Carnival of The Storytellers 5th Edition

Welcome to the 5th edition of Carnival of the Storytellers.

This edition of the COTS was delayed a day due to my guest-hosting the Carnival of Family Life. I had a scheduling snafu and ended up with both to be published on March 19th. I decided to fulfill my commitment to the Family Life Carnival and delay mine a day.

To say I get fewer entries than the other carnival is an understatement. I heard from a friend that hosts a financial carnival that he gets 70 plus submissions every time. I rather like having just a few. It allows me to easily exercise my complete sovereignty over the carnival. I read every word submitted, and introduce each one with my honest opinion of what was written. Several submissions never make it to the carnival. I revel in my absolute power to include or exclude each post. I, in my sole opinion, may decide a post is not appropriate for my audience (namely family and friends that I know read this blog). I may decide to not include it because it’s simply bad.

King George III once said "I desire what is good. Therefore, everyone who does not agree with me is a traitor." Gotta admire, to some degree, honesty like that. Even though he was wrong, and quite possibly insane, he ruled his kingdom. My kingdom is my small little blog. And I may also be insane.

I may lose a few future contributors that are offended, and for that I'm sorry, I’m compelled to tell you what I honestly think about each post before recommending you go off and read them.
Enjoy!

*****C*A*R*N*I*V*A*L***OF***T*H*E***S*T*O*R*Y*T*E*L*L*E*R*S*****

When I went to review Praveen's post two things struck me- the headline of the blog states "Taoism, Zen, Simplicity, Gentleness" but the page is cluttered with AdSense and Amazon ads. And he says he says his interests include stock trading. Interesting. Not simple, but very interesting. He presents a (very) short story about a simple mouse and a complex bird. Check out Tao of Simplicity: The Mouse, Bird, and Fox posted at Tao of Simplicity. It reminded me of a story/lesson I learned once about a frog and a fly. I posted it a couple days ago.

So as I read this next post several comments popped in my head and I immediately started to think about how I would introduce TherapyDoc's Popularity posted at Everyone needs therapy? Lessons from a family therapist." As I got through it, I realized that I shouldn't say what I wanted to say since the post was all about being nice and kind. So...I will leave it to the author's own words- "Can we REALLY expect kids to be nice? The popular kids probably are nice, really nice. This story highlights how hard that is. Basically, we all want to huddle together with our best friend and ignore everyone else." I believe her main assertion that being popular comes about from being nice is patently wrong. I can quickly rattle off 50 'popular' people of past and current days that would be anything but nice. Maybe its just me, but I have a hard time figuring out exactly what she is saying. I'm just chalking it up to not being smart enough to understand her.

I am intrigued by the relatively new phenomenon of novel writing online. Using blogs to start, add to, edit, change, and evolve a story is a very cool concept, and a far cry from the old days where a person locked in a room with a typewriter completed an opus from beginning to end and then sent it to a publisher to be rejected. So much wasted time and effort. Christopher Kinniburgh presents The Preacher And The Author - One posted at Emotion Part One, saying, "The beginning of a novella length story." It is the start of a tale about a man and a woman that are living very separate lives, that once in the distant past shared one together. A very nice start to a potentially interesting story.

Interesting. Not a post with a story by a story writer, but a post about a story in a newspaper about a story writer writing about his stories. Al Nye presents Stephen King on the Writing Life posted at Al Nye The Lawyer Guy.

Awesome! That's the word I have for this post. How I love a great dramatic retelling of a real life experience. Stephen Kuusisto presents Don't Pop That Critter! posted at Planet of the Blind, saying, "This wasn't funny at the time..."

TherapyDoc is in for a second round, and this one I got. Great post about everyday life and dealing with extraordinary events while navigating the daily routine. Very interesting read. The Living and the Dying posted at Everyone needs therapy? Lessons from a family therapist, saying, "Bittersweet isn't all about chocolate, actually."

It is rare to find someone that will open up to the core. Blogs have helped this to some degree, but often you just find people telling you about things they really shouldn't. In most cases these disclosures result in nothing for the reader other than a passing thought that the idiot they just learned about really should have kept their mouth (or rather their laptop) shut. Not the case with Stephanie. Her post Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood: I am posted at Adventures in the 100 Acre Wood, is a truly insightful and valuable exploration of who she was, and who she is. You can sense from her past and present who she will become. Loved it.

*****C*A*R*N*I*V*A*L***OF***T*H*E***S*T*O*R*Y*T*E*L*L*E*R*S*****

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of the storytellers using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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