Read Freely Fest at Richland Library

 

I hope to see you this weekend!

SC’S BIGGEST LOCAL AUTHOR EVENT

IT’S FREE

 

Read Freely Fest

Sat., March 28 (9am – 6pm) & Sun., March 29 (10am – 4pm)

Richland Main Library

1431 Assembly St, Columbia, SC

 

I'LL BE THERE

You’ll find me in “Indie Author Alley” with 30 other authors on the first level of the Library. Author presentations will continue seamlessly throughout the posted hours on both days. Numerous options each hour with shows on the Outdoor Main Stage, in the Auditorium, and in the Theater. This includes talks by writers of romantic reads, mysteries, graphic novels, and nonfiction. It’s a chance to meet and share ideas with other readers and writers. Check out the schedule.

https://www.readfreelyfest.com/schedule

 

BUY A BOOK

Also, check out the Library’s book sale with its selection of used books for readers of all ages, all priced at $1 each.

 

Don’t miss with this opportunity! Catch up on SC authors and genres, pick up a new signed book or buy a $1 used one, and most important, support your local talented writers.

 

I hope to see you there!

 

A.I. writing test

 

The hand of the future?

 

 AI vs Human Writing

I was shocked that I preferred A.I.’s excerpts to actual human writing in a recent NYT test, “Who’s a Better Writer: A.I. or Humans? Take Our Quiz.” (By Kevin Roose and Stuart A. Thompson, March 9, 2026)

In this article, you’re given five samples, each with two texts (one A.I and one human). The subjects are 1) Literary Fiction, 2) Fantasy, 3) Science Writing, 4) Historical Fiction, and 5) Poetry. The human samples are from well known writers, such as Carl Sagan and Cormac McCarthy. After you read two excerpts, you select the one you like best. In every case, I chose the A.I. excerpt.

In these particular examples, A.I. passages evoke more human experience with greater subtly than actual human writing. Being a cynic, I suspect the passages were carefully selected because of their explicit messages, but even at that, we writers need to forget about denial as a defense. We’re not going to out-write A.I. The solution is somewhere else.

If it’s any comfort, we can tell ourselves that A.I would be nowhere without us. We control the choices, so far.

 

NEW YORK TIMES link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/03/09/business/ai-writing-quiz.html?ae=oa&campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20260311&instance_id=172326&nl=the-morning&regi_id=227682554&resp=1&segment_id=216486&user_id=3e762e87559516d79141d72aacf418b9

A,I. is stealing our brain with our permission

Foggy Morning

 

My foggy backyard this morning

Weather as Inspiration

Remember some of the old novels (and movies) with foggy scenes. Sherlock Holmes comes to mind and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And Wuthering Heights. Fog comes across as an obstruction to clarity, not just in the scenery but in the plot. The characters have trouble seeing the problem and so do we.

A most effective use of fog appeared in the closing scene of the movie Casablanca. Who can forget the sense of uncertainty it gave us?

According to AI, fog is loaded with symbolism, e.g. impending doom, isolation, moral ambiguity, hidden truth. With all that luggage, you’d think fog would appear in more general fiction than it does. If fact, fog seems to be fading into the genre of horror.

Of course there are the novels where the plot depends less on characters and more on circumstances brought about by the weather. Many of these stories fall into the genre of dystopian fiction, sometimes post-apocalyptic. If that’s your interest, “Weird Weather” may be a source of inspiration- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeirdWeather.

Literary fiction, at least in what I’ve been reading lately, seems to ignore the weather. The characters living through an average plot don’t seem to sweat a lot, nor use umbrellas, or slip on sleet or brush off snow (unless the setting is the tundra).

I’ve finished writing a young adult novel about Calvin, who lives through a winter in 1942. He’s cold much of the time, the fireplace is the only warm spot in his house—a house, by the way, that groans and creaks with the wind.

I am gratified by the changing weather from hot to cold to in-between. And by the changing scenery winter and summer bring. Normal weather reassures us that all is well with the world. Catastrophic events come along to remind us of how much the weather means.

 

Words vs Numbers

 A LOOK AT WORDS AND NUMBERS

I suppose most writers are fascinated by words, as I am. Recently in a poem I wrote, I take the position that everything that exists  (whether physical, mental, emotional) has a word. In essence, you can’t think of something (much less write about it) if there’s no word for it. My hope is that readers will realize this premise is questionable. And as an aside, is it possible that language limits our imagination?

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

We communicate not just with words, but with numbers. I’ve told my sons to think of numbers as a different language. Some people hold that we developed numbers just as we developed words in a language. There are other people who will argue that there’s a difference. Numbers are not invented, they’re discovered.

ALL THINGS ARE NUMBER

So said Pythagoras. That is to say, the physical world, everything you can see, smell, taste, feel, or think is quantifiable. And with the discovery, or maybe it’s the invention, of calculus, even relationships and movement can be communicated with numbers.

UNIVERSALITY OF NUMBERS

Now that I’m into numbers over my head, I’ll back out by saying that math was my worst subject in school. Nonetheless, our fascination with numbers and our dependence on them has never been greater. Seems we’re on our way to proving Pythagoras correct.

DATA ADDICTS

For the entertainment of mathematicaphiles, The Week magazine provides a column titled “The Bottom Line.” The shear amount of data collection and analysis is mind-boggling. Numbers relay meanings and can affect our opinions, maybe even change our mind. Several random samples from The Week:

25% of unemployed persons are age 25 and over

64% of Spotify’s most popular podcasts in 2024 were men

The average commuter spends a record 63 hours a year stuck in traffic

Consumers plan to spend an average of $890/person on holiday gifts, food, etc. 

 A book titled Book of Unusual Knowledge, a Christmas gift, states that it took about 30 million hours for Stone Age workers to build Stonehenge. Who figured that out and how?

 

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE?

Now I’m getting around to another point.  More and more research and/or scientific findings depend on data collection and not infrequently on polls taken of participants.

ARE THESE FACTS OR DATA DRIBBLE?

From The Times (UK) researchers analyzed data from 86,00 adults across 27 countries to find that learning a second language may help slow aging. (As if the only variable in 86,000 people is the number of languages they speak.)

Ultra-processed foods made up 55% of the food Americans ate from 2021 to 2023 according to the Centers for Disease Control. (What’s the definition of ultra-processed food?)

Researchers at the Univ. of British Columbia discovered that people are happier doing activities when sharing with others. Some 41,000 participants were quizzed on how happy they were doing three activities. (How happy? How reliable is a person’s opinion of their own happiness? And what if they’re asked on a bad day?)

 

The Right to Write

 SLAVERY in HISTORY 

Charleston, SC and slavery books 

 

Why am I not surprised to see the above headline? Maybe it’s because of my experience as the author of four historical fiction novels that tell the story of whites and slaves on a Southern plantation in 1857.

 

Before self-publishing, I queried a number of literary agents seeking a representative for my work. Two of them told me (a white woman) that they could not sell the manuscript in New York because there were slaves in the story. Maybe my books aren’t good books, but to have them rejected because of the subject matter doesn’t give me a chance, even if they’re excellent books. How has compassionate socialism turned into political correctness and worse, repression? 

 

Our media spurns Putin’s decision to rewrite Russian history, as if we aren’t doing the same thing. According to The Conversation, “New Russian high school textbooks … attempt to whitewash Stalinist crimes and rehabilitate the Soviet Union’s legacy.”

 

In particular, Russian history is being revised to “gloss over Stalin’s Terror and other truths.”

From the History News Network:
Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage again.

Are we Americans trying to airbrush our history of slavery? A fiction novel set in the antebellum South either conforms to certain social strictures or it doesn’t get published by legacy publishers, regardless of the merit of the writing. When our history is ugly, no good is served by suppressing it.

 

Why Am I Here?

A book of ideas on thinking 

Why Am I Here?

If you’ve asked yourself this question in a strange room after a night of heavy drinking, that’s not what I’m about. If you’ve asked it while wondering if you should try to develop a relationship with a church or synagogue, you’re the person I’m talking to.

 

If you’re like me, you have difficulty buying the Christianity message, and Judaism seems to be a religion with no benefits, except maybe cultural. You can’t escape having a belief whether or not you put any thought into it. I know some people who seem to believe that the meaning of life is a good hamburger.

 

NO ANSWERS

 

Some of us can’t accept the meaning of life even if we don’t know the meaning. Or perhaps, we can’t accept that we can’t discover a meaning. Not even hamburgers.

 

Of course, philosophers can explain it, but when’s the last time you tried reading a book by John Locke or Immanuel Kant? Even when written in English, their words are unrecognizable, like a foreign language. Or if Socrates, the writing is so dense your thoughts implode.

 

On the other hand are philosophers who advocate meditation by which you can explore the self and existence. Maybe something’s wrong with me, but the only thing I get out of meditation is frustration. Wondering how much longer I can try to get my brain into a meaningful clarity has only led to boredom. 

 

GIVING UP THE QUESTIONS

 

In the book At the Intersection of Existence, author Davis Stanard asks himself questions about existence. Why Am I Here? Davis suggests we get over that and build a belief system that allows us to live a meaningful life, whatever is out there beyond life. He doesn’t provide answers but he gives himself, and by implication the reader, permission to quit asking unanswerable questions.

At the Intersection of Existence Back Cover

A gift like none other

 LITERARY AND VERY PERSONAL

My daughter-in-law Cindy gave her son (my grandson Frank) a unique gift for his 18^th birthday. In fact, only a limited number of these gifts exist. She researched Frank's ancestors, recorded the data, formatted photos and text, and printed a 50-page book that provides the names and dates of Frank’s male relatives and ancestors, living and dead. The title is “the Book of boys,” and in the case of Cindy’s family, it traces Frank’s ancestors back six generations.

The title is behind a cut-out

It's remarkable that four Civil War veterans appear in the pages, my ancestor John Gantt who lost an arm in the battle of the crater at Petersburg, VA; Jake Shumpert who was wounded at Gettysburg; Austin Stanard who fought with the 75^th Illinois Corps; and Lorenzo Myers who was Captain of the 64th Ohio Infantry. 

Sixth generation

The birth locations of Frank’s closest male relatives are Ohio and Illinois. But going back generations, they’ve come from South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Missouri, and New York. 

Frank's paternal great-great grandfathers

Cindy has inherited from her father a love of genealogy. It’s obvious from this book that she spent hours on family history research, not to mention formatting the book. She’s a graphic designer, so that explains a lot. However it takes a devoted mother to turn a hobby into something that will be a family keepsake.

 

Quartet Journal

 

 

CAR ACCIDENT AS INSPIRATION

The May edition of Quartet Journal will publish my poem “Failing To Yield,” which is about an auto accident that occurred at Fairview Crossroads some years ago. The Crossroads has been the scene of a number of accidents, in part because it is the intersection of four roads: Hwy. 178, Neely Wingard Rd., Calks Ferry Rd., and Wagener Hwy. 

 

I didn’t view the accident, but I was there when the EMS arrived. There were a number of us standing on the sidelines in silence. The hush was broken by the wailing prayer of the grandmother who had been uninjured in the accident.

 

A car accident has been used as a point of departure for a number of writers, I’m thinking of novels. Here are several examples of writers who took an auto accident and went into diverse plots:

 

* If I Stay by Gayle Forman – an accident leads to a common trope of memory loss which gives rise to mystery and discovery.

* Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor – five people are killed in a car accident which develops into a story about organized crime.

* The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal – a car accident begins a story about a heart transplant.

* Home Stretch by Graham Norton – after a car accident involving a wedding party, the driver can’t face living among the mourning relatives and friends.

 

The publisher of my poem, Quartet Journal, is an online poetry magazine with three issues a year—Winter, Spring/Summer, and Fall. Linda Blaskey is the usual editor, but on the masthead for 2025 is guest editor Franetta McMillian.

 

One of the things I enjoy about this magazine is the authors' comments about how they write and what has meaning for them. In the most recent edition, poet Deidra G. Allan wrote that a theme she comes back to is “the great interplay of hope and despair, grief and joy.” Her poem speaks implicitly to this theme and ends with “like a child’s laughter through the open window of a house in mourning.”

More of Quartet Journal at - https://www.quartetjournal.com.

Selling Books

FESTIVALS

Selling books is a challenge, in part because readers are hard to find. Even publishers have to work hard to market books, so for an individual writer it becomes near impossible, unless of course they are already well known, e.g., Tom Hanks, Britney Spears.

 

To market my books I’ve been going to festivals with some success, depending on the festival. Yesterday I went to Augusta to check out the Fat Tuesday Food & Music Festival as a possible venue.  

 

A description of the festival was tantalizing: it was to “bring a taste of New Orleans to Augusta.” My sister Nila and I waited 30 minutes to pay the $10 entry fee, we spent about 15 minutes checking it out.

My sidekick and sister Nila

 

I should have taken a hint about the “festival” when a person selling gutters approached me at the entry. On surveying the vendors, instead of jambalaya, beignets, or gumbo, we saw the usual tacos, lemonade, funnel cake, and kettle corn. There were few other vendors selling things such as soaps and jewelry. It didn’t have the sort of traffic to sell books, or much of anything else. 

I wasn't looking for lemonade...

In the past, book festivals in our area were more successful, at least in the sense that they were big events that pulled traffic from a large area. The three-day South Carolina Book Festival held in Columbia closed down in 2015 after 19 years. Book “Em NC, held at Robeson, and Lowcountry Arts & Literary Festival have closed. 

 

What we have now are smaller festivals that are hanging on despite low traffic. Several that have returned annually for several years are the Indie Author at Aiken, SC, Author Showcase at the Richland Library, and Authors for Literacy at the Lexington library. A more intimate gathering that features authors is Readers & Writers held at a local restaurant. 

 

At a time when selling books has become as productive as digging for gold, festivals in SC are multiplying like rabbits. Flower festivals (azalea, iris), food (crawfish, peach, pimento cheese, shrimp, BBQ, strawberry, rice festivals), cultural (Celtic, Cajun, Italian, Swamp, Greek, Irish, hippie festivals); music (jazz, bluegrass, boogie), which is but a sampling. A list can be found here:

https://festivalguidesandreviews.com/south-carolina-festivals/

Belle Isle Books

 

My book Dust on the Bible has been published by Belle Isle Books with a few changes to the original, which I self published several years ago. When Belle Isle expressed an interest in publishing another edition, I jumped at the offer. 

 

Dust on the Bible has appeal for readers of Young Adult, Literary, Historical Fiction, and Religion readers. Lily’s spiritual journey is combined with a mystery. When she tries to find out why her father is not living with the family, she discovers that her family is not as easily understood as she thought. 

 

The novel has received good reviews and I hope this edition will attract more traffic than the original. Chanticleer Reviews gave it five stars and a positive review with comments such as this:

 

"A poignant tale from start to finish, Dust on the Bible by Bonnie Stanard is a vivid and emotionally captivating story about the strife of a family living in rural South Carolina in 1944.

"Stanard creates a family with a non-nonsense way of life, but the family also carries a deep abiding love for each other; no matter what." 

 

Take a look, buy a book, and leave a comment!

THINKING QUOTE - "If you only read the books everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." —Haruki Murakami

Dust on the Bible is available at Belle Isle Books:

https://www.belleislebooks.com/store/p258/Dust_on_the_Bible.html

amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Dust-Bible-Bonnie-Stanard/dp/1962416739/ref=monarch_sidesheet_title

Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dust-on-the-bible-bonnie-stanard/1123171377?ean=9781962416733

 

London Tour

 

 

 

SHAKESPEARE LOST

 

Last week, while in London I went on a Shakespeare & Charles Dickens guided tour. Our guide was an actor who was knowledgeable about these literary giants. She referenced numerous characters from plays and novels. At stops along the way she recited passages from the works of Shakespeare and Dickens (dramatically, more Shakespeare than Dickens)— I felt stupid...I couldn’t identify the plays or novels being quoted. Do you know which Shakespeare plays list twins in the cast of characters?

As the tour progressed I noticed that the glass and steel buildings where we strolled had little to do with either Shakespeare or Dickens. At those places where we stopped for commentary (with dramatic quotes), we saw nary a building or garden or otherwise that related to the two writers.

Correction: there was a plaque on a wall at one stop with the notice that Shakespeare had lived in a house that no longer existed at a location somewhere nearby. The tour guide said that even the street no longer existed.

I gathered from this tour that no actual artifacts, such as rented rooms, homes, or pubs from the time of Shakespeare and Dickens, are left in London City.

That’s not to say the writers aren’t honored, well, at least Shakespeare. You can take in one of his plays at the Globe Theater, a copy of which has been built on the south bank of the River Thames.

Too bad, but London isn’t the place to find memories of Shakespeare or Dickens.

 

Night at Bull Dog Pub

 

This is me as a mafioso

NOIR STORIES AT HALLOWEEN

 

There were seven of us writers reading stories at the British Bulldog Pub on Halloween night. I read “Waitiing at the Back Door,” a story about a woman who has a major-time grudge against her sister.

 

Phil Lenski stole the show with a story about parishioners in a church who are concerned about the drop in attendance. Only gradually do you realize the church members are all vampires.

 

I dressed as a mafioso and was the only author in costume. One reason I love Halloween is the fun of dressing up and becoming somebody else for a night. My dream is to have a Halloween party only for persons in costume.

 

Today I worked in the house, packed away Halloween and took out Thanksgiving. I’m doing lots of stuff but not much writing. 

 

 Photo L to Rt. Raegan Teller, Paula Benson, 

Irene Stern, Phil Lenski, Carla Damron, Warren Moore, and me.

 

barnyard lowbrow

"SLOP"

Some words give you an idea of what they mean, aside from describing sounds. I’m not talking about onomatopoeia (words such as buzz or boom). I mean words that hint at their definition. Take for example doldrums. It sucks at the back of your throat and shreds off traces of optimism. Or flimflam, which is flippant on your lips, a signal that it’s surface-deep and likely to deceive. Or quirky, which brings a pout to your lips and makes you think of something stretching off somewhere beyond your mouth.

 

What I’m getting to is slop. Judging by the sound, it could be something to stick to the bottom of your shoe and stink up the place. Well, that’s not exactly proving my point. Slop, as any farmer in the 20^th Century could tell you, is food for hogs and it contains scraps from the kitchen, cooked and uncooked.

 

I wrote a poem about slopping the hogs and Main Street Rag has published it (Vol 29, Number 1, Winter 2024) though it’s not yet posted on their website. The poem, “Barnyard Lowbrow” is facetious while describing a moment of recognition that life includes multifarious forms, more than just human, and is better for it.

 

In the same issue is Mark Brazitis’ short story “In the Midnight House,” which begins in an adult-care home where death seems superficial and memory loss sabotages reality. Though you’d think it would be depressing, somehow Brazitis keeps the tone upbeat.

 

The winter issue is not yet available online, but check back in to get a copy. Here’s the link https://mainstreetragbookstore.com/ 

Upcoming issue Winter 2024

 

 

red-faced ranting

 

Me, this morning

RANT ON PUBLISHERS

Sometimes you just have to rant to keep your sanity. My sanity has been put to the test by my publisher's questionnaire regarding the upcoming release of a fiction book. In the list of questions:

 

1) List any potential reviewers, publications, and media outlets that you can contact who might be willing to publish a review, article, or announcement about your book.

 

2) List libraries, booksellers, and other venues who may host a book event for you.

 

3) you’ll need to talk about your book to groups and individuals, market your book on your website, social networks, and by other methods.

 

PROVIDE YOUR OWN MARKETING

Maybe I’m overreacting, but my impression is that the publisher isn’t just asking for assistance in marketing my book, it’s asking me to do all the marketing. From my previous experience, none of my publishers called me regarding a possible appearance or a possible interview or book signing. Not once.

 

INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER DILEMMA

The publisher here is a small independent publisher, which is where any unknown writer has an outside chance of getting their book published. Though independent publishers may be struggling to survive in a commercial environment that is toxic, to cut costs by cutting marketing is self-defeating, not just for their authors but for their own financial well being.

 

DO I HAVE FANS?

Do publishers realize that first time authors don’t have fans? We don’t belong to a hundred organizations. We don’t hobnob with literati. We don’t host socials. We have no clout.

 

CLOUT IS THE ISSUE

Publishers have clout, if they choose to use it. Who is more likely to get a book signing scheduled at Barnes & Noble—me (an unknown person) or a publisher (even an unknown one)? The mere fact that a publisher makes the call provides legitimacy, one that no beginning author can muster regardless of how wonderful the book.

 

LONG TERM EFFECT

When publishers cut the marketing department from the budget, their bottom line will look good in the short term, but the long term consequences are dismal. Publishers can only thrive if their authors thrive. And emerging authors can only thrive with marketing support from publishers.

 

An even more disappointing consequence is that some of the most creative and talented writers do not have a chance to reach an audience (despite enthusiastic promises from the self-publishing sector). We’ll blaze no new literary trails given the current environment.

 

Meet the Authors Day

MEET ME IN AIKEN, SC

An in-person event to meet and greet local published authors! Mingle with writers, rub elbows, find out what’s happening next Saturday, March 2, in Aiken, SC from 11:00 am until 4:00 pm. I’ll be there, as well as 28 other authors. The address is 1310 E. Pine Log Road. Would love to see you with us at “Meet the Authors Day.”

 

Steve Gordy has scheduled a day of activities including round table chats, author readings, and panel discussions. I’m looking forward to the panel “The Present and Future of Writing.” Much controversy today about AI’s impact. Some people think computers will do our writing in the near future. In fact, you can already buy novels on Amazon that have been written by computers. Something to talk about! That panel is on at 11:45 am.

 

If you’ve been thinking about taking up writing, you may like “I Want To Be a Poet. How Do I Get Started?” Panel discussion at 1:00 pm.

 

Aiken is what I think of as “small town America,” in a good sense—A main street worthy of a movie setting and numerous restaurants and cafes. A visit to the Aiken Antique Mall will give you an impression of what our past was like.