Smart Business & Career Tips

Be A Millionaire Day

Did you know that Saturday, May 20^th is Be A Millionaire Day?

I just found out that T. Harv Eker is giving away $1 million in scholarships to his highly popular 3-Day Millionaire Mind™ Intensive seminar. It is an amazing program full of life-altering ideas that positively changed my life forever. I know you'll get a lot out of this amazing course. By the end--you will have a completely different point of view towards money and success; a millionaire's view.

All you have to do to get your scholarship is go to: Millionaire Day  and sign up.

But, only the first 386 people who register ON MAY 20 ^th will be eligible. If you miss this opportunity, the tuition is $1295 (and worth every penny of it). So hurry!

On May 20^th, when you get to the site, all you have to do is put in your name and email address. You will then be notified if you are one of the lucky winners for this remarkable course. Let me know if you were able to get in so we can celebrate together!

Happy Be A Millionaire Day!

And, psst...pass this message on to 5 more people that you care about who could do a lot of with financial success in their lives!

P.S. If you want to receive a reminder email on May 20^th, get to the site, put in your name and email address and an email will be sent to you on May 20^th.

Thief With Leaf

[Canada] [Poetry] [Caribbean Writing]

Brian Chan
Thief With Leaf

Jan Shinebourne writes: 'The distinguishing mark of Brian Chan's poems is that they constantly illuminate the moments of everyday living; wherever the poet finds himself, glimpses of actual and remembered scenes come to him in moving detail... Each poem in this selection is life-enhancing. There is no vain pursuit or striving after slogans, catchphrases, sentiment, or any other seductive, transient passions. For the poet, poetry at its best is like a best friend, trustworthy and of lasting value, an art in which to invest an individual's own quest for permanence, an art through which to converse sincerely, explore and transcend experiences, so we find in them a voice which expresses the most permanent qualities of vision. This is a collection of poems essentially of spiritual questing, Zen-like, giving at their best a quiet spiritual aura to the everyday.'

Thief With Leaf won the Guyana Prize for Poetry in 1989. 

 

Authors offer immortality in Web auction

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - How much would you pay to be immortalized as a zombie in a Stephen King novel or a good guy in a John Grisham thriller?

King and Grisham are among 16 authors selling the right to have a character in a book named for the buyer to raise money for the First Amendment Project, a California-based nonprofit group that promotes freedom of information and expression.

Details of exactly what each author is offering have been posted on Internet auction site eBay and the auctions will be held between September 1 and September 25, the group said on Tuesday.

King said he was offering the chance to name a character in a novel called "CELL," to be published in 2006 or 2007.

"Buyer should be aware that 'CELL' is a violent piece of work, which comes complete with zombies set in motion by bad cell phone signals that destroy the human brain," King said.

"Like cheap whiskey, it's very nasty and extremely satisfying," he said on the site, adding that if the buyer wanted the character to die, it must be a female name.

David Greene of the First Amendment Project, which provides legal representation in freedom of expression cases, said fans had already shown significant interest.

"My job is to put out the most conservative estimate and we're hoping to raise somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 between the 16 authors," Greene told Reuters.

The auction is not without precedent -- religious fiction writer Karen Kingsbury has raised some $100,000 for charity in recent years through a series of auctions that her publicists say bring an average of $2,500 per sale.

In the auction posting at http://www.ebay.com/fap, legal writer Grisham promised the character whose name he is selling would be portrayed "in a good light" in his next novel.

Amy Tan, author of "The Joy Luck Club," and best-selling romance writer Nora Roberts are also offering names, but they gave no guarantees about what sort of character it would be.

The author of the children's series "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" is selling "an utterance" by the infant Sunny Baudelaire, the youngest of the three orphan children whose adventures are chronicled in the books.

"Pronunciation and/or spelling may be slightly 'mutilated.' An example of this is in 'The Grim Grotto' when Sunny utters 'Bushcheney,'" the posting said.

Dave Eggers, author of the memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," said his buyer would be featured in an illustrated story called "The Journey of the Fishes Overland."

About a young Guyanese born Canadian Writer

Tessa McWatt is a novelist, screenwriter, and librettist. She was born in Guyana and grew up in Canada.

 

Her first novel, Out of My Skin, was published in 1998. Her second, Dragon’s Cry, followed in 2000, when it was short-listed for the City of Toronto Book Awards and the Governor General Awards of Canada. Victoria her third novel, is due to be published in 2004.

 

She has had shorter pieces published in Canadian literary journals, and her performed work was set to music by a contemporary classical composer. She is the writer and producer of a film based on John Berger’s novel, To the Wedding.

 

She has taught literature and creative writing at institutions in London as well as in Canada. There’s no Place Like … is her first work written specifically for teenaged readers.

 

I hope this inspires all who read my notes.

See more progress on: write a book this year

“Anything is possible if you believe hard enough.”

      “Anything is possible if you believe hard enough.” Preethi Nair gave up a high-flying job to publish her first novel. She created her own publishing house and promoted her work under the guise of fictitious PR woman Pru Menon. A few months after hitting the bookshops, Gypsy Masala is already on its third print run!

Read Full Interview Here

Preethi Nair recounts the extraordinary lengths to which she went to publish and promote her first book Gypsy Masala; a story of dreams (published by NineFish).

Preethi Nair walks into the room. She is calm, her eyes feel intense and look at me inquisitively as though I will be one of the characters for her next book. Author of Gypsy Masala; a story of dreams, she feels almost embarrassed that the book is doing incredibly well. Pru Menon, her promoter, and Director of the Creative House, interjects. Pru is the epitome of a bulging ego. She seems to get bigger as she reels off the list of papers, magazines, TV shows, promotional activities that Preethi has been involved in and she ends an already crammed sentence by telling me how many book stores have Gypsy Masala as their choice pick.

"It's all about having a strategy; you can have talent but you need a strategy," she continues. "Ultimately though, both are dreamers, fuelled only by belief."

This last sentence hits me between my fluffy eyebrows. Resonating somewhere within, it makes me understand the craziness of the scenario and the madness of the last year and a half. Let me explain; belief has introduced me to three people and these three people, myself included, are one and the same.

Read Full Account Here

Nine Canadian books are now classics

JUDY STOFFMAN ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

Some books disappear from bookstores after a season, while others live forever, or deserve to. What is an immortal work of literature is a matter that can be debated till Doomsday.

In fact, such discussions have divided academics for the past two decades, since it was noticed that nearly all the "classic" books were by men, with works authored by women and minorities conspicuously absent.

But none of that matters, because the decision does not rest with academics or the common reader � it's publishers who decide what is a classic by keeping it in print.

At Penguin Books Canada, the question of what makes a classic is answered simply: It is at least 20 years old by a noted writer that Penguin holds the rights to.

At a party at the AGO last night, Penguin's Canadian president Ed Carson and publisher David Davidar announced that nine Canadian books  by Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley and Robertson Davies  will join Penguin Modern Classics, a uniform international series that includes books by Evelyn Waugh, D.H. Lawrence, Ana�s Nin, Saul Bellow, Paul Bowles, F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck, among others.

The nine will be issued on July 1, Canada Day.
Alice Munro
Dance Of The Happy Shades
Lives Of Girls And Women

Timothy Findley
Famous Last Words
The Wars

Mordecai Richler
Solomon Gursky Was Here
The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz

Robertson Davies
Fifth Business
The Manticore
World Of Wonders

All had been paperbacks published locally by Penguin when Cynthia Good was publisher, but it took the international vision of Davidar, the company's new Indian-born publisher, to fit the titles into a wider context.

Davidar consulted Adam Freudenheim, the Modern Classics' general editor in London, to determine which authors have international cachet.

Allen Lane, who invented the quality paperback and founded Penguin Press in 1935, started the Penguin Classics, distinguished by their uniformly black spines in 1946. This is why the company calls the series Black Classics.

A few years after Lane's death in 1970, all the 20th century authors were separated into the Modern Classics line, handsomely designed with silver spines. The classics series has 1,000 titles, of which 175 are moderns. George Orwell's Animal Farm is the line's biggest seller.

No Canadian writer has appeared in the series, which has the power to shape school reading lists around the world.

Carson calls the nine titles "just the beginning. These books are going to be around a long time."

Each of the books will come with introductions by noted authors: Annie Proulx, Jane Smiley, David Bezmozgis, Alberto Manguel, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Ann-Marie MacDonald and M.G. Vassanji.

Dr.Luck

Since 1974, when he began his journalism career in
Washington, D.C. as an investigative reporter for
syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, Randall Fitzgerald has
written for a wide variety of publications including The
Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Reason,
and for 20 years was a contributing editor with Reader's
Digest.

He has authored seven books on such topics as the search
for other intelligent life in the universe and an expose
of the tabloid newspaper industry. His most recent book,
Lucky You!, concerns the paranormal and spiritual
dimensions of luck and good fortune and how that
translates into financial prosperity.

He has been interviewed on hundreds of radio and
television shows about his books and magazine articles,
including appearances on NBC's Today, ABC's 20/20, C-Span,
CNN. He is currently senior editor of Phenomena magazine
writing on the impact human consciousness has on the
material world.

Chris Gorman: Millionaire

When Chris Gorman isn't working he paces around his sound studio and disco at his home with the 'energy of a hyperactive eight-year-old'. Like Tigger, he is always on the go whether it's making back-to-back phone calls as he is chauffeured from meeting to meeting, partying with friends or trying out the latest gadgets from The Gadget Shop. (Both he and his children are gadget fanatics.)

His millionaire lifestyle is a whole world away from his impoverished childhood. He was considered lucky when, at the age of 16, he landed a job in the local supermarket, although he asserts luck had nothing to do with it. He'd had a part-time job with them and was actually working for the company while sitting his exams! 'I'd look at the manager there who was earning £30,000 a year in his mid-thirties and think, maybe I could do that.' Then he read a self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, which made him question whether he could actually achieve more.

He became a highly successful salesperson, eventually moving to London. However, when his vivacious blonde wife, Mary, became pregnant, they decided to move to Scotland to be near family. They had to sell their house at a loss and left, £30,000 in debt, starting their new life in a council house. It was then that Chris feels his goal-setting kicked in with a vengeance. Having had a taste of money, he was determined to make it again. 'We'd go and look at show-homes every weekend, so we could see the house we wanted to move to. It's like offering a kid sweets, then taking them away. It makes you want it more.'
Having the vision of the house he wanted helped him stay focused. As soon as they'd managed to move into the first house, they took to looking at show-homes again, looking for the second home to act as an incentive. This worked so well that the Gormans moved five times in five years, each time to a better property. He now lives in a house where the master bedroom is about the same size as that entire council house!

Learn From The Millionaires- Sahar Hashemi

For Sahar Hashemi, a high-heeled whirlwind of a woman and co-founder of Coffee Republic, it was a stay in New York, as a high-powered lawyer, that stimulated her love affair with coffee. She revelled in the different varieties and the fat-free muffins that helped her retain her trim, mini-skirted figure. Back in London, however, coffee was served instant, slopped over the saucer and sold as an adjunct to sandwiches.

Lamenting to her brother Robby the loss of her lattes, he suggested that introducing such coffee bars to Britain would he a tremendous hit. Sahar took some persuading, even telling Bobby she'd be happy just to be his first regular customer! However, she soon began to be revved up by the idea literally, as one research trip involved a tour of as many coffee bars in New York as she could drink in. (One astute manager even spotted that she was idea hunting and chased her off the premises).

As someone with professional experiences as a lawyer (including serving a writ on miners' leader Arthur Scargill) but with no business experience Sahar found setting goals for the business really helped her get it off the ground and deal with the vast, fast expansion. 'I always thought it was important to set goals.' says Sahar. 'We had a vision of a finished product that kept us going, but it was important to have those goals to be able to achieve it I think it's important to review goals every six months because everything around you changes and you have to adapt to that '

From Think Yourself Rich by Sharon Maxwell Magnus

Learn from the Millionaires-Karan Bilimoria

Karan Bilimoria owes at least part of his fortune to polo sticks. A talented polo player (he was a Cambridge blue, as well as a keen scuba diver), his first idea for a business was to sell pukha polo sticks to Harrods. The money he made from that helped him start Cobra.

Not that Karan had seemed to be destined for life as a business-man. Urbane, fastidious and academically brilliant, he won a place at Hyderabad University at 15, then studied accountancy in Britain. Realising a life of figures wasn't likely to hold his attention, he opted for a law degree at Cambridge, funding it through auditing accounts. It was then that his big idea began to take shape.

Pining for the sort of homely Indian cooking he was used to, he ate out regularly and noticed that there was a lamentable lack of a beer that suited Indian cuisine. A combination of spicy food and conventional gassy beer meant diners felt bloated quickly, finishing neither their food nor drink. Karan felt sure there was a market for a less gassy beer. 'I even had the taste in my mouth,' he recalls.

He was sure his concept would be a winner. His family were not. They felt he should stick to a profession. So did Mysore Breweries, the biggest Indian brewery, when he contacted them with his eureka idea, no track record and no funding. 'When I arrived, the whole management team were there and most of them laughed in my face, he recalls. They told Karan how their competitors had also wanted t< export Indian beer to Britain and most had come a cropper. 'I did'nt stand a chance, according to them,' Karan recalls. 'I told them the all their competitors had lacked one thing - me. I told them I believe in myself, in the product and that I would make it happen. If you have faith in your idea and abilities, then you gain self-belief.'

From Think Yourself Rich-Sharon Maxwell Magus