the past decade and tweaks them in an utterly fresh way. For example, Claire and Phil sit and talk about the difficulties of parenting a teenager:

Claire: If Haley never wakes up on a beach in Florida half-naked, I’ve done my job.

Phil (gently correcting her): Our job.

Claire: Right. I’ve done our job.

And again, just to tease the episode a little, some of the biggest laugh-out-loud moments for me occurred with the scheduling of a BB gun shooting.

The series was created and the pilot written by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd. Their names should sound familiar – they both have a great comedy resume, having written for Frasier and Wings, among others. So watch the show or tape it on your DVR recorder – this one should be appointment television.

How I Became a Famous Novelist

Write a popular book. Do not waste energy making it a good book.

Must include a murder.

Must include a club, secrets/mysterious missions, shy characters, characters whose lives are changed suddenly, surprising  love affairs, women who’ve given up on love but turn out to be beautiful.

Give readers versions of themselves, infused with extra awesomeness.

These are only about half the rules he comes up with. Hearing his rationales for the rules, and then reading the synopsis he comes up with that incorporates all the rules, provided a number of laugh out loud moments.

As Hely’s anti-hero Pete writes his book and achieves his publishing goal, I began to think that this book should not be in the fiction aisle, but in the writing how-to reference section. Cynical though it may be about the publishing world, take a look at the current bestsellers and see how many of Tarslaw’s rules have been followed.

But as with any good novel, even one that is following a set of commercialized and formulaic rules, the protagonist must grow and change, and so does our anti-hero Pete.  As he journeys along the path of the intentional writer sell-out, including one of the darkly funniest wedding scenes ever, he learns a number of lessons about the difference between writing as truth and writing as commerce.

The actual writer, Steve Hely, doesn’t want this book to be on the writing h0w-to reference section.  By the time we turn the last page, we know why.

[Incidental note: After you read the novel, go to the website for The Tornado Ashes Club. I find it intriguing, for lack of a better word, that the fictional novel has its own website, while the actual novel How I Became a Famous Novelist does not.]

I’ve been wanting a Kindle forever, or at least since they first came out with it. And once received, I haven’t been disappointed with it. But here’s the deal about the Kindle, and I mean this as an utter compliment. It’s hard to get super-excited about it. It’s meant to be read as a book, and just as you don’t go around with a traditional book shrieking, “Oh my Gawd, turning pages on this thing is so simple. Look at the text, how it flows from one word to another!”, so too with the Kindle. The print quality on it is very good, and I appreciate that I can change text size (i.e. enlarge it) from those nutty paperbacks who think an 8-point size is acceptable.  I like – no, love – the ability to buy a book online and be able to begin reading it within a minute after purchase. If I were still a student, I’d really love the ability to highlight sections and take notes, but it’s not really that necessary for my reading requirements.

And here’s a handy tip. Most Kindle owners have probably already figured this out, but I’ll state it for people on the fence about getting a Kindle. There are scads of books you can download for free. Generally, they fall within what is considered classic English and American literature, but if you’ve never read these books, you’ll be surprised at how involving and accessible they are. Books like The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, or Homer’s The Odyssey. Free. There are also current pieces for free, including from the romance, mystery and thriller genres. To find them, go to Amazon from your main computer (as opposed to your Kindle), click on the Kindle Books section, and then have it sort by Low-to-High price.

As for John Connelly’s The Book of Lost Things, this is a book that takes all those fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers Grimm and tweaks them to even darker, more ominous conclusions – which, if you’ve read the originals, is saying something. The novel follows the path of a boy who wanders into a world of these fairy tale characters as his own real world has been traumatized from the slow illness and death of his mother. It is perhaps not the best bedtime reading, but the writing is crisp and emotionally involving, reminding me of some of my favorite novels of Peter Straub.

So for bedtime and non-bedtime reading, the Kindle offers a reading experience that is as immersing as that of a traditional book, but with more convenience – especially helpful for the traveling reader or reader without a good bookstore or library at hand. And The Book of Lost Things will scare you silly – in a good way.

I would have read Daniel Radosh’s amazing New York Times Magazine article “While My Guitar Gently Beeps” (pure GOLD, that title), an article on the making of Harmonix’ The Beatles: Rock Band, strictly on the basis of being a closet gamer. But what I got when I read it was so much more than a fan piece. The article is a remarkably thorough and fascinating visit into: (a) the process of building a music video game; (b) the history of The Beatles, and meshing that history with the storyline (or lack thereof) of the video game; and (c) explorations of the polarizing reactions to the world of music video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

It was heartening to read that Rock Band: The Beatles had such extensive involvement from those close to the band, such as George Harrison’s widow Olivia. And it was fascinating to read Paul McCartney’s take on these video games, likening them to the “miming” of Buddy Holly that he did back when he was growing up. For gamers and non-gamers alike, musicians and non-musicians, the description of the process involved in the selection of particular singles and the arrangement of the parts is nothing short of fascinating, and only confirms my long-held theory that these game developers have the “funnest” job on the planet.

Now if I could only score a copy of the game. . .

Now that I’ve impressed the temporal urgency of the matter upon you, I can go back and tell you why this miniseries is so good. Torchwood is a British spinoff of the science fiction cult favorite Doctor Who series (random tidbit – what’s an anagram of Doctor Who? Torchwood, of course). Created and written by Russell T. Davies, Torchwood follows the work of the Torchwood Institute set in Cardiff, Wales. The Institute primarily investigates matters of the extraterrestrial variety, but works outside the jurisdiction of the police or government. The team is led by Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), assisted by former cop Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and jack-of-all-trades Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd).  In Children of Earth, a regular day turns sinister when every single child on Earth stops dead still and begins uttering in unison, “We are coming.” It is up to the Torchwood team to find out what is going on, even as the government turns against them for unknown reasons and they become the hunted.

I have not watched the whole mini-series yet. I’ve only seen the first two episodes, and I can honestly say that there are scenes – completely devoid of blood or gore – that left me as unsettled as anything I’ve ever watched. Combine that with absolutely brilliant pacing and episode cliffhanger endings, and I am utterly hooked.

Note: I’ve been a Torchwood fan from its beginning, but you need not know anything about the previous seasons to be drawn in to this miniseries. If you’re new to the series and enjoy watching the miniseries, then definitely go back and find Torchwood – The Complete First Season and Torchwood – The Complete Second Season on DVD. Finally, if you miss BBC America’s showing of Torchwood: Children of Earth, it will be released on DVD beginning July 28. This is television too good to miss.

Am I right in thinking genre of “The Big Con” started to rise in popularity with The Hustler (1961)? There have been so many really good films since then (The Sting, The Usual Suspects, House of Games, Ocean’s Eleven, just to name a few) that despite the high quality of the work,  it’s easy to become a little burnt out with the genre, always looking for the twist ahead of time.  But remember back to the first con movie you saw, the sense of fun and being off balance, and being genuinely surprised at the ending. Leverage possesses that sense of fun from the best of the con genre.

Primarily written by veteran television writers Chris Downey and John Rogers, Leverage stars my longtime crush Timothy Hutton as Nathan Ford, an ex-insurance fraud investigator with an axe to grind. Turning into a modern-day Robin Hood, he assembles a team of thieves with different specialties to enact justice on corrupt fat cats with deep pockets. With dialogue sharp enough to cut glass, brisk plotting, and terrific performances by the whole cast, Leverage is a treat to watch.