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Too often trips can be planned like a mad shopping spree, adding new places to the itinerary as fast as you can, thinking ‘the more the better’! In fact, when it comes to seeing as much as possible, there’s a lot to be said for not spreading yourself too thinly. It’s sometimes better to spend a little more time learning about the history, tradition and people of one place, than sample lots in one go. It would take a lifetime of travel to truly understand even one country, so you won’t run out of things to explore. Touring a country and delving a bit deeper into its culture means unlocking the mysteries of the past as well as your inner explorer. Temples, monasteries, castles and ancient ruins are solid memories of worlds long gone and provide a fascinating and unique insight a country’s history, as well as a welcome break from the hectic world of modern travel. Step back in time and out of the airport check-ins and endless queues of tourists and you can discover these countries all over again. The place to be The best places to visit on a cultural tour are those whose history and culture you’re really interested in. Africa and Asia have cultures that are so distinct from ours that they’ve had an immeasurable appeal to westerners for a good few hundred years. The mad colonial scramble for African and Asian land wasn’t just a product of their location but owed much to their beauty and desirability. Their diversity, colour and enchanting traditional life continue to fascinate all who visit. Top tip Asia gets our vote as the most visually stunning place to take a cultural tour, but the choices are many and varied. Countries as distinct as Pakistan and Japan offer the adventurous traveller trailblazing tours through strikingly different places. Perhaps you’d like to find out the origins behind Cambodia’s troubled past amongst the jungle covered Khmer temples, or learn more about the world’s next super power, China? Equally, as one of the oldest and most diverse countries on Earth, India almost offers several cultural tours in one! The life of locals Culture isn’t just embodied in buildings and books, the best part of a travelling experience can be meeting new people. If you stick too closely to the tourist trail and you rarely come across traditional communities. Wander off the beat and track will help you to meet people with different traditions and broaden your horizons. Whether it’s helping to build stoves in an Andean village or visiting the ancient towns of rural Thailand, looking at a country through the eyes of its people is a really rewarding experience. Top Tip Africa is still an underexplored place. While thousands head to the plains of Kenya to see the Big 5, fewer take the opportunity to explore the amazing cultural history here. A country not undeservedly known as the ‘cradle of humanity’, the people here embody traditions and cultures as ancient and rich as anywhere on Earth. Maasai herders and warriors once dominated the East African plains, but life is now a mixture of nomadic culture and the influences of the modern world. Exploring this part of Africa offers one of the most exciting cultural experiences in the world but also an insight into the conflicts of traditional and modern cultures. In recent years travellers have become more interested in meeting and learning about the people in foreign lands rather than just enjoying their views. Cultural tours are becoming hugely popular as a means of seeing a country in a different light. As long as they are done responsibly they offer the chance for distinct peoples to really connect with each other and enjoy their differences. They can be the most informative and authentic travel experiences you’ll ever have, offering memories that will stay with you for the rest of your life. .i-to-i.com/adventure-travel/

It would be wonderful if I could tell the world that as I was growing up in an Amish community I never experienced any domestic violence. But that is just simply not the truth. Amish people are human being and they experience all the same feelings that anyone else does. Happy, sad, confused, angry, ashamed are all feelings that pretty much everyone in this world has felt one time or another. The Amish are not exempt from that. There are many very good and friendly Amish people in America and this is not to bash the Amish in any way. The awareness that I want to bring out here is that there are some Amish that are very violent towards others and those victims need our (as outsiders, non-Amish) help when we get the chance. The Amish culture is very male dominated so I must say that violence between women was very seldom seen or heard of. However, violence towards women and girls is very common and also amongst the young people. They understood the Bible teaching about non- violence but not all Amish people practice this or have moments of weakness. Is spanking considered violence? It all depends on the severity of the spanking. When you swat a child on the behind to get their attention, without leaving a mark or redness, then I would consider that to be warranted sometimes. However, if you spank a child with a leather strap or willow branch hard enough to leave red marks and sometimes draw blood then absolutely that is violence. Some children are scarred severely, both physically and emotionally, by the time they are old enough to fight off the offender. Many people have asked me how they can help an Amish person when they find out that violence is happening. There is not an easy answer for this because of the secretiveness of the Amish culture. The Amish believe that all issues should be kept within their own group. If the victim of violence wants help they are only allowed to look for help within the group. Calling the authorities for help is not okay and not practiced. Some live with the violence all their lives because they do not believe in getting help beyond their own culture. In some cases the help that is available is not forceful enough to actually stop the violence. The leaders of the community will try to talk to the offender. He is required to ask for forgiveness in church and promise to change his ways and everyone hopes it will help which sometimes it does and other times it does not. Here is my plea to all who do not live the Amish lifestyle (as I don’t anymore, I left that all behind 16 years ago). If you see violence happening among the Amish please call for help. Someone in each situation is begging you to see beyond the lifestyle and the dress to get them some help. When I grew up only knowing the Amish way of thinking I know the victim feels there is no choice but to take the beatings. Now I know, as an outsider, that there is help if only we can get to them soon enough. For more in the experiences of growing up Amish visit .growingupamish.com

There are many ways to approach learning American English. The information I will be sharing was developed in the classroom by a teacher with many years of experience and found to be, after years of use and testing, one of the easiest and most effective methods available.Writing or speaking in English can open up a very large audience for you to approach with your ideas and products. It can give you an increased number of people who you meet who then might be able to hear and understand you. If you are a student trying to take classes in an American College or University, it will help you learn more easily, in addition to more thoroughly understanding the material or subject you are learning about. A pretest will give you the level you are currently spelling on so you know where to start. On the schedule you select you will be given a list of words plus sentences which will help you select the correct word because of the content of the other words in the sentence. That allows you to learn how to use the word in a sentence. Having more of a grasp of the words matched with content in the sentence speeds your ability to get conversational with English quickly in addition to learning how to spell. The easiest part of working with the basics of the English language is to feel comfortable with the way it is used which the sentence. Since writing is just another form of speaking, you will also become a better writer more quickly. Just the confidence you gain is amazing. You can then relax and keep going with your project to learn English, write in English and look forward to connecting by sharing your ideas with many others around the world.

Michael Connelly was born on July 21, 1956, in Philadelphia and raised from the time he was 11 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He hales from a large family with him being the eldest child. Michael’s father was a property developer and his mother a homemaker. Michael says his parents encouraged all the children to be successful. Michael’s mother loved to read, especially mysteries. He read some of her books as a child before he found his own. Michael says he likes the more hardboiled mysteries. Michael attended the University of Florida where he majored in journalism with a minor in creative writing. It was while there that he came across the works of Raymond Chandler. Michael married Linda McCaleb in April of 1984. They have a daughter, Callie. Michael says that he feels that since having a child he has become a better writer because he has become a better person. Michael was a reporter for about 13 years covering the courts and the police beat. He said he considered this research for the time when he started to write fiction. Michael moved to Los Angeles, CA in 1987, when one of Michael Connelly’s stories was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and caught the attention of the Los Angeles Times. Michael says this was a secret hope of his, “…because the most influential writers of crime novels, to me at least, all wrote about Los Angeles or Southern California. The place has a certain interest for readers.” In 1995, Michael quit his reporting gig and concentrated full time on his fiction-writing career. He says he prefers crime novels over other genres. He, for instance, does not see himself writing general fiction or science fiction. He writes what he likes to read. You have to write what comes from within. In 2001, Michael and his family moved from Los Angeles back to Florida to be closer to their families. Although he now has to work from “creative memory,” Michael says he still goes back to visit. Meanwhile, he says he tries to read whatever comes out about LA. Several years ago at a journalism conference Michael stated, “You scratch a reporter and you find a novelist wannabe…its a natural extension of the job because novels carry a lot of reporting and truth. You have to experience the world to write about it.” Books by Michael Connelly: Series: Harry Bosch: The Black Echo (1992) The Black Ice (1993) The Concrete Blonde (1994) The Last Coyote (1995) Trunk Music ((1996) Angel’s Flight (1998) A Darkness More Than Night (2000) City of Bones (2002) Lost Light (2003) The Narrows (2004) The Closers (2005) Echo Park (2006) The Overlook (2007) 9 Dragons (2009) Jack McEvoy : The Poet (1995) The Scarecrow (2009) Mickey Haller: The Lincoln Lawyer (2005) The Brass Verdict (2008) Stand Alone Novels: Blood Work (1998) Void Moon (1999) Chasing the Dime (2002) Non Fiction: Crime Beat: Stories of Cops and Killers (2006) Omnibus: The Harry Bosch Novels: Black Echo/Black Ice/Concrete Blonde (2000) The Harry Bosch Novels Volume 2: The Last Coyote/Trunk Music/Angels Flight (2003) Two Great Novels: The Black Echo, The Black Ice (2004) The Harry Bosch Novels Volume 3: Darkness More Than Night/City of Bones/Lost Night (2008) Anthologies Edited: The Best American Mystery Stories 2003 (2003) (with Otto Penzler) Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Depression (2005) The Blues Religion: New Stories About Cops, Criminals, and Chase (2008) In the Shadow of the Master (2009) To Read More Great Author Biographies

You have an idea for a book. You know it’s going to be great. You know people will want to read it, it will help millions, it will be funny, it will be touching, it will…you fill in the blank. Now what? You do a little research, you talk to a few people, you might even sit down and outline the whole book, chapter by chapter. Then…nothing! You don’t know what to do, you can’t even put a few words down on the computer screen to get you going. You don’t know how to begin. You’re not alone. I’ve heard this so often it makes me envision a huge pipeline in writers’s brains and it’s clogged with all these books wanting to come out. All they need is a little push-from you. Get Behind the Wheel Let’s pretend your book is a car on a road trip and as the writer, you are the driver. The car is not going to drive itself. Likewise, your book will not write itself so you have to get behind the wheel. That means you have to make the time to sit down and do the work of writing. Easier said than done, right? But on some level you’ve probably already done it. If you’ve outlined your book you’ve done some writing. It’s just that many writers then freeze at the prospect of the first sentence. Somehow it’s different than just making notes in an outline. People might read this-it has to be good! Well, yes, but not right away. At this point you’re just trying to put words on the screen or paper. Not sure what to say? Here’s where to start… Describe a Little of Where You’re Going To get to your first sentence, talk to your reader directly. Start out very conversationlike, explaining why you’re writing this book and what the reader will get out of it. If you’re writing non-fiction, you can start by describing the problem the reader is having (that way they’ll know that you “get” them and understand the situation) and how your book will help them solve it. If you’re writing a novel, you will start with telling a simple story, one that will grab the reader’s attention and give a taste for the adventure to come. Here’s a great example from Cane River by Lalita Tademy. The first sentence of the book is, “On the morning of her ninth birthday, the day after Madame Francoise Derbanne slapped her, Suzette peed on the rosebushes.” Ms. Tademy follows with a brief telling of Suzette leaving her bed and doing the deed then the rest of the first chapter tells how Suzette came to be slapped. Already you know this little girl is a pistol, but she’s also a slave. It’s intriguing to think where she might be going-and we’re along for the ride. Put The Car In Gear Quickly set up some action that will pull the reader in even further. In a non-fiction book you can use real life examples that will engage the readers and allow them to see themselves in the book. With a novel, you can throw out a series of complications. In The Prince of Tides, author Pat Conroy has many things happen within the first 20-30 pages: Tom’s sister attempts suicide, his wife declares her unhappiness with their marriage and you learn Tom has a difficult relationship with his mother. You can feel the engine of this book revving up. Go! Now that your story is in motion, keep going! In a non-fiction book, just take the reader step by step through your process or whatever information you’re putting forward. With a novel you can pretend that you’re telling the story to a friend. You’re both enjoying the conversation-you’re especially excited to tell your friend about what will happen next. You want to maintain that feeling as you write. When the Car Stalls Somewhere along the road you will get stuck. It’s happens to all writers. How do you get unstuck? This is where your outline really comes in handy. You go back to it to find out what you’re supposed to be doing in the book at the point where you’re stuck. Use it to figure out what’s not working. Maybe you’ve written yourself into a corner. Maybe you need to end a plot line or start a new one. Remember, the outline is like your road map. And a good map is essential if you’re going to reach your destination or, in your case, finish your book! © 2009 Sophfronia Scott WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, but you must include this complete resource box with it: Sophfronia Scott is Executive Editor of the Done For You Writing & Publishing Company. Learn what a difference being a published author can make for your business. Get your FREE audio CD, “How to Succeed in Business By Becoming a Bestselling Author” and your FREE online writing and book publishing tips at .DoneForYouWriting.com.

by Philip Yaffe William Shakespeare was unquestionably one of the world’s greatest poets and poetic playwrights. Arguably, his mastery of English far surpassed that of anyone else who ever put pen to paper. So what can Shakespeare — a genius at playing the language almost like a violin — possibly teach us about expository (non-fiction) writing, where ideas must prevail and the language made as inconspicuous as possible? He can teach us that being a truly accomplished writer means knowing when to turn a beautiful phrase and when to speak plainly. Perhaps more than anyone else, a poet recognizes that the result that must take pride of place, not the techniques used to achieve it. Ask anyone to recite something from Shakespeare. Almost invariably you will hear either “To be or not to be, that is the question” or “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” The first is the famous Hamlet soliloquy where the young prince is contemplating suicide, the other the famous Marc Anthony soliloquy where Anthony laments the death of Julius Caesar. Both are works of genius. However, the Hamlet soliloquy is very much of its time, composed of literary images, erudite allusions, and poetic turns of phrase. By contrast, the Marc Anthony soliloquy is almost painfully plain and seems as if it could have been written yesterday. Since Anthony’s speech sounds more familiar to contemporary ears, let’s analyze it to see just how Shakespeare made such an apparently “simple” text immortal. Bear in mind that Anthony’s hidden agenda is to turn the people against Brutus and the other assassins who have seized control of Rome, largely to popular assent. As a public relations gesture, Brutus allows Anthony to address to the crowd, but only to express his grief at the death of a friend. At the outset, this is apparently all that Anthony intends to do, until his ingeniously crafted words reverse the situation and send the conspirators fleeing. With this as background, read the first nine lines of the soliloquy straight through. Then read the analysis follows. Sentence 1 Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. Sentence 2 The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. Sentence 3 So let it be with Caesar. Sentence 4 The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious. If it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Sentence 5 Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest

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After you have completed writing a your book, the next step is to market your work as an E-book. The fastest way to increase your publishing sales, especially your profits, is creating an exclusive website, dedicated to marketing the E-book. Quick tips for designing your exclusive website to increase publishing sales: The domain name: The URL of the web site must mention the name of the product you intend to sell through the web site. (resource: godaddy.com) Hosting your website: You will need a place on the web for your site’s information to be stored. (resource: beyonyourbook.com/besthosting) Information: This web site should contain detailed information related to the product you intend to sale while leaving a bit of unresolved information. Curiosity creates desire and action. In this case, more people will buy your E book. (resource: search for Joseph Sugarman books at amazon.com) Content: The content on this web site should be written concisely and clearly. The primary goal of this web site is to translate casual visitors in to buyers, before the visitor leaves the web site. Hence, the content should be interesting to captivate the visitor’s interest. It should be remembered that you couldn’t expect the visitor to stay longer at your site. Therefore, the message you want to convey should reach out to the visitors the moment he or she surfs the web site. (resource: William Zinsser’s book, On Writing Well) A Buy Now Button: You will need a way for people to click to give you money. (resource: PayPal.com) How much will it cost? It is fairly easy and cost effective to launch an exclusive web site. The cost of maintaining the web site would be in the range of $30 to $45 approximately. You must do the following for creation of an exclusive site for publishing sales: Sales Copy: You have to write sales copy. If you are not clear about the matter of sales copy, you can refer to other sites selling E books and take some ideas for your own sales copy. If you are not good at writing, you can always outsource the job. (resource: elance.com) Creating your own web site is fairly simple, and fun. If you have trouble creating the site on your own, you could get help from people at scriptlance.com or your local community college. Students engaged in studying web programming may develop your site for free or a small fee.

My breathing became labored, and as the poison worked its way into my heart, I wished that I had begun my quest when I was much younger, before the wars. I also wished I had paid more attention to the robed man who warned me to sweep the path! When key seekers speak, it is never for conversation or amusement. The sorcerer crossed my mind too. I found it amusing that for once, he was wrong; I would not find the key in this lifetime, and would have to come back one more time. Leaves rustled all around me, snakes everywhere, but then I heard something else - men running down the path. It was a John with two other key seekers carrying brooms, and they seemed to know immediately that I had been snake-bitten. They frantically swept the remaining snakes off the path and then one of the men drew a needle from his robe and started to perforate my head and shoulders with hundreds of small punctures. The other man removed a vial he had tied around his neck, poured its liquid over my pierced skin, and rubbed it in. Next, they carried me to my hut and laid me on the floor, making me as comfortable as possible with a John sitting next to me. He quickly instructed me that for the next three days, I must drink water continuously and remain awake so that the poison would dilute and circulate, and not have a chance to settle in my heart. When the other men left, I asked a John how he knew I had been bitten. “It is important for you to remain awake but not move, so I will try to keep you from sleeping by talking to you and waking you if you doze off,” he replied. “You have only a slim chance to live but I will do everything I can to save you. Just in case, however, I will also prepare you for death. To answer your question, I was practicing my inner work as I do most of the night when a point of light came through the window. It looked similar to other immaterial beings in the forest that drop in occasionally, but this one was exceptionally brilliant, growing into a bluish-green, transparent form of a stunning young woman, perhaps three feet tall with exceptional large, dark piercing eyes.” I whispered, “Ariya.” “When she told me that you were going to be bitten by a snake and would be lying on the path, I immediately ran out to find a key seeker with anti-venom. Not knowing what kind of snake would bite you, I did not know which robed man to go to because there are many different types of anti-venom that the villagers prepare for us, and each man carries a different one in his vial. However, I followed the point of light that guided me to a couple of huts where I aroused the men and we came as quickly as we could. Luckily, one of them had the Banded Krait anti-venom, and when we found you, we could tell immediately by the odor that you were bitten by a krait.” Ariya promised when I first entered the forest that she would always be there to help when I had exhausted my own efforts, but I also remembered what she said regarding freewill. I knew that my fate, as the result of this snakebite, was not within her powers. She could only do so much. But I could feel she was in some strange way strengthening me, and I knew if I survived this bite, as I did the fever and the quicksand, it would be because of her. A John was looking at me as if he was hesitant to say something, and then said, “I must tell you one more thing. Ariya revealed to me that this was no mere accident. Moosawa is trying to kill you. I suspected him from the very beginning and tried to keep an eye on him but he was very clever, stealing into the night with bags of snakes and setting them loose on your path. He is a bounty hunter disguised as a key seeker.” “Why didn’t you tell me of your suspicions sooner?” “Because if I had, you would have killed him.” “But why did he go to the trouble of collecting all those snakes? He apparently has a crossbow hidden somewhere. Why didn’t he just shoot me?” “Well, for one thing,” said a John, smiling, “he is apparently not a good shot! Additionally, he would have had a problem explaining how a key seeker could be murdered in this protected community. Only someone who lives among us could have been the killer. Questions would have been asked and suspicions aroused. Moreover, he would have had to get you back to Ayatana to collect the bounty and that would be difficult. It would have been impossible to get a body out of the gate or traverse this country with it without a good explanation. No, it would be much simpler to make it look as if it were an accident. Then he could confess that he knew you were a king, and graciously volunteer to return the body to its rightful subjects.” “Help me up, I am going to kill him right now,” I said, as I almost passed out. I distantly heard a John laugh, saying that I was not going anywhere, and that I was lucky to be alive. He said that I should no longer be concerned about Moosawa; and that he would deal with him in his own way. I was now only to pay close attention as a John was going to give me instructions for death. (To be continued) E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center, .SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com His twenty-nine years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers. Visit .AYearToEnlightenment.com

Why do we have to plan and manage IT projects? Why bother at all considering the fact that many clients eventually accept whatever the resulting software may be? Why bother at all since time is precious in building the systems rather than planning systems? These are the usual answers of independent or freelance software developers who are excited in tackling or building software projects immediately without the need to sit around and plan first. If you will bother to read my article, you will see the importance of IT Project Management. I have an experience before in my last year in college where in we have an IT project to do. Since we are excited in building