Mark A Silverstein

“I’M THE CHOSEN ONE.” Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, declared on Thursday. “Somebody had to do it,” Our Fearless Leader said, referring to his decision to “take on China.” He turned his head, looked to heaven, and said, “I’m the Chosen One.” THE CHOSEN ONE has decided Jewish-Americans don’t have a right to choose. When asked by a reporter today about whether his claim that Jews who choose to vote for Democrats are disloyal is anti-Semitic, he responded, “only in your head.” A number of Jewish organizations claim the trope of Jews having split loyalty is historically anti-Semitic. Guess THE CHOSEN ONE forgot to check with chief…

One metaphor I have always enjoyed from both the visual image it plants in my brain and its message to remain humble when success arrives is– I stand on the shoulders of those who came before me. As an author I get not only the visual of being atop the cheerleaders’ pyramid but also balancing on one leg at the top of a steep pile of books. If you’ve read my short bio in the About Me section of this website, you’ll have discovered the names of five authors of young adult novels who have influenced me. Mark Twain is by far the oldest and most famous. Stephen Chbosky‘s romance The…

Yesterday the President gave the State of the Union, and I was all in. Not that I’m the biggest fan of the President, but I’ve always been a news junkie and there’s no bigger news story than the State of the Union. The first part I listened to because we were in the car on our way back from our volunteer work as facilitators of an adults with Down syndrome book club. Deb and I have made the twenty-five mile roundtrip every Tuesday for the past six years. We watched the remainder and the Democrats’ response when we were home. Earlier in the day I picked up out of date…

In my last blog I went over the six steps to becoming an author implementing the longest established method. Step one is to write an inspirational novel. Steps two and three are finding an agent and using said agent to find a publisher. Step four is to work with the editor at the publisher to produce content that will fly off the shelf. Promoting the book is the fifth step. The final step is to repeat steps one, four and five. In other words, unless you end up with an agent you can’t work with that part of the process is complete. So where am I in this process you…

In my biography found in the About section of this website, I explained how eight years ago I sat down to write the great American novel. Page after page filled my computer screen and in less than a year’s time I had what I thought was a pretty good manuscript. Numerous friends encouraged me to self-publish. Most of them have no idea what that entails, but they know you can get Amazon to put your book on their website and it can be downloaded for use on a Kindle. This sounds like a simple solution to what had been traditionally an arduous task. What most of these friends fail to…