Five Quotes, Three Announcements, and One Link

"Power always thinks it has a great soul." -- John Quincy Adams

“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. . . . What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horses, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes." -- Gustave Flaubert
    
"In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard." -- Russell Baker

"'The cat sat on the mat' is not a story. 'The cat sat on the other cat's mat' is a story." -- John LeCarre

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1. The winners of the StarCrossed/Liar's Moon/Second Sight giveaways were Lindsay Mead, Rachel Stark, Cathy C. Hall, Pat Esden, and Leslie Jordan. For those of you interested in giveaway strategy, both Cathy and Lindsay took full advantage of the opportunity to enter multiple times, and it clearly paid off for them. Congratulations to all!

2. If you live in New York and you're interested in supporting the Occupy movement:  My awesome church, Park Slope United Methodist, is housing protesters in the sanctuary each night, and we're looking for volunteers to sleep overnight there as hosts. (You do not have to attend the church to volunteer.) I did it on Thursday, and it was actually quite lovely -- not the most sleep I've ever gotten, certainly, but an opportunity to chat with some really interesting people devoted to building a better world, in their very particular way, and to give them a place to lay their heads, as the carol goes. If you'd be up for it, e-mail me at the address on my website and I'll put you in touch with the coordinator.

(My friend Rachel, being mischievous, asked me if we would put up Tea Party people as well should they ask for shelter; and I'd like to think we would, though I also think most Tea Partiers would be too horrified by my church to want to shelter there. A soup kitchen, an all-inclusive marriage policy, a Christmas pageant that included "Occupy Bethlehem" jokes, an emphasis on social and economic justice . . . The Koch brothers' heads would implode! (I admit the glee I take in that idea is neither particularly welcoming nor becoming. It's a process.))

3. Registration opens on December 22 for my March 3, 2012 Master Class on Plot in Spokane, Washington, via SCBWI Inland Empire. Details: here.

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Finally, if you saw "Breaking Dawn," you also need to see this: "Breaking Dawn" in 15 Minutes.