#Prevent Talents And Clients From Being Stolen

[otograph]

How To Treat Employees Like Family?

Join hands with Otograph agents Israel to run your organization like a family. Everyone in your company is a member of a bigger family and it's your responsibility to treat every worker as an important member of your organization.

 What is Otograph?

 It is necessary to know about the company that will help in bringing all your workers to one place where you can monitor their performance and reward them according to their output. But the biggest benefit of joining hands with this company is that you won’t have to rely on your managers to get a report of the junior workers.

 When you Treat Employees Like Family, you bring them closer to the organization. The first thing is that you notice and recognize the efforts of every worker irrespective of his position and responsibility. Another advantage of the technology is that you allow equal opportunities to the workers to prove their talent.

 What is the technology about?

 It is a software application that you will install in every end device your workers use for business communication. The job of the application is to monitor the digital behavior of workers and update you about their behavior. For example, you can check what websites they visit during working hours. Also, you will get details about the time your workers spend on different sites.

 Otograph Agents Israel are there to help in everything from installing the app on your computers, Smartphones, and tabs, to solving technical problems you might encounter with the app. Also, your data will remain safe in the cloud. The app will establish a direct connection with every end device so you can check what your workers are doing during office hours.

 For example, if you find that an employee is working hard and his work is visible in his output and the app. You can see that he is visiting the sites necessary for your business. You can assign more responsibilities to that executive. Also, you can consider increasing his salary according to his hard work.

 Similarly, you can punish an employee who spends more time on questionable sites and social media. When you treat employees like family, you want to keep track of their movements and activities. And you reward and punish the workers according to their performance. You won’t have any hassle in using the application. The company is there to help with technical support and regular updates.    

[thousandbirds]

hatake kakashi’s tropes ( as seen in canon ) are as follow :

--- the Ace. someone who is ridiculously good at what they do, whatever that happens to be, and everyone knows it. people look up to them, envy them, and are in awe of them. they have a reputation for doing the impossible, and may be Shrouded in Myth, as people are unable to separate their real accomplishments from unfounded rumors. they'll probably be extremely talented at everything they try. in direct relation to this, he is also affected by the Broken Ace trope. he's tall, charming, strikingly good-looking and extremely skilled, but underneath all that his inner self is a mess of self-hatred and parental issues ( more on the Broken Ace trope later on the list ). 

--- Always Someone Better. the character who is the best-of-the-best with a supporting cast that Can't Catch Up. more powerful than the super hero, or more skilled than the ninja, or smarter than the professor, and so on.

---  Achilles' Heel. any seemingly Nigh Invulnerable character will inevitably have some key weakness that can and will be exploited. in kakashi’s case, this is his massive stamina issues, exacerbated by the use of his sharingan, which demands a ridiculous amount of chakra when used. almost all of his major battles have ended with him fainting or bed-ridden for over-expending his energy.

--- Badass Bookworm. these characters are quiet, smart, and seemingly physically unimposing, but with Hidden Depths of formidable physical and practical skills. naruto calls him as smart as shikamaru, which, combined with his status as the most elite ninjutsu specialist in konoha, would make him this easily.

--- Badass Teacher. they are just a regular teacher, until you threaten their students. after that you might want to start praying to whatever god is out there for mercy. you do not mess with their students. also related to the Sink-or-Swim Mentor, as seen in his bell test, which doubles as a Secret Test of Character for his students.

--- Bishōnen. the term bishōnen simply connotes a really, really attractive male. it is seen as somewhat of a gag through the manga, but the truth is that an unmasked kakashi is seen to give nosebleeds, provoke swooning, blushing, and in general cause strangers to stop and stare. related to this is the Even the Guys Want Him trope, as both the few females and males who have seen him unmasked are, well, very impressed to say the least.

--- Blessed with Suck. when a character is given a special ability that seems to cause nothing but trouble for them. because he isn't an uchiha, he can't deactivate the sharingan and it rapidly drains his chakra reserves whenever he uses it, leaving him bedridden after extended use. he keeps the eye covered when he doesn't need it in order to prevent this. the mangekyō sharingan, in particular, places a great strain on kakashi, and precipitated the deterioration of his vision until eventually his eye went blind during the fourth shinobi world war.

--- Broken Ace. kakashi talks about his broken past to sasuke, to try and convince him that revenge isn't everything and that living with the pain of his losses, while difficult, is possible. it doesn't work. later, in the battle against kaguya, kakashi tells obito that losing obito, rin, and minato all within the span of a year all but completely broke him, going on to state that there was nothing stopping him from completely sinking into despair except for the fact that obito had entrusted his sharingan ( and thus, his dream of seeing the future together ) to him. given the amount of characters that turned to darker paths for similar reasons, it's a bit of an eye-opener as to how close kakashi could have been to completely losing himself as well.

--- Child Prodigy. as youngest genin and chunin, kakashi graduated at 5 years old from the academy and went on to become the most accomplished shinobi of his generation.

--- Cool Teacher. team 7 was the first team that he ever passed, because they're the first one to catch his lesson on putting each other's safety ahead of the mission. look underneath the underneath.

--- Deadpan Snarker. always has a straight face on, no matter the absurdity of the situation. the mask probably helps in this department. [ kakashi: naruto, you can't kill the client. that's not how it works. ]

--- Despair Event Horizon. the line that, once crossed, destroys any last remaining sense of hope. it could be for a cause, a person, a situation, or simple survival. a character has given up on it, and there is no going back. it can lead soldiers to despair — or even suicide, if they don't simply lose the will to live. it can turn an ideal hero into an anti-hero or an outright villain. it's in his time in ANBU ( during and after the kyuubi attack ) that kakashi was dangerously close to this after the death of his sensei, leaving him the last living member of his team. it's implied that the reason why kakashi wasn't a big part of naruto's life until he became a genin was because he was so mentally anguished that he couldn't be trusted around small children, even if they were his sensei's son. he was barely able to take care of himself ; there is no way he would've been able to handle taking care of a baby jinchuuriki at the same time. it took a lot of time and support for him to move past this, and it wasn't until he was assigned to team 7 that he really began to heal.

--- Everybody's Dead, Dave. his backstory can be summed up in this one trope. when sasuke threatens to kill someone close to him so kakashi can understand his pain, kakashi replies that everyone he cares about is already dead.

--- Failure Hero. this is how he sees himself after watching his childhood team die and later on when he failed to talk sasuke out of defecting.

--- Friendly Rivalry. proud partner on the ultimate rivalry with maito gai, lasting from their early childhood, up into adulthood, and still very, very intense and showing no signs of slowing down.

--- Generation Xerox. this trope takes following in your parent's footsteps to a whole new level. they haven’t just inherited their parents' character traits and superpowers — they've inherited their entire life story. kakashi was mentioned to greatly resemble his father sakumo hatake, Konoha's White Fang, which made his enemies tremble in fear of him even when he was just about 13 years of age, mistaking him for his father. he's also a generation xerox of jiraiya. he lost his teacher, lost his student to the dark side, his closest childhood friend turned into one of the most reviled criminals in history and was indirectly responsible for their teacher's death, and has a near pathological Heroic Self-Deprecation as well.

--- Heroic Self-Deprecation. he literally calls himself trash when talking to obito. learning that his childhood friend obito, his idol and hero, the person who kakashi has modeled his entire life after, is responsible for nearly every tragedy that has befallen him over the years, starting with their teacher's death, all but broke him completely — the amount of self-hatred he felt after that revelation was almost insurmountable.

--- Hidden Depths. from naruto's point of view, he has this generally cheerful, constantly tardy teacher who is a Flat Character, someone he doesn't really think or worry about all that much. however, during the fight with obito, it turns out that that same tardy, cheery guy who's been protecting naruto all these years is indirectly responsible for creating the main villain of the story, and he has one of the worst background stories of all the characters in the series.

--- I Let Gwen Stacy Die. specifically, he killed rin himself... because she chose to jump in the way of his raikiri rather than become a Trojan Horse and be the catalyst of her village’s destruction. 

--- Instant Expert. they are almost universally capable of instantly figuring out how to use their stolen powers, typically to the same level of skill or effectiveness, or even a greater level, as the character who had the power first.

--- The Leader. even though his students outclass him strength-wise during the fourth shinobi world war, kakashi remains their leader. sasuke tries to take over, but his strategies against kaguya fail miserably. kakashi comes up with an alternative plan in minutes, making use of his students' skills as well as his own, and it instantly succeeds. afterwards, even the Sage of the Sixth Paths compliments his leadership ability.

--- Mask Power. is never seen without a mask on. and in fact, he’s never seen with his whole face revealed. not for eating, not for drinking either. some distraction or accident will suddenly occur so that his face remains private. team 7 is shown trying to see under kakashi's mask but when they finally get him to remove it in front of them, underneath is... another mask. according to pakkun, he hates being photographed without it. when he becomes hokage, his face on the mountain still has the mask on.

--- Obfuscating Stupidity. kakashi is first shown as a goofy teacher who falls for one of naruto's unbelievably idiotic pranks, but he soon reveals himself to be badass. his enemies do know he's dangerous, and treat him as such, but he's far more dangerous than most of them have been led to believe. he makes deliberate misleading first impressions, which cause people to underestimate him, and then makes uses of that fact to his advantage.

--- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! in the ninja world, those who break the rules are scum, that's true, but those who abandon their friends are worse than scum.

--- Shell-Shocked Veteran. he lost his father to suicide, his childhood friend to an enemy attack, his teammate rin, who he himself killed, and his mentor minato to the kyuubi. the reason kakashi was always late for his training sessions with his genin team? every morning he spends hours just standing in front of the konoha memorial to honor his comrades' memory. in immediate aftermath of rin's Heroic Sacrifice kakashi suffers Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. he keeps seeing rin die by his hands, having nightmares, and as a result becomes far, far more withdrawn. due to the trauma he couldn't use his chidori anymore since he kept thinking of rin. it's stated that during his time in ANBU, kakashi became so depressed that gai literally begged the third hokage to either allow gai himself to join or to release kakashi from service altogether. it was only after his jounin instructor transfer and with gai's persistent friendship that kakashi's mental health started to improve for the first time in years.

--- Shrouded in Myth. a Living Legend, mysterious and untouchable. rumors and hearsay seem to surround their every word and deed.

--- The Stoic. probably the hardest character to get a rise out of in the entire series, except when the Icha Icha series or his dead childhood friend is concerned.

--- Team Dad. the opposite to the Team Mom, more often than not the disciplinarian, lead-by-example-kind of character. he tends to be strict and gruff, but he never hesitates to put his life on the line for his team members. sometimes the facade might even crack and he'll show undisguised pride over his kids.

--- Wise Beyond His Years. kakashi graduated from the academy at five, passed the chunin exam one year later, and became a jonin not much later. all through his childhood, people remarked how mature he was, an outlier from his peers.

--- Wishful Projection. kakashi is a strange case in which his projection was on someone who he thought was dead. obito, who is the one death he has never managed to move past. somewhere down the line, he went from deceased childhood friend whose last wishes I need to honor, to idol whose memory and ideals I need to live up to. a lot of kakashi's baggage stems from his over-idealization of obito ; some part of him genuinely believes that obito always would've succeeded where he failed. kakashi is subconsciously projecting his prodigious abilities and genius reputation on to obito, since it was his sacrifice and ideals that kakashi lives on for. learning that obito became the Big Bad almost broke him, but it was also the event that contributed to him seeing obito as a person again and finally being able to move on with his life.

[thisisatestsff-blog]

Newsletter #99 September — November, 2012

RECENTLY RECEIVED AND FORTHCOMING SCIENCE FICTION

Already Received

Doctor Who Magazine #447

 (The Doctor must face every Dalek ever; Steven Moffat interview; more) $8.99

Doctor Who Magazine #448

 (William Russell on being Doctor Who's first action hero; interview with Neil Gaiman; more) $8.99

Doctor Who Magazine #449

 (First look at the 2013 series; casting director Andy Pryor talks about his work; more) $8.99

Fantasy & Science Fiction July / August 2012

 (New fiction, reviews, more) $7.50

Locus #617 June 2012

 (Interviews with William F. Nolan and Genevieve Valentine; Nebula Awards; forthcoming books; industry news, reviews, more) $6.95

Locus #618 July 2012

(Young adult fiction special issue; interviews with Holly Black, Tamora Pierce, and Rae Carson; Locus Awards; Ray Bradbury tributes; industry news, reviews, more) $6.95

Locus #619 August 2012

 (Interviews with Jack Vance and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer; award news; industry news, reviews, more) $6.95

Abraham, Daniel

Shadow and Betrayal: A Shadow in Summer / A Betrayal in Winter

 (Long Price #1 / #2: Omnibus reprint; 2 fantasy novels) $17.99

Adams, John J. (ed)

Other Worlds Than These

 (PBO; Anthology; reprints 31 stories of parallel worlds) $16.99

Asaro, Catherine

Aurora in Four Voices

(Collection; 2 novellas and 3 short stories (1 original to this volume), all sf, plus an essay on how she uses math to craft her alien worlds) $30.00

Baker, L-J

Promises, Promises

(After making a series of improbable predictions about Princess Beryl's future, Sandy, a mediocre witch, is commanded to make them all come true within a year - or face the executioner. Luckily, her dyke friends are willing and able to join her on her quest) $15.00

Bedford, K.A.

Paradox Resolution

(Spider Webb #2: PBO; Spider Webb fixes time machines for a living, and hates it. The time machine biz has changed. But one machine - an illegal, radically overclocked hotrod built by Spider's boss - has been stolen, and Spider is the only one who might be able to find it) $14.95

Beukes, Lauren

Zoo City

(Clarke Award winner. Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty online 419 scam habit - and a talent for finding lost things. But when her latest client turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she's forced to take her least favorite kind of job: missing persons) $15.00

Bradbury, Ray

Fahrenheit 451

(Reissue; Guy Montag is a fireman, his job to burn that most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. He never questions this destruction, until he meets a young neighbor who introduces him to a past where people didn't live in fear, and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television. When she suddenly disappears, Montag starts hiding books in his home; when this is discovered, he must run for his life) $11.99

Broderick, Damien

Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010

(PBO; Nonfiction; discusses each novel and its author(s) in the context of popular literature, as well as providing a plot synopsis and mini review) $14.99

Carey, Mike/Gross, Peter

On to Genesis

(Unwritten #5: PBO; Full color graphic novel. Not for kids. Reprints issues 25-30 of the comic. Tom Taylor's just a daring heist away from the journals that will reveal the truth: was he born of flesh and blood, or written into existence by sheer storytelling magic?) $14.99

Carroll, Jonathan

The Woman Who Married a Cloud

 (Collection; 37 fantasy stories, some original to this volume) $45.00

Chen, Haiyan/Li, Fang (ed)  

Eight Dragons on the Roof and Other Tales

 (Kids; Anthology; 34traditional dragon stories from China) $12.95

Conley, Darby

Survival of the Filthiest

 (Get Fuzzy: PBO; Black & white daily strips, color Sunday strips) $12.99

Cox, Greg

The Dark Knight Rises

 (PBO; Novelization of the film) $7.99

Cronin, Justin

The Passage

(Passage #1: A security breach at a secret facility unleashes the monstrous product of a military experiment. As civilization breaks down to predators and prey, FBI agent Brad Wolgast flees with 6-year-old Amy, a refugee from the project, whose odyssey will lead her towards the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun) $7.99

Dick, Philip K.

Now Wait for Last Year

(Reissue; Earth is trapped in the crossfire of an unwinnable war between two alien civilizations. Its leader is perpetually on the verge of death. And a new drug that haphazardly sends its users traveling through time has just entered circulation. Caught up in all of it, Dr. Eric Sweetscent has questions. Is Earth on the right side of the war? Is he supposed to heal Earth's leader or keep him sick? And can he change the harrowing future that the drug has shown him?) $13.95

Dick, Philip K.

The Simulacra

(Reissue; On a ravaged Earth, fate and circumstances bring together a disparate group, including a fascist with dreams of a coup, a composer who plays his instrument with his mind, a First Lady who calls all the shots, and the world's last practicing therapist. And they all must contend with an underclass that is beginning to ask a few too many questions, aided by a man called Loony Luke and his very persuasive pet alien) $13.95

Dick, Philip K.

Ubik

(Reissue; Glen Runciter and his teams of anti-psychics protect corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. When he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in a dreamlike state of suspended animation. Soon, the surviving members of the team begin experiencing strange phenomena, such as Runciter's face appearing on coins and the world seeming to move backward in time. As consumables deteriorate and technology gets ever more primitive, the group needs to find out what is causing the shifts, and what a mysterious product called Ubik has to do with it all) $13.95

Duncan, Dave

Wildcatter

(PBO; An independent starship heads to Cacafuego, intent on beating the larger corporations to the exoplanet's resources. Will a yellow warning flag planted in orbit stop them? Or, if their prospectors venture to the surface anyway, will they survive?) $9.95

Egan, Greg

The Clockwork Rocket

(Orthogonal #1: Threatened by strange meteors, a planet sends a spaceship crew on a journey to discover the science their planet urgently needs and bring it back in time to avert disaster. The trip will last many generations for those on board, but will return after just a few planetary years) $14.99

Fies, Brian

Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?

(Full color graphic novel. Depicts an optimistic and ambitious era fueled by industry, engines, electricity, rockets, middle-class popular culture, and the atom bomb, from the 1939 World's Fair to the last Apollo space mission in 1975) $14.95

Gaiman/Bealer et al (ed)  

Neil Gaiman and Philosophy

 (PBO; Nonfiction; essays on Gaiman's writing) $19.95

Grant, Maxwell

Prince of Evil / Messenger of Death / Room 1313

 (Shadow #60: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Grant, Maxwell

The Triple Trail / Murder Genius

 (Shadow #61: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Grant, Maxwell

Cyro / The Man Who Died Twice

 (Shadow #62: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Grant, Maxwell

The Devil's Paymaster / The Wasp Returns

 (Shadow #63: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Hand, Elizabeth

Glimmering

(PBO; Revised from the 1997 edition. Jack struggles to keep his life afloat and his loved ones safe while battling AIDS. A former lover gifts him with a mysterious elixir rumored to cure AIDS. But soon, the side effects become apparent, and Jack gets mixed up with a bizarre entourage of rock stars, Japanese scientists, corporate executives, AIDS victims, and religious terrorists, all competing to control mankind's fate in the 21st century) $14.95

Hearn, Lafcadio

Kwaidan: Weird Tales from Japan

(Reissue; Collection; 29 traditional tales of ghosts and monsters, collected and translated by Hearn during his 14-year stay in Japan) $15.95

Hodgson, William Hope

Horrors from Haunted Seas

 (Collection; 17 stories of nautical mystery and horror, originally published between 1905 and 1923) $16.95

Holt, Tom

The Better Mousetrap

(Insurance is indeed the force that binds the universe together. Frank Carpenter, one of the foremost magical practitioners of our age, felt himself irresistibly drawn to it - until he met Jane, with her annoying habit of falling out of trees and getting killed. Repeatedly. Soon they find themselves face to face with the greatest enigma of our times: When is a door not a door?) $15.95

Hopkinson, Nalo

Report from Planet Midnight

(PBO; Collection; transcript of a speech tackling sexism and racism in publishing, plus 2 short stories, an interview, and a bibliography) $12.00

Kane/O'Regan (ed)

The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

 (Anthology; reprints 25 stories) $13.95

King, Stephen

11/22/63

(On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Al reveals that the storeroom of his diner is a portal to 1958, and enlists his friend Jack on a mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination) $19.99

Koch, G.J. (Gini)

Alexander Outland: Space Pirate

(PBO; Alexander and his crew - which includes an engineer of dubious sanity, a deposed planetary governor, and an annoyingly unflappable sexbot - get in trouble with the military, the Mob, mad bombers, and would-be conquerors) $14.99

Lundoff, Catherine

Silver Moon

(Becca Thornton, middle-aged and recently out of the closet, discovers that menopause has turned her into a werewolf. And a number of other women in Wolf's Point have had the same experience. As the newest member of the pack, Becca figures her nights will be spent protecting the town and running through the woods howling at the moon. But there are werewolf hunters in town, and they've got Becca in their sights) $15.00

Maas, Sarah J.

Throne of Glass

(YA; Celaena the assassin must defeat 23 other criminals in a competition at the castle in order to be released from prison. But something evil dwells in the castle. When her competitors start dying, her fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival) $17.99

Mandelo, Brit (ed)

Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction

 (Anthology; reprints 17 stories that question the ways in which gender and sexuality have been rigidly defined) $20.00

Marmell, Ari

The Abomination Vault

(Darksiders: PBO; Based on the videogame. Ages before the events of Darksiders and Darksiders II, Death and War are tasked with stopping a group of renegades intent on locating the Abomination Vault) $15.00

Martin, George R.R. et al

A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Companion Cookbook

(Song of Ice and Fire: Nonfiction; the authors of a popular food blog based on Martin's epic fantasy provide over 100 recipes, plus a guide to dining and entertaining in Seven Kingdoms style) $35.00

Matthews, Hugh

Song of the Serpent

 (Pathfinder Tales: PBO; Novel based on the game) $9.99

McMann, Lisa

The Unwanteds

(Kids; In a society that purges 13-year-olds who are creative, identical twins Aaron and Alex are separated, one to attend University while the other, supposedly Eliminated, finds himself in a wondrous place where youths hone their creativity and learn magic) $6.99

Merciel, Liane

Nightglass

 (Pathfinder Tales: PBO; Novel based on the game) $9.99

Moorcock, Michael et al

Elric: The Balance Lost Volume 2

 (PBO; Full color graphic novel; reprints issues 5-8 of the comic book) $14.99

Payton, T. Aaron

The Constantine Affliction

(London, 1864: A malady that kills some and transforms others into the opposite sex has spread upheaval throughout society. When Pimm, an investigator, and Skye, a journalist, stumble onto a plot that links a criminal overlord with the Queen's new consort, they find the forces of both high and low society arrayed against them) $26.99

Pinkwater, Daniel

Irving and Muktuk: Two Bad Bears

(Bad Bears #1: Kids; Full color picture book; Officer Bunny is the law in Yellowtooth. But can he protect the town's Blueberry Muffin Festival from muffin-loving polar bears Irving and Muktuk?) $6.99

Pinkwater, Daniel

Bad Bears in the Big City

(Bad Bears #2: Kids; Full color picture book; Irving and Muktuk have a new home at the lovely Bayonne, NJ, zoo. But with a muffin factory right next door, can mischief be far behind?) $6.95

Pratt, Tim

City of the Fallen Sky

 (Pathfinder Tales: PBO; Novel based on the game) $9.99

Quinn, Seabury

The Devil's Bride

(Jules de Grandin: Reissue; French occult detective Jules de Grandin tackles a case involving black magic, murder and mutilation, rape and torture, and genocidal race war. Plus bonus story 'House of Golden Masks', pitting de Grandin against white slavers) $14.95

Rankin, Robert

The Mechanical Messiah and Other Marvels of the Modern Age

(1897: The British Empire encompasses Mars, and an uneasy peace exists between the peoples of Venus, Jupiter, and Earth. In Whitechapel, a monster is once more committing hideous acts of murder, and it may take nothing less than the Mechanical Messiah Himself to save London, the Empire, and all of the solar system from impending apocalypse) $14.95

Riordan, Rick

The Lost Hero

(Heroes of Olympus #1: Kids; Percy and his friends have rebuilt their beloved Camp Half-Blood, where a new group of demigods must prepare for a chilling prophecy of their own. But to survive the quest they've inherited, they'll need some help) $9.99

Roberts, Adam

By Light Alone

(In a world where people have been genetically engineered so that they can photosynthesize sunlight with their hair, the poor grow their hair, while the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by eating. The young daughter of an affluent family is kidnapped, but the ransom demands are refused. A year later a young woman arrives at the family home claiming to be their daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home?) $14.95

Robeson, Kenneth

Murder on Wheels / The Three Gold Crowns / Death to the Avenger

 (Avenger #7: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Robeson, Kenneth

The Pirate's Ghost / The Green Eagle (Bama cover)

 (Doc Savage #50: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Robeson, Kenneth

The Derrick Devil / The Spotted Men

 (Doc Savage #58: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Robeson, Kenneth

Pirate Isle / The Speaking Stone

 (Doc Savage #59: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Robeson, Kenneth

He Could Stop the World / The Laugh of Death

 (Doc Savage #60: Pulp reprints) $14.95

Salvatore, R.A.

Charon's Claw

(Forgotten Realms: Neverwinter #3: Drizzt draws his sword once more to aid his friends, assisting the elf Dahlia as she enacts revenge, and helping an old foe break the bonds that have held him hostage for over a century $27.95

Scott, M/Barnett, L

Point of Hopes

(Astreiant #1: Reissue; In the great city of Astreaint, magic is real, stars guide lives, and Nicolas Rathe and his colleagues are attempting to establish a police force. Rathe and Eslingen work together to halt an astrological and alchemical conspiracy against the queen, and rescue scores of kidnapped children) $18.00

Scott, Melissa

Point of Knives

(Astreiant #1.5: Novella. Rathe and Eslingen work together to solve the murders of father-and-son pirates. When pirate treasure proves a threat to the throne, they must make uncomfortable choices) $13.00

Shepard, Lucius

The Dragon Griaule

 (Collection; 6 tales, 1 original to this volume) $45.00

Smith, Jeff

The Drift

(RASL #1: PBO; Black & white graphic novel. Not for kids. A dimension-jumping art thief races through space and time searching for his next big score - and trying to escape his past) $13.00

Smith, Jeff

The Fire of St. George

(RASL #2: PBO; Black & white graphic novel. Not for kids. A dimension-jumping art thief races through space and time searching for his next big score - and trying to escape his past) $15.00

Smith, Jeff

Romance at the Speed of Light

(RASL #3: PBO; Black & white graphic novel. Not for kids. A dimension-jumping art thief races through space and time searching for his next big score - and trying to escape his past) $15.00

Stauber, Katy

Spin the Sky

(PBO; After years away at war, Cesar Vaquero returns to Ithaca, an orbital colony that boasts the only cattle in space, to find his wife and son don't recognize him. Penelope swore off men after her husband disappeared, and has been busy running the ranch, raising her son, and fending off suitors. But something about the war-weary man stirs forgotten feelings in her, even as sabotage, rustlers, and a space stampede threaten to tear Ithaca apart) $14.99

Swift, E.J.

Osiris

(Osiris Project #1: Osiris has been cut off from the land since the Great Storm 50 years ago. Adelaide is a jaded socialite. Vikram is a third-generation refugee, who sees his people dying of cold and starvation. As a brutal winter brings the city closer to riot and revolution, these two will try to bridge the gap dividing the city) $26.99

Szathmari, Sandor

Voyage to Kazohinia

(A dystopian classic in Hungary, available in the U.S. for the first time. A shipwrecked surgeon finds himself among the Hins, who live a technologically advanced existence without emotions, desires, arts, money or politics. Unhappy amid the bleak perfection, he asks to be admitted to the closed settlement of the Behins, beings with souls and atavistic human traits) $16.95

Tan, Charles (ed)

Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology

 (14 original stories) $18.00

Tobin, Paul (ed)

White Cloud Worlds

 (Full color art book showcasing the work of 27 established and emerging sf and fantasy artists from Aotearoa New Zealand) $29.99

Walton, Evangeline

The Mabinogion Tetralogy: Prince of Annwn / The Children of Llyr / The Song of Rhiannon / The Island of the Mighty (alternate title: The Virgin and the Swine)

 (Omnibus reprint; 4 classic fantasies based on Welsh mythology) $24.95

Watson/Whates (ed)

The Mammoth Book of SF Wars

 (Anthology; 24 stories (3 original to this volume) of war in the future) $13.95

Whitehead, Colson

Zone One

(After a pandemic devastates the planet, a team of civilian volunteers is tasked with clearing out feral zombies from lower Manhattan. Mark is occupied with the mundane mission of zombie mop-up, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible tasks of coming to terms with a fallen world. Then things start to go wrong) $15.00

Williams, Mazarkis

The Emperor's Knife

(Tower & Knife #1: When the Cerani Empire is devastated by a strange plague, long-planned conspiracies boil over into violence, and an invincible evil intelligence known as the Pattern Master appears from the deep desert. Only three people stand in his way: a lost prince, a world-weary assassin, and a young girl from the steppes who saw a path in a pattern once, among the waving grasses - a path that just might save them all) $14.99

Williams, Tad

A Stark and Wormy Knight

 (Collection; 11 stories, novellas, and scripts) $40.00

Wilson, N.D.

The Dragon's Tooth

(Ashtown Burials #1: Kids; Cyrus and Antigone Smith join an ancient order of explorers who search for lost cities and powerful artifacts, and act as jallers to unkillable criminals who have terrorized the world for millennia) $7.99

Wingrove, David

Son of Heaven

(Chung Kuo Prequel #1: Dorset, 2085: Chinese airships are in the skies, and Jake finds himself forcibly incorporated into a global city of some 34 billion souls, where a resurgent China is seeking to abolish the past and bring about world peace through rigidly enforced order. But a civil war looms, and Jake will find himself at the heart of the struggle) $12.95

Wrede, Patricia C.

Shadow Magic

(Lyra #1: Reissue; Her kingdom's ancient enemies have kidnapped 20-year-old Princess Alethia, carrying her off through the forest. These are magic woods, home to fabled creatures whose existence she has always doubted. To find her way home, Alethia will have to learn to trust the old tales, which hold the only hope of saving her kingdom; Signed copies) $14.99

Wrede, Patricia C.

Daughter of Witches

(Lyra #2: Reissue; After her parents were executed for practicing magic, Ranira became indentured servant to a brutal innkeeper. While attempting to protect her from her master's cruelty, three guests reveal magical powers. Now she must unleash her own magical powers to save her new friends from certain death; Signed copies) $14.99

Wrede, Patricia C.

The Harp of Imach Thyssel

(Lyra #3: Reissue; Emereck, a minstrel, and Flindaran, a nobleman masquerading as a tramp, have found an abandoned castle, and in it, one of Lyra's most sought-after treasures. Emereck must learn to harness its strength to create and destroy, with the fate of the kingdom hanging in the balance; Signed copies) $22.99

Wrede, Patricia C.

Caught in Crystal

(Lyra #4: Reissue; When a sorceress asks for a room at Kayl's country inn, Kayl is sure the woman has come to take her back to the life she renounced. To save her family and her world, Kayl will have to unlock a side of herself she buried long ago; Signed copies) $24.99

Wrede, Patricia C.

The Raven Ring

(Lyra #5: Reissue; Learning that her mother has died far from home, of wounds sustained in an attack, Eleret sets out to reclaim her mother's belongings - especially a ring etched with a raven. She doesn't know what's special about the ring, but someone was willing to kill for it. To make it home in one piece, she will have to unlock the mysteries of the ring; Signed copies) $23.99

Zeltserman, Dave

Monster: A Novel of Frankenstein

(19th-century Germany: When his beloved is murdered, a young man is accused of the crime. Broken on the wheel and left for dead, he awakens on a lab table, transformed into an abomination. He finds his tormentor, Victor Frankenstein, in league with the Marquis de Sade, creating something much more sinister) $23.95

Expected Early September

Aguirre, Ann

Endgame

(Sirantha Jax #6: PBO; The planet La'heng is occupied by foreign conquerors, but Jax means to liberate it as part of a grass-roots resistance movement) $7.99

Aiken, G.A.

How to Drive a Dragon Crazy

(Dragon Kin #6: PBO; Izzy is trying to fulfill a ridiculous quest for a pushy god; sexy dragon warlord Eibhear the Blue is determined to come along to protect her) $7.99

Allston, Aaron

Conviction

(Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi #7: Abeloth is on the run, but has not given up its plans to destroy the galaxy, even as the Jedi and the Sith abandon all pretense of cooperation and make plans to rout each other) $7.99

Almasi, G.T.

Blades of Winter

(Shadowstorm #1: Rather than risk another war, the four superpowers - the U.S., the Soviet Union, Greater Germany, and the Nationalist Republic of China - have poured their resources into creating superspies known as Levels. Alix is one of the best U.S. Levels. But when a decision explodes - literally - in her face, she uncovers a conspiracy that could upset the balance of power) $9.99

Anderson, K/Peart N

Clockwork Angels

(Companion novel to the newest Rush album; a young man travels across a steampunk world of lost cities, pirates, anarchists, carnivals, and a Watchmaker who imposes precision on daily life) $24.95

Anderson, Kevin J.

Death Warmed Over

(Dan Shamble #1: PBO; A resurrected mummy is suing the museum that put him on display. Two witches, victims of a curse gone wrong, are seeking restitution from a publisher for not using 'spell check' on magical tomes. It's all in a day's work for zombie P.I. Dan Chambeaux. And he's got to figure out a very personal question: Who killed him?) $15.00

Anthony, Piers

Well-Tempered Clavicle

(Xanth #35: Picka Bones and his sister Joy'nt are off in search of adventure with three creatures newly arrived from Mundania - and not the sort of creatures you might expect!) $7.99

Archer, Alex

The Matador Crown

(Rogue Angel #38: PBO; Invited to the Museum of Cadiz to assess some coins, Annja soon finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation that leads her to an illegal - and deadly - collection of Visigoth votive crowns) $6.99

Axler, James

Crimson Waters

(Deathlands #106: PBO; Stranded in a gutted redoubt in the West Indies, Ryan and his friends must escape before they are wiped out by pirates) $6.99

Baggott, Julianna

Pure

(Pressia barely remembers the Detonations, when the world turned to ash, dust, and damaged bodies. Having reached the age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia - to be trained as a soldier, or used as a live target - she is on the run. Those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked are inside the Dome. Partridge - whose father is an important man in the Dome, and whose mother never made it inside their shelter - feels isolated. When he learns that his mother might still be alive, he risks his life to leave the Dome to find her. And when Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again) $9.99

Ballantine, Philippa

Wrayth

(Book of the Order #3: PBO; Sorcha is still unable to move or speak; even her partner Merrick cannot reach her through their shared bond. But when Sorcha is abducted by men seeking her lover Raed, only Merrick can find and rescue her) $7.99

Base, Graeme

Little Elephants

( Kids; Full color picture book; a boy living on a farm in Texas gets a big surprise when he discovers tiny flying elephants under his bed) $16.95

Battersby, Lee

The Corpse-Rat King

(Battlefield looter Marius is mistaken for a dead monarch by one of the dead soldiers, and transported to the Kingdom of the Dead. The dead need a King to remind God where they are. To recover his life, Marius must return to the surface and find them a King. Which he fully intends to do - just as soon as he stops running) $7.99

Bell, Alex

Lex Trent versus the Gods

(Lex Trent #1: Lex Trent's world is inhabited by magicians, crones, and a menagerie of gods and goddesses. And while Lex is seemingly dedicated to his legal studies, he leads a double life as a notorious cat burglar who has been evading capture for years. But Lex's luck is about to run out, because the Goddess of Fortune has selected him to be her player in the highly dangerous Games) $11.95

Beyer, Kristen

The Eternal Tide

(Star Trek Voyager: PBO; The fleet continues its exploration of the Delta Quadrant, investigating the current status of sectors formerly controlled by the Borg) $7.99

Blaylock, James P.

Zeuglodon

(Pursued by kidnappers, three junior members of the Guild of St. George must descend into the depths of the hollow earth to return the Sleeper to his ancestral home. But awakening him might mean the end of the dream, the closing of the passage, and three intrepid explorers marooned in a savage land) $35.00

Bond, Gwenda

Blackwood

(YA; 114 modern-day people have disappeared from Roanoke Island. Miranda, from the island's most infamous family, and Phillips, who hears the voices of the dead, must dodge everyone from federal agents to long-dead alchemists as they work to uncover the secrets of the new Lost Colony) $9.99

Bornikova, Phillipa

This Case Is Gonna Kill Me

(Linnet comes from an affluent human family. When she begins her career at a vampire law firm, she discovers that, in a workplace where some humans will eventually achieve immense power and centuries of extra lifespan, office politics can be vicious beyond belief) $14.99

Brockmann, Suzanne

Born to Darkness

(Determined to end the scourge of a designer drug that can make anyone a superpowered Greater-Than, but exacts a lethal toll, operative Michelle Mackenzie is knocked for a loop when she meets the new test subject: former Navy SEAL Shane Laughlin, her latest one-night stand) $7.99

Brook, Meljean

Riveted

(Iron Seas #3: PBO; Five years ago, Annika unwitting endangered the secret of her Iceclandic community. Now she serves on an airship - and her home is again threatened when David comes aboard, looking to expose her secrets. Disaster leaves them stranded on a glacier, pursued by a madman - with heat rising between them) $16.00

Buehlman, Christopher

Those Across the River

(When Frank Nichols returns to his Georgia hometown to write a history of his family's plantation, he soon learns there is a presence there that demands sacrifice - and has been waiting for Frank's homecoming) $15.00

Buettner, Robert

Undercurrents

(Orphan's Legacy #2: Sent to bring down the local politicos of a politically quarantined giant habitat, Lt. Jazen Parker finds himself inclined to abandon the place to its ways - until he uncovers a plot to throw a 500-hundred-planet alliance into anarchy) $7.99

Carroll, Lee

Black Swan Rising

(Garet James #1: New York City shopkeeper John Dee offers jeweler Garet James a generous sum of money to open a vintage silver box. The symbol of the swan on the box matches a ring Garet's mother gave her, and when she opens the box, otherworldly things start happening) $7.99

Carson, Rae

The Girl of Fire and Thorns

(Elisa #1: YA; Andre Norton Award finalist. Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness. Elisa is the chosen one. She could be everything to those who need her most - if the prophecy is fulfilled, if she finds the power deep within herself, if she doesn't die young. Most of the chosen do) $9.99

Cassidy, Dakota

Accidentally Dead

(Accidentally Paranormal #2: After a patient bites her, dental assistant Nina Blackman ends up with a set of fangs, a taste for blood - and an irresistible attraction to the patient) $7.99

Charlton, Blake

Spellbound

(Nicodemus #2: The demon behind his curse has hatched a plot to force Nicodemus to change language and ultimately use it to destroy all human life. Nico faces challenges from all sides as he struggles to thwart the demon's plan) $7.99

Christopher, Adam

Seven Wonders

(PBO; Tony lives in a city under siege by hooded supervillain The Cowl. When Tony develops superpowers and acts to take down The Cowl, he finds that the local superheroes aren't as grateful as he thought they'd be) $12.99

Ciruelo

The Book of the Dragon

 (Reissue; Full color. Reveals the secrets of the dragons, illuminating a culture filled with poetry, magic, and art) $17.95

Cook, Glen

A Path to Coldness of Heart

(Dread Empire #8: King Bragi Ragnorson is the captive of Lord Shih-kaa and the Empress Mist at the heart of the Dread Empire. Bragi's queen and what remains of his army seek to find and free their king, hampered by the loss or desertion of their best warriors. Dane, Duke of Greyfells, seeks to seize the rule of Kavelin. And in the ancient castle Fangdred, the sorcerer Varthlokkur waits, using his arts to spy on the world at large, and observing the puppet strings that control kings and empires alike) $15.99

Correia, Larry

Legion

(Monster Hunter #4: When hunters from around the world gather in Las Vegas for a conference, a creature left over from a WWII weapons experiment wakes up and goes on a rampage across the desert. A wager between rival companies turns into a race to see who can bag the creature first. But there's more to this case than meets the eye: the crew from MHI will have to stop an ancient god from turning Sin City into hell on earth; Signed copies; signing at Uncle Hugo’s Tuesday, September 18, 5-6 pm) $25.00

Crane, Carolyn

Head Rush

(Justine Jones #3: As Midcity cowers under martial law, sleepwalking cannibals, and a mysterious rash of paranormal copycat violence, Justine's search for answers leads her into the most dangerous mind game yet) $16.00

Curran, Kim

Shift

(YA; 16-year-old Scott learns he's a Shifter, with the power to undo any decision he's ever made. Pretty cool, until his world starts to unravel around him, and he realizes that using his power has terrible consequences) $9.99

Daniells, Rowena Cory

Sanctuary

(Outcast #3: With winter storms brewing and raiders drawn by rumors of wealth, tension grows on the overcrowded ships of the mystics. And although Imoshen sent the Sagora Scholars a request for sanctuary, they haven't replied) $8.99

De Grave, Kathleen

The Hour of Lead

(Kansas, 2039: An earthquake that has slowed down time forces two people to confront their pasts in order to repair their broken lives in the present) $14.95

Dick, Philip K.

Upon the Dull Earth

 (Collected Stories #3: Collection; 23 stories and novellas written in 1953 and 1954, plus extensive story notes) $40.00

Dick, Philip K.

Solar Lottery (alternate title: World of Chance)

(Reissue; In 2203 anyone can become the ruler of the solar system - it all comes down to the random turns of a giant wheel. But when a new Quizmaster takes over, the old one still keeps some rights, namely the right to hire assassins to attempt to kill the new leader. After the most recent change in leadership, employees of the former ruler scurry to find an assassin who can get past telepathic guards. But when one employee switches sides, troubling facts about the lottery system come to light, and it just might not be possible for anyone to win) $13.95

Dick, Philip K.

We Can Build You

(Reissue; When Louis Rosen's electronic organ company builds a pitch-perfect robotic replica of Abraham Lincoln, they are pulled into the orbit of a shady businessman, who is looking to use Lincoln for his own profit. Meanwhile, Rosen seeks Lincoln's advice as he woos a woman incapable of understanding human emotions - someone who may be even more robotic than Lincoln's replica) $13.95

Dick, Philip K.

The World Jones Made

(Reissue; Floyd Jones has always been able to see exactly one year into his future, a gift and curse that began one year before he was born. As a fortune-teller at a post-apocalyptic carnival, Jones is a powerful force, and may just be able to force society away from its paralyzing Relativism - if he can avoid the radioactively unstable government hitman on his tail) $13.95

Doctorow, C/Stross, C

The Rapture of the Nerds

(At the dusk of the 21st century, Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids happily living in a preserve at the bottom of a gravity well. Those who weren't happy have emigrated to the densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system. The metaconsciousness of the solar system occasionally spams Earth's networks with plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies. A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes, but there's always someone who will bite. So there's Tech Jury Service: random humans charged with assessing dozens of new inventions and ruling on whether to let them loose. Young Huw, a technophobic, misanthropic Welshman, has been selected for the latest jury) $24.99

Doctorow, Cory

For the Win

(YA; In electronic sweatshops, countless 'gold farmers', trapped by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay. A mysterious woman called Big Sister Nor will use her experience, knowledge of history, and connections to real-world organizers to build group of young people into a movement that can challenge the status quo) $10.99

Douglas, Ian

Bloodstar

(Star Corpsman #1: PBO; Navy Corpsman Elliot Carlyle and Bravo Company's Black Wizards are en route to the colony planet of Bloodworld, where the alien Qesh have made violent first contact) $7.99

Egan, Greg

The Eternal Flame

(Orthogonal #2: When a fuel shortage threatens the generation ship's voyage, Tamara the astronomer sees a risky solution in a meteor whose trajectory will bring it within range. Meanwhile, Carlo the biologist searches for a better way to control the ship's population explosion) $26.99

Elliott, Kate

Cold Fire

(Spiritwalker #2: Cat and Bee are caught in an intricate web of subterfuge and politics. Everyone seems to want something from them: the warlord who wants to conquer Europa, the Cold Mages who stand against him, and the dangerous Master of the Wild Hunt) $7.99

Flanagan, John

The Outcasts

(Brotherband #1: Kids; Skandians are known for their size and strength. Not Hal, Stig, and their friends. But that doesn't mean they don't have skills, or courage. And they'll need both to do battle at sea against the Wolves and the Sharks in the ultimate race) $8.99

Flavin, Teresa

The Blackhope Enigma

(Kids; Blackhope Tower is shrouded in intrigue, centering on a labyrinth and painting in the Mariner's Chamber. When 14-year-old Sunni visits the tower and sees her stepbrother Dean disappear, seemingly into the painting itself, she sets out to find him) $6.99

Flint, Eric (ed)

Ring of Fire III

 (Ring of Fire: Anthology; 20 original alternate history tales set in the world of  

1632

, by Flint, Lackey, and more) $7.99

Friedman, C.S.

Legacy of Kings

(Magister #3: With the Magisters hunting her for killing one of their own, Kamala's only hope of survival lies in the northern Protectorates. There spells are warped by a curse, originally intended to protect the lands of men from the souleaters. But the curse appears to be weakening - and the threat of the souleaters is once more falling across the land) $7.99

Froud, Brian & Wendy

Trolls

 (Art book; new and classic work by the Frouds, revealing the world of trolls) $35.00

Gaider, David

The Stolen Throne

 (Dragon Age: Prequel to video game  

Dragon Age: Origins

) $7.99

Gear, W.M. & Kathleen

The Broken Land

(First North Americans #19: Dangerous sorcerer Atotarho has set in motion a cataclysmic battle that threatens to destroy the Iroquoian world. To stop him, Jigonsaseh, Hiyawento, and Sky Messenger must find a way to unite five warring nations) $7.99

Gibson, William

Distrust That Particular Flavor

 (Collection; 25 essays and articles on technology, popular culture, writing, and more) $16.00

Gilman, Laura Anne

The Shattered Vine

(Vineart War #3: As conditions worsen throughout the Lands, Jerzy returns to the Berengia to delve into the magic that has been growing within him, knowing that his god-forbidden knowledge may be the only thing that can save the Lands Vin) $9.99

Golden, Christie

Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War

(World of Warcraft: When a beloved peacekeeper is pressed to the limit by an inconceivable horror, will it change her forever? Break her? Or redefine her role on Azeroth?) $26.00

Goonan, Kathleen Ann

In War Times

(1941: After his brother is killed at Pearl Harbor, Sam promises that he will do anything he can to stop the war, and is selected to study code breaking, electronics, and physics. He is seduced by a mysterious female physicist, and given the plans for a device that will end the war, perhaps even end the human predilection for war. But the device does something less, and more, than that) $15.99

Gorey, Edward

A Halloween Treat

(In a previously unpublished vignette, kids and cats go trick-or-treating, gathering loot that might be tricks - or their very own monsters. Plus a collection of ghastly ghost illustrations) $13.00

Green, Simon R.

Ghost of a Dream

(Ghost Finders #3: PBO; Renovations at the long-abandoned Haybarn Theater have been thrown off schedule by some peculiar incidents. The team figures investigating a haunted theater will be a walk in the park - until they encounter the Phantom of the Haybarn, an ancient evil with the ability to alter reality) $7.99

Greenwood, Ed

Elminster Enraged

(Forgotten Realms: Sage of Shadowdale #2: Inhabiting the body of a fallen dark elf, Elminster begins to rally Cormyr's Wizards of War. Manshoon has plans as well: to conquer Cormyr and be the new Emperor, and hunt down the Sage's clones) $25.95

Grimes, Linda

In a Fix

(Ciel Halligan #1: Aura adaptor Ciel Halligan takes on her clients' appearances and slips into their lives to handle situations they don't want to deal with themselves. Her current job, snagging a marriage proposal for her client during an island vacation, is pretty enjoyable - until her resort bungalow is blown up and her client's date is snatched by modern-day Vikings) $14.99

Grinti, Mike & Rachel

Claws

(Kids; Emma's family lives in a trailer park that's home to down-and-out harpies, hags, trolls - and Jack, a one-eyed, smooth-talking cat. He becomes Emma's friend, and she discovers that she, too, has cat magic - claws. She's going to need them to rescue her sister from the powerful faeries who stole her) $16.99

Harris/Kelner (ed)

An Apple for the Creature

 (Anthology; urban fantasy stories of unnatural education, including a new Sookie Stackhouse story) $26.95

Hartley, A.J.

Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact

(Kids; When he's forced to move from his tiny English town to Atlanta, Georgia, Darwen knows things will be different - but he wasn't expecting to discover that the old mirror in his new closet leads to another world - or that there are creatures there who are after something that only human children possess) $8.99

Hatke, Ben

Legends of Zita the Spacegirl

(Zita #2: PBO; Kids; Full color graphic novel; Zita is determined to make it home to Earth, but her robot doppelganger is wreaking havoc, and Zita is being blamed) $12.99

Herbert, James

The Secret of Crickley Hall

(Would you live in a place where ghostly things keep happening? Where hushed whimpering is heard? Where the presence of evil is all around you? The Caleighs did, but they had their reasons. They should have known better) $9.99

Hinks, Darius

Orion: The Vaults of Winter

(Warhammer: The forest-king Orion awakens from his winter slumber to discover he has been cursed. As the corruption spreads to the woodland realm around him, he must rely upon his loyal subjects to help him unmask a traitor) $11.99

Holkins, J/Krahulik, M

Magical Kids in Danger

(Penny Arcade #8: Full color. Collects the 2007 strips of the popular webcomic starring geeky heroes Gabe and Tycho, plus creator commentary) $14.99

Hughes, Alex

Clean

(Mindspace #1: PBO; Adam used to work for the Telepath's Guild. Now he works for the cops. His ability to get inside the twisted minds of suspects makes him their best interrogator. A serial killer is stalking the city, and Adam needs to solve the case, because he's just had a vision of the future - and he's the next to die) $7.99

Hunter, Erin

The Empty City

(Survivors #1: Kids; The humans are gone, and a new animal is ready to rule the world. Which animals are brave enough to take control when disaster strikes? And what enemies will stand in their way?) $16.99

Jacka, Benedict

Taken

(Alex Verus #3: PBO; Mage apprentices have been vanishing without a trace, and someone on the Council might be involved. Alex has no evidence, no witnesses, and no suspects, but he sees that he doesn't know the half of it - and that he could be the next to disappear) $7.99

Johnson-Shelton, Nils

The Invisible Tower

(Otherworld Chronicles #1: Kids; A mysterious message appears in Artie Kingfisher's favorite video game, leading him to a game store where a centuries-old wizard named Merlin holds the key to his destiny) $6.99

Johnson, Mat

Pym

 (A failed academic acquires an old slave narrative manuscript confirming that Edgar Allan Poe's  

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

 is a true story. He sets out for Antarctica to discover the land of black people that Poe describes, but instead he and his fellow adventurers are enslaved by the white ice creatures from the novel. Now this black crew must try to escape slavery all over again) $15.00

Kadrey, Richard

Devil Said Bang

(Sandman Slim #4: While ruling the denizens of darkness does have perks, James Stark isn't exactly thrilled with the course of his career. He has to hold off a host of killers while working on his escape plan. Meanwhile, a serial killer ghost is running wild in LA, and Slim's angelic alter ego is hiding in the lost days of time with a cabal who can rewrite reality) $24.99

Kibuishi, Kazu

Prince of the Elves

(Amulet #5: Kids; Full color graphic novel. The Elf King has forged new amulets which will allow him to invade Cielis and destroy it; Emily and her friends make desperate preparations to defend Cielis) $12.99

Kittredge, Caitlin

Soul Trade

(Black London #5: PBO; Crow-mage Jack Winter and former detective Pete Caldecott face formidable new enemies as they continue their quest to save Black London from destruction) $7.99

Kostic, Conor

Edda

(Epic #3: YA; In the virtual world of Edda, Scanthax the ruler decides he wants to invade another virtual world. This move embroils the universes of Edda, Saga, and Epic in all-out war - with three teenagers determined to try to restore peace) $9.99

Krentz/Castle, Jayne

The Lost Night

(PBO; Psychic Rachel Bonner has found peace and quiet on Rainshadow Island - until Harry Sebastian arrives to investigate strange events in the Preserve. She can sense the heart of darkness within him - and the stirrings of desire within her) $7.99

Lackey, M/Edghill, R

A Host of Furious Fancies: Beyond World's End / Spirits White as Lightning

 (Bedlam's Bard #3 / #4: Omnibus reprint; 2 fantasy novels) $13.00

LaValle, Victor

The Devil in Silver

(On his first night in New Hyde Hospital's psych ward, Pepper is visited by a terrifying creature who nearly kills him before being hustled away by the hospital staff. It's no delusion; Pepper rallies three other inmates in a plot to fight back) $27.00

Laws, Robin D.

Blood of the City

 (Pathfinder Tales: PBO; Novel based on the game) $9.99

Lee, Sharon/Miller, Steve

Dragon Ship

 (Liaden: Theo Waitley #4: Theo has a trade route to run for Clan Korval while she convinces the ghost ship  

Bechimo

 - and herself - that she wants to commit herself to being the human side of their immensely powerful symbiosis. While her former lover battles a nano-virus that's eating him alive, Theo faces the unexpected challenge of rescuing hundreds of stranded pilots and crewmen from an explosive situation in near orbit around a suddenly hostile planet; Signed copies) $23.00

Lore, Pittacus

The Rise of Nine

(Lorien Legacies #3: YA; The stakes are higher than ever as John, Number Six, and Number Seven desperately try to find the rest of the Lorien Nine before it's too late) $17.99

Maltin, Leonard

Leonard Maltin's 2013 Movie Guide

(PBO; Revised and updated guide with thousands of capsule movie reviews, DVD and video listings, mail-order and online resources for buying and renting DVDs and videos, and more) $9.99

Mandanna, Sangu

The Lost Girl

(YA; Eva was cloned to replace Amarra if she ever died. So when Amarra dies in a car crash, Eva moves to India to replace her. But does she want to live out her years as a copy? Or risk everything to be Eva?) $17.99

Marr, Melissa

Carnival of Souls

(YA; Aya and Kaleb both face bleak futures, unless they can win a competition hosted by the Carnival of Souls, fighting to the death to join the ruling elite) $17.99

Martin/Lowder, J (ed)

Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire

 (Essays by authors and critics looking at Martin's epic fantasy) $14.95

McDonald, Ian

Be My Enemy

(Everness #2: YA; Everett has escaped with the Infundibulum from the clutches of Charlotte Villiers and the Order, but his father is missing, banished to one of the billions of parallel universes. Everett and the airship crew have taken a Heisenberg Jump to a random parallel plane, where Everett is making plans to rescue his family. But Charlotte Villiers is one step ahead of him) $16.95

McGuire, Seanan

Ashes of Honor

(October Daye #6: PBO; While searching for a powerful changeling with the potential to destroy all of Faerie, Tobey is drawn into a web of kidnappings, political intrigue, and attempted assassinations) $7.99

McKinney, Joe

Mutated

(PBO; Fleeing the cities and their flesh-eating zombies, Bob Richardson and his crew find sanctuary at an abandoned farm. But their stronghold may not be enough - the undead are banding together and working as a group) $7.99

McMahon, Gary

Beyond Here Lies Nothing

(Concrete Grove #3: Ben arrives in Concrete Grove to research a infamous paranormal incident from the early 1970s; when strange things begin happening, it's up to him to put the ghosts to rest) $8.99

O'Brien, Caragh M.

Prized

(Birthmarked #2: YA; 16-year-old midwife Gaia flees the Enclave with her baby sister, only to be captured by the people of Sylum, where women rule the men, and a kiss is a crime) $9.99

Oliver, Lauren

Liesl & Po

(Kids; Locked in the attic by her cruel stepmother, Liesl is surprised one evening when a ghost named Po appears. That same evening, an alchemist's apprentice named Will makes an innocent mistake that has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey) $6.99

Packard, Edward

Through the Black Hole

(U-Ventures: Kids; You're in command of the most advanced spaceship in the galaxy on the wildest mission in history. Choose your own fate as you try to make it through a black hole) $5.99

Palma, Felix J.

The Map of the Sky

(H.G. Wells #2: Socialite Emma Harlow agrees to marry millionaire Montgomery Gilmore, but only if he accepts her challenge to reproduce the invasion featured in Wells'  

War of the Worlds

. Interconnected plots tell a tale of time travel and mystery, with appearances by a young Edgar Allan Poe as well as Captain Shackleton and Charles Winslow) $26.00

Passarella, John

Rite of Passage

(Supernatural: A series of accidents and strange occurrences in a New Jersey town attracts the attention of the Winchester brothers) $7.99

Paterson, K & J

The Flint Heart

(Kids; Freely abridged from Eden Phillpotts' 1910 fantasy. A Stone Age man demands a talisman to harden his heart, allowing him to take control of his tribe. The tribe's magic man creates the Flint Heart, but the cruelty of it destroys the tribe. Thousands of years later, the talisman reemerges. Can Charles and his sister Unity find a way to rescue humans, fairies, and animals alike from its dark influence?) $9.99

Paver, Michelle

Gods and Warriors

(Kids; Warriors have kidnapped his sister and tried to kill him; a stranger has given him a bronze dagger. Now young Hylas is on the run, trying to discover why he's being hunted, and to find his sister before the warriors find him) $16.99

Petrucha, Stefan

Dead Mann Running

(Hessius Mann #2: PBO; The living dead PI is drawn into a killer case when a severed arm leaves a mysterious briefcase at his office) $7.99

Phillips, Holly

At the Edge of Waking

 (Collection of short fantasy fiction) $15.95

Priest, Christopher

The Islanders

(The Dream Archipelago is a vast network of islands whose very locations seem to twist and shift. Some islands have been sculpted into musical instruments, some are home to lethal creatures, some are playgrounds for the rich. And a war being fought by two distant continents is playing out across the archipelago's waters) $14.95

Reay, Joanne

Romeo Spikes

(Homicide detective Alexis Bianco teams up with the mysterious Lola, who is more weapon than woman, to pursue the Tormenta, demonic predators who convince humans to kill themselves in order to siphon off their victims' unspent lifespans) $25.00

Redwine, C.J.

Defiance

(YA; While other girls train to be ladies, Rachel trains to survive in the wilderness and wield a sword. When her father fails to return from a courier mission, her father's apprentice Logan is assigned to protect her. Together they will escape the tyrant's city to hunt for Rachel's father) $17.99

Reus, Katie

Primal Possession

(Moon Shifter #2: PBO; When a hate group targets humans known to sympathize with paranormal beings, December McIntyre turns to lupine shifter Liam Armstrong for help) $7.99

Rosca, Madeleine

The Clockwork Sky Volume 1

(Graphic novel. 1895: In the London slums, young Sally Peppers and automaton police boy Sky uncover a dark secret that could overturn all of London) $10.99

Scarrow, Alex

Day of the Predator

(TimeRiders #2: YA; When Maddy mistakenly opens a time window, Liam is marooned 65 million years in the past. He must make contact with Maddy and Sal before he's hunted down by dinosaurs - or alters history) $9.99

Sedia, Ekaterina (ed)

Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top

 (PBO; Anthology; stories of circuses traditional, bizarre, and futuristic) $15.95

Shatner, William

Shatner Rules

(A collection of guidelines and fun facts, illustrated with stories from Bill's life and career, showing how to become Shatneresque) $15.00

Silverberg, Robert (ed)

Tales from Super-Science Fiction

 (Anthology; reprints 14 stories from the 1950s magazine) $32.00

Singh, Nalini

Archangel's Storm

(Guild Hunter #5: PBO; Angelic spymaster Jason and Princess Mahiya are drawn to each other as they work together to solve the murder of Neha's consort) $7.99

Slonczewski, Joan

The Highest Frontier

(On an Earth altered by global warming, with an invasive alien species threatening the surviving ecosystems, Jennifer Ramos Kennedy, daughter of a rich and influential family, is headed for the college of the future, in orbit) $7.99

Smith, Cordwainer

When the People Fell

 (Collection of Instrumentality stories and miscellaneous short stories, providing a sweeping saga of the centuries to come) $7.99

Smith, Sherwood

Blood Spirits

(Kim Murray #2: With the man she loves set to marry a look-alike princess, Kim returns to California to heal her broken heart. But family politics send her to London, where she winds up in a duel with a Dobrenican nobleman, and learns that her great sacrifice, leaving Alex, was a disaster. She returns to Dobrenica, where she finds ghosts, magic, and murder awaiting her) $7.99

Stein, Jeanne C.

Haunted

(Anna Strong #8: PBO; Vampire and bounty hunter Anna Strong and her friend Culebra end up in Mexico, dealing with cartel infighting, a few old vendettas, and missing girls) $7.99

Stirling, S.M.

The Tears of the Sun

(Change #8: Rudi McKenzie - now Artos, the High King of Montival - must stand against the forces of the Church Universal and Triumphant, knowing he may lose his life in the final battle) $9.99

Stirling, S.M.

Lord of Mountains

(Change #9: To end the war, Artos must journey to the Lake at the Heart of the Mountains and take part in a coronation that will unite the realms into a single kingdom, granting him an army large enough to defeat his enemies once and for all) $27.95

Strahan, Jonathan (ed)

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

 (YA; Anthology; original stories celebrating the witch) $16.99

Swallow, James

Fear to Tread

(Warhammer 40,000: Horus Heresy #21: Horus sends the Blood Angels to the Signus system, where an army of Khornate daemons waits for them. The Warmaster's plan is to use the flaw in the Blood Angels' gene-seed to turn them to the worship of the Blood God) $9.99

Thomas, Shelley Moore

The Seven Tales of Trinket

(Kids; Guided by a tattered map, accompanied by Thomas the Pig Boy, and inspired by her heritage, 11-year-old Trinket searches for the stories she needs to become a bard like her father, who disappeared years ago) $16.99

Thorpe, Gav

Path of the Outcast

(Warhammer 40,000: Eldar #3: While Aradryan lives as a Ranger, Alaitoc is attacked by the Sons of Orar Space Marines, and must do what he can to help save the craftworld) $8.99

Tinker, Major (ed)

The Steampunk Gazette

(From the founder of the Victorian Steampunk Society, a lavishly illustrated history of steampunk, from its 1980s origins to today. Sections on fashion, gadgets, home decor, art, literature, media, and social events) $24.99

Trent, Tiffany

The Unnaturalists

(YA; When his Tinker family is captured to be refinery slaves, Syrus Reed finds that his fate may be bound up with that of Vespa Nyx - and with the Unnatural creatures she catalogues in her father's New London museum) $16.99

Varley, John

Slow Apocalypse

(Screenwriter Dave Marshall thought the scenario sounded implausible when he heard it from a government consultant on his last film: a scientist releases a virus that feeds on petroleum into an Iraqi oil field, but it spreads to infect the entire international fuel supply. Now it's become a terrifying reality) $25.95

Weber, David

A Beautiful Friendship

(Stephanie Harrington #1: YA; On the pioneer planet Sphinx, young Stephanie Harrington discovers an intelligent alien species, treecats, and forms the first telepathic bond with one. But a lot of powerful people are determined to make sure that Sphinx remains entirely in human hands - even if it means the extermination of another thinking species) $9.99

Wendig, Chuck

Mockingbird

(Miriam #2: PBO; Miriam is trying to live a normal life, keeping her ability - to see when and how someone is going to die - in check. Which feels like keeping a tornado trapped in a tiny bottle. And then comes one really bad day) $7.99

Williams, Tad

The Dirty Streets of Heaven

(Bobby Dollar #1: Bobby is a rough-and-tumble angel who's always done his part in the long cold war between Heaven and Hell. But now he's stepped into the middle of something that's got both sides nervous - an unprecedented number of missing souls) $25.95

Wooding, Chris

Havoc

(Malice #2: Kids; Having escaped from Malice, Seth isn't sure if he should try to destroy the evil comic book from his own world, or go back for an artifact that might help. Meanwhile, Kady is still trapped in Malice, trying to find a rebel group of kids who want to fight cruel overlord Tall Jake) $9.99

Zeltserman, Dave

A Killer's Essence

(When a serial killer terrorizes New York City, jaded detective Stan Green finds just a single witness, a neurologically disabled recluse who sees through the souls of others as demonic hallucinations) $15.00

Expected Mid-September

Andrews, Scott K.

School's Out Forever

(Afterblight Chronicles: 15-year-old Lee and his boarding school's Matron must try to protect their charges from cannibalistic gangs, religious fanatics, a bullying prefect, and the surviving might of the U.S. Army) $12.99

Bachmann, Stefan

The Peculiar

(Kids; Bartholomew is a changeling, child of a faery father and a human mother, who lives in the faery slums of Bath. When he witnesses the kidnapping of another changeling, he finds himself at the center of a web of intrigue) $16.99

Balaban, Bob

The Creature from the Seventh Grade: Boy or Beast

(Kids; Charlie has suddenly morphed into a giant mutant sea creature. Now his best friends are treating him like a science project, the cool kids are recruiting him for their clique, and, for some reason, his parents are acting like everything is perfectly normal) $15.99

Barnhill, Kelly

The Mostly True Story of Jack

(Kids; When Jack is sent to Hazelwood, Iowa, to live with his crazy aunt and uncle, he expects a summer of boredom. But the people of Hazelwood have been waiting for him for a long time. He makes friends. The town bully beats him up. And the richest man in town begins to plot Jack's imminent demise. It's up to Jack to figure out why - but to do that, he'll have to believe that magic is real, and has something to do with him) $6.99

Bray, Libba

The Diviners

(YA; 1920s: Evie is shipped off to NYC to live with her Uncle Will, curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and the Occult. They find themselves in the thick of an investigation of occult-based murders. And Evie has a secret - a mysterious power that could help catch the killer, if he doesn't catch her first) $19.99

Brower, S/Heller, S

Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants: The Art of the Paperback

 (Reissue; A celebration of the art and design of the mass-market paperback, from the late 19th century to today) $7.98

Burroughs/Maxwell

Jane: The Woman Who Loved Tarzan

 (PBO; Authorized by the Burroughs estate. The Tarzan story told from Jane's viewpoint; $25.99 hc also available) $14.99

Carlson, Amanda

Full Blooded

(Jessica McClain #1: PBO; Jessica has become a werewolf. It wasn't supposed to happen: female werewolves don't exist. When a killer comes looking for her, her Pack finds themselves caught in the middle of a war. It's up to Jessica to find out why everyone wants her dead) $12.99

Chabon, Michael

Telegraph Avenue

(2004: Archy and Nat rule a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen and Aviva, are two semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the community. When a former NFL quarterback announces plans to build his latest megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence; Signed copies expected) $27.99

Cornwall, Emma

Incarnation

 (In a steampunk London, Lucy Weston confronts Bram Stoker to find out why he lied about her in his novel  

Dracula

. Then, with Stoker's reluctant help, she sets out to track down the fiend who turned her into a vampire) $15.00

Davis, Jim

Garfield Gets in a Pickle

 (Garfield #54: PBO; Full color comic strips) $14.00

Durst, Sarah Beth

Vessel

(YA; Liyana has trained her entire life to be the vessel of a goddess, but the goddess never comes. Abandoned by her tribe, Liyana expects to die in the desert, until a boy arrives. Korbyn is a trickster god inside his vessel, who tells Liyana that five other gods are missing. They set off in search of the other vessels, for the tribes cannot survive without the magic of their gods. The closer she grows to Korbyn, the less Liyana wants to disappear to make way for her goddess. But she must die for her tribe to live, unless a trickster god can help her to trick fate - or a human girl can muster some magic of her own) $16.99

Edward, John

Fallen Masters

 (A final confrontation between good and evil unfolds on both the Earthly plane and the Other Side) $25.99

Erikson, Steven

The Forge of Darkness

(Malazan: Kharkarnas #1: In Kurald Galain, the commoners want Vatha Urusander, their great hero, to take Mother Dark's hand in marriage, but her consort Lord Draconus is opposed. As the impending clash disrupts the realm of Darkness, an ancient power emerges from the long dead seas. Caught in the middle of it all are the First Sons of Darkness, Anomander, Andarist, and Silchas Ruin) $27.99

Griffin, Kate

Stray Souls

(Sharon Li has just discovered she's a shaman, and not a moment too soon. London's soul has gone missing. To solve the mystery and rescue the dying city, she'll need help from the support group she's just set up for people with magical issues) $14.99

Johnson, Kij

At the Mouth of the River of Bees

 (Collection; 16 works of sf and fantasy from an award-winning author; Signed copies expected) $16.00

Jones, Stephen (ed)

A Book of Horrors

 (Anthology; original stories of horror and dark fantasy from top writers) $15.99

Jordan, Hillary

When She Woke

(In the not too distant future, the line between church and state has been eradicated, and convicted felons are no longer imprisoned but chromed - their skin color genetically altered to match the class of their crimes - and then released back into the population to survive as best they can. Hannah is a Red; her crime is abortion) $14.95

Kenyon, S/Love, D

The Curse

(Belador #3: PBO; When Svart Trolls invade Atlanta, Evalle tries to stop the bloody troll-led gang wars; she unwittingly exposes a secret that endangers all she holds dear and complicates her tumultuous love life with Storm) $7.99

King, A.S.

Everybody Sees the Ants

(YA; Andre Norton Award finalist. Lucky has a secret that helps him wade through his dysfunctional life. In his dreams, he escapes to the war-torn jungles of Laos, where he can be a hero. It's dangerous and wild - a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky hide in his dreams before reality forces its way in?) $9.99

Knaak, Richard A.

Shade

(Legends of the Dragonrealm: Shade the spellcaster struggles to find an end to the curse he brought upon himself millennia ago) $16.00

Kristoff, Jay

Stormdancer

(Lotus War #1: After disaster befalls her mission to capture a griffin for the Shogun, Yukiko finds herself stranded in the wilderness with a crippled griffin. They will face intrigue, betrayal, and murder as they try to save their homeland) $24.99

Le Guin, Ursula K.

Finding My Elegy

 (Collection of some of her best early poetry plus a group of poems written over the last four years) $22.00

Leslie, Mark (ed)

Tesseracts 16: Parnassus Unbound

 (Anthology; short works of speculative fiction about art, music, literature, and culture) $15.95

Marillier, Juliet

Shadowfell

(YA; Possessing a powerful ability to communicate with the fairy-like Good Folk, 16-year-old Neryn sets out for Shadowfell, a home and training ground for a rebel group determined to overthrow the evil King Keldec) $16.99

McElligott/Tuxbury

Benjamin Franklinstein Meets the Fright Brothers

(Victor Godwin #2: Kids; When giant bat planes and mysterious attacks bring mayhem to Philadelphia, Victor knows only the Wright Brothers could pilot such creations - but the red-eyed brothers don't seem quite like themselves. Can Victor and his friends stop them from taking over the city?) $7.99

McOmber, Adam

The White Forest

(Jane has a gift that allows her to see the souls of manmade objects. When her friend Nathan becomes interested in a cult - led by a mystic who encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation - and then disappears, the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle events. But when a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must use her talent to find Nathan before it's too late) $25.00

Shirley, John

Retribution

 (Resident Evil: PBO; Novelization of the film) $7.99

Starmer, Aaron

The Only Ones

(Kids; Martin arrives at the village of Xibalba. Like the other children who've journeyed there, he faces an awful truth. When families and friends all disappeared one afternoon, he and these other children were forgotten. Inspired by the prophesies of a mysterious boy who talks to animals, Martin believes he can reunite them with their loved ones - but believing and knowing are two different things) $7.99

Tanner, Lian

City of Lies

(Keepers #2: Kids; When his sister is stolen, Toadspit and his friend Goldie follow the child-stealers to a neighboring city. Along the way, Toadspit is captured. When Goldie discovers some secrets that the child-stealers will kill to protect, she'll need all her skills as a thief and a liar to survive and save her friends) $6.99

Tolkien, J.R.R.

The Art of

The Hobbit

 (The author's complete artwork for the book) $40.00

Weber, David

Midst Toil and Tribulation

(Safehold #6: A vicar of the Church of God Awaiting has engineered a rebellion against the Lord Protector of Siddermark, bringing civil war to the nation at harvest time) $27.99

Weeks, Brent

The Blinding Knife

(Lightbringer #2: Gavin had thought he had five years left, now he has less than one. Magic is running wild and threatens to destroy the Satrapies. The old gods are being reborn, and their army of color wights is unstoppable. The only salvation may be the brother whose freedom and life Gavin stole) $25.99

Ziegler, Rob

Seed

(After economic, political, and environmental collapse, the US is now controlled by Satori, a corporation that is also a living, intelligent city. Satori bioengineers the climate-resistant seed that feeds the nation, as well as the post-human genetic Designers, Advocates, and Laborers. When a Designer goes rogue, the government hopes to regain power by using her to break Satori's stranglehold on seed production) $15.99

Expected Early October

Anderson, Kevin J.

The Martian War

(PBO; What if the Martian invasion was not entirely the product of H.G.'s imagination? What if he witnessed something that spurred him to write  

The War of the Worlds

 as a warning?) $12.95

Anderson, Taylor

Firestorm

(Destroyermen #6: Even as the Allies and the Empire of New Britain Isles stand united against the Grik and the Japanese, the Holy Dominion - a warped, power-hungry mix of human cultures - threatens destruction with a devastating weapon neither Allies nor Empire can withstand) $7.99

Archer, Jill

Dark Light of Day

(Noon Onyx #1: PBO; Noon is capable of wielding the destructive power of demons. But because she's human, the demons consider her an abomination- and a threat to their rule over Earth) $7.99

Bein, Steve

Daughter of the Sword

(Fated Blades #1: Tokyo cop Mariko Oshiro investigates the attempted theft of an old samurai sword, forged by a swordsmith whose blades may have magical qualities. She is only the latest in a long line of warriors to confront this power, and it threatens to turn against her even as she learns to wield the sword) $16.00

Benford, Gregory et al

The Wonderful Future That Never Was

 (Between 1903 and 1969,  

Popular Mechanics

 magazine included hundreds of predictions about the future. This book recaps some of those ideas, illustrated with the original futurist art. Benford supplies modern perspective on why some of the predictions were made. Full color throughout) $17.95

Briggs, Patricia

Cry Wolf Vol. 1

 (Alpha & Omega GN #1: Full color graphic novel; adaptation of the novel) $24.95

Brown, Eric

Helix Wars

(For 200 years, peace has reigned on the Helix. But when shuttle pilot Jeff Ellis crash-lands on Phandra, he interrupts an invasion by the neighboring Sporelli - who scheme to exterminate Ellis before he can return to New Earth and inform the peacekeepers) $8.99

Buehlman, Christopher

Between Two Fires

(1348: After an orphan tells him that the Black Plague is only part of a greater cataclysm, Thomas, a disgraced knight, finds himself in a macabre battleground of angels and demons, sinners and saints, in a struggle for nothing less than the soul of man) $25.95

Burroughs/Griffin

Tarzan Centennial

 (Lavishly illustrated official history of the Tarzan phenomenon) $39.95

Caine, Rachel

Black Dawn

(Morganville Vampires #12: YA; Unless Claire and her friends figure out how to cure Amelie - who has been infected by the master draug's bite - and defeat the draug, Morganville will become little more than a ghost town) $9.99

Campbell, Jack

Tarnished Knight

(Lost Stars #1: Betrayed by the brutal Syndicate government, Artur Drakon and Gwen Iceni launch a battle for control of the Midway star system) $26.95

Carey, Jacqueline

Dark Currents

(Agent of Hel #1: Fathered by an incubus, Daisy lives in a Midwestern resort town that is home to eccentric locals, wealthy summer residents, assorted paranormals, and eldritch folk presided over by reclusive Norse goddess Hel. When a boy drowns and signs point to eldritch involvement, Daisy investigates with the help of a sexy werewolf cop) $26.95

Chan, Kylie

Earth to Hell

(Journey to Wudang #1: On Earth, Simon Wong, the Demon King's son, is no longer around to trouble Emma and Simone, but his associates have taken over Simon's underworld activities. The otherworldly stones are being targeted and are in danger of being completely destroyed. It seems that the Demon King is the only one Emma can turn to for help) $7.99

Chance, Karen

Fury's Kiss

(Midnight's Daughter #3: PBO; Dory and Louis-Cesare will have to face off with zombie vampires, fallen angels, and a mad scientist to get to the bottom of a deadly smuggling ring) $7.99

Clarke, Cassandra Rose

The Assassin's Curse

(YA; When Ananna runs away from her arranged marriage, her cutthroat parents hire Naji the assassin to murder her. When she inadvertently saves his life, she activates his curse: whenever her life is in danger, he must protect her. This development pleases neither of them - but to lift the curse, they will have to complete three impossible tasks) $9.99

Cobley, Michael

Seeds of Earth

(Humanity's Fire #1: The planet Darien hosts a thriving human settlement. But hidden on Darien's forest moon are secrets that go back to an apocalyptic battle between ancient races. Darien is about to become the focus of an intergalactic power struggle, and the true stakes are beyond human comprehension) $7.99

Connolly, Tina

Ironskin

(Jane, who wears an iron mask to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek, answers a carefully worded ad for a governess, certain that the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help. She finds herself fascinated by the girl's artist father: a parade of ugly women enter his studio, and come out as beautiful as the fey) $24.99

Crossan, Sarah

Breathe

 (YA; In a world where air is restricted, three teens find out exactly what they're willing to do for the freedom to breathe) $17.99

Cummings, Sean

Poltergeeks

(YA; To save her witch mother's life, 15-year-old Julie and her uber-geek friend Marcus must find out who is responsible for increasing levels of poltergeist activity all over their town) $9.99

Doctorow, Cory

Pirate Cinema

(YA; In dystopian near-future Britain, artists and activists are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens. Parliament is in thrall to a few wealthy media conglomerates, but the powers-that-be haven't reckoned on the power of a gripping movie to change people's minds) $19.99

Drake, D/Lambshead, J

Into the Hinterlands

(Sent to clear the power-hungry Terrans from a star sector where they're encroaching, greenhorn commander Allen Allenson must also overcome the machinations of the alien Riders) $7.99

Drake, David

Night & Demons

 (PBO; Collection of horrific, weird, and fantastic tales) $13.00

Dunn, Christian (ed)

Shadows of Treachery

 (Warhammer 40,000: Horus Heresy #22: PBO; Anthology) $8.99

Dunn, Christian (ed)

Treacheries of the Space Marines

 (Warhammer 40,000: PBO; Anthology) $8.99

Emson, Thomas

Skarlet

(Vampire Trinity #1: When a new drug starts turning users into vampires, Iraqi War veteran Jake Lawton finds himself doing battle with immortals and their human cohorts. And beneath the London streets lurks a bigger evil, waiting to be resurrected to reign over a city of human slaves) $14.99

Evans, Chris

Ashes of a Black Frost

(Iron Elves #3: As the human-dominated Calahrian Empire struggles to maintain its hold on power in the face of armed rebellion, the Iron Elves' perilous quest to defeat the power-hungry elf witch, the Shadow Monarch, takes on greater urgency) $9.99

Evenson, B.K.

Catalyst

 (Dead Space: Novel based on the video game) $14.99

Feehan, Christine

Dark Predator

(Carpathian #19: When he leaves his life as master executioner behind, Zacarias wonders who he really is. The answer awaits him back home in Peru, where he will face old enemies and a bloody family legacy - and find his lifemate) $7.99

Fforde, Jasper

The Last Dragonslayer

(YA; 15-year-old Jennifer runs Kazam, an employment agency for magicians, but it's hard to stay in business when magic is drying up. Now visions are predicting the death of the world's last dragon at the hands of an unnamed Dragonslayer. If the visions are true, everything will change for Jennifer and Kazam - because something known as Big Magic is coming) $16.99

Fforde, Jasper

The Woman Who Died a Lot

(Thursday Next #7: After an assassination attempt, Thursday returns to Swindon to recuperate. But there are problems at home: Friday's career struggles in the Chronoguard; Tuesday's trouble perfecting the Anti-Smote shield in time to prevent an angry Deity from wiping Swindon off the face of the earth; and the issue of Thursday's third child Jenny, who exists only as a confusing and disturbing memory. With Goliath attempting to replace Thursday with synthetic Thursdays, and a call from Bookworld to hunt down Pagerunners who have jumped into the Realworld, Thursday's convalescence is going to be anything but restful) $26.95

Fisher, Catherine

Darkwater

(YA; Desperate to regain the power and wealth her family had lost, Sarah made a bargain with Azrael, Lord of Darkwater Hall, who gave her 100 years and the means to her objective - in exchange for her soul. A century later, will she be able to stop young Tom from making the same ruinous bargain?) $16.99

Flint, Eric

1635: Papal Stakes

(Ring of Fire: Trapped in a mire of papal assassins, power politics, murder, and mayhem, Pope Urban VII and uptimers Frank Stone and Ambassador Sharon Nichols and their downtimer spouses need help fast. Special rescue crews converge on Rome, and an uptime airplane is on its way to spirit the Pope to safety. When everything goes wrong, it's once again up to the rough and ready Grantville natives to set things right) $25.00

Gear, W.M. & Kathleen

A Searing Wind

(Contact: The Battle for America #3: After learning of de Soto's plans to target the Chicaza, Black Shell is determined to set the perfect trap to preserve his people's pride, traditions, and winter stockpiles of food and supplies) $9.99

Giallongo, Zack

Broxo

(Kids; Full color graphic novel. Can Broxo - the only survivor of a barbarian tribe - and Princess Zora defeat the man-eating walking dead that drag themselves out of a fetid lake?) $16.99

Gibson, William

Zero History

(Campbell Memorial Award finalist. A Department of Defense contract for combat wear turns out to be the gateway drug for arms dealers so shadowy that even global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend, whose subtlety and power in the private sector would be hard to overstate, finds himself outmaneuvered and adrift in a seriously dangerous world) $9.99

Gilman, Charles

Professor Gargoyle

(Lovecraft Middle School #1: Kids; At his brand new, high-tech school, 11-year old Robert finds some anomalies: rats in the lockers; a student gone missing; a library corridor full of worm-eaten antique books; and a science professor who seems to be undergoing a strange transformation) $13.99

Gladstone, Max

Three Parts Dead

(A god has died, and it's up to Tara, a first-year associate at a necromantic firm, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart) $24.99

Gropp, Richard E.

Bad Glass

(PBO; The military moves in to quash rumors of unexplained phenomena in Spokane and figure out what's going on. But after weeks of news leaking out of the quarantine, it becomes clear they have no idea. A young photographer sneaks into the city, hoping to make a name for himself documenting the unimaginable - if he doesn't go insane first) $15.00

Hamilton, Kiki

The Faerie Ring

(YA; 1871: Pickpocket Tiki steals a ring that could lead to all-out war. For the ring belongs to Queen Victoria, and binds the rulers of England and Faerie to peace. A group of faerie rebels hopes to break the treaty with dark magic - and Tiki's blood) $9.99

Harris, Charlaine

The Sookie Stackhouse Companion

(Southern Vampire: Agatha Award finalist. Tour Bon Temps, Louisiana, prowl around the werewolf and werepanther communities, visit Tara's dress shop, and belly up to the bar at Merlotte's in this guide to Sookie's family, friends, enemies, lovers, and adventures. Includes an original Sookie novella, recipes, and more) $18.00

Harrison, Kim

A Perfect Blood

(Rachel Morgan #10: Ritually murdered corpses are appearing across Cincinnati, terrifying amalgams of human and other. Pulled in by the FIB to help investigate, Rachel Morgan soon realizes that someone is determined to make demons. But it can't be done without Rachel's blood) $7.99

Hayes, Erica

Revelation

(Seven Signs #1: PBO; Dr. Morgan Sterling doesn't believe in angels, but Luniel is one of the fallen, bound to fight evil to earn redemption. Together they must stop a zombie plague ravaging Manhattan's slums) $7.99

Heinlein, Robert A.

Starman Jones

 (Reissue; Classic sf novel) $7.99

Hendee, Barb

Ghosts of Memories

(Vampire Memories #5: PBO; Not all vampires want to live by the Four Laws. Now Eleisha must confront the deadliest predator she has ever faced, or lose everything she has fought to protect) $7.99

Hidalgo, Pablo

Star Wars: The Essential Reader's Companion

(Looks at all published Star Wars fiction, providing a synopsis of each story, behind the scenes facts and anecdotes, and a chronological listing of titles placing each in context. Illustrated with over a hundred full-color paintings) $28.00

Holm, Chris F.

The Wrong Goodbye

(Collector #2: PBO; Because of his efforts to avert the Apocalypse, Sam has been given a second chance, provided he can stick to the straight and narrow. Which is all well and good, until the soul he's sent to collect goes missing) $7.99

Hunter, Faith

Death's Rival

(Jane Yellowrock #5: PBO; To uncover the identity of the vamp who is trying to steal Leo's territory, Jane will have to venture into the underbelly of New Orleans vamp society) $7.99

Jerome, Celia

Sand Witches in the Hamptons

(Willow Tate #5: PBO; As if Willow didn't have enough problems coping with Otherworld visitors, now she has a stalker, her doom-seer father has a secret, and Paumanok Harbor has Otherworld sand stealers) $7.99

Jones, Darynda

Death and the Girl Next Door

(PBO; YA; Why is Cameron, her high school's designated loner, standing outside Lorelei's house every night? What does tough, sexy newcomer Jared know about her parents, who disappeared years ago? And what will any of them do when Death comes knocking for real?) $9.99

Jones, Diana Wynne

Reflections

 (Collection of essays, speeches, and biographical pieces written and/or chosen by Jones) $24.99

Jones, Stephen (ed)

The Mammoth Book of Zombie Apocalypse! Fight Back

(Mosaic novel; interconnected eyewitness narratives - text messages, emails, blog entries, letters, diaries, and transcripts - telling of the fight against the New Zombie Order) $13.95

Joyce, William

The Sandman: The Story of Sanderson Mansnoozie

(Guardians of Childhood #2: Kids; Full color picture book. When the moon is less than full, who will keep the children safe at night? The Man in the Moon thinks sleepy sweet-dreamer Sandy is the perfect choice to help thwart Pitch, the Nightmare King) $17.99

Joyce, William

Toothiana: Queen of the Tooth Fairy Armies

(Guardians of Childhood Novel #3: Kids; Toothiana can spin herself into a multitude of selves, depending on nightly teeth-placed-under-pillows rates. And she is tiny, but very fierce - the villainous Pitch has no idea what he's up against) $14.99

Karpyshyn, Drew

Revan

 (Star Wars: Old Republic #3: Novel based on the online game) $7.99

Kessler, Liz

Emily Windsnap Boxed Set: The Tail of Emily Windsnap / Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep / Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist / Emily Windsnap and the Siren's Secret

 (Reissue; Kids; Four fantasy novels; the adventures of a teenage girl with a human mother and a merman father) $23.96

Ketter, Greg (ed)

Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores

 (Anthology; 16 sf, fantasy, and horror stories, each with a bookstore at its core) $15.95

Kiesbye, Stefan

Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone

(Four young friends come of age in Hemmersmoor, a place shrouded with fear - and talk of revenants. Their innocent games soon bring them face-to-face with the village's darkest secrets) $15.00

L'Engle, Madeleine

A Wrinkle in Time graphic novel

 (Kids; Adaptation of the classic sf novel) $19.99

Lackey, Mercedes

Changes

(Valdemar: Collegium #3: Magpie pursues his quest for his parent's identity, while being trained as an undercover agent for Valdemar. Bardic Trainee Lena has to face her uncaring father, a famous Bard. And Healing Trainee Bear struggles with his parents, who are pressuring him to quit the Collegium because he lacks the magical Healing Gift) $7.99

Lackey, Mercedes

Redoubt

(Valdemar: Collegium #4: A mysterious new enemy has taken an interest in Herald trainee spy Mags, but why? The answers can only be found in the most unexpected corners of Mags' past. Assuming he can stay alive long enough to find them) $25.95

Lamberson, Gregory

Tortured Spirits

(Jake Helman #4: PBO; Jake's ongoing quest to save his best friend Edgar Hopkins takes him to New Orleans, Miami, and the jungles of Pavot Island, where undead slaves harvest narcotics for a ferocious dictator) $14.95

Launet, Francois

Unspeakable Vault (of Doom)

 (Collection of webcomics providing a humorous look at the Cthulhu mythos through the daily lives of the Great Old Ones) $19.95

Lazellari, Edward

Awakenings

(Cal MacDonnell and Seth Raincrest have nothing in common - except they both suffer from retrograde amnesia. It's as if they just appeared out of thin air thirteen years ago. Now their forgotten past has caught up with them) $7.99

Lin, Grace

Starry River of the Sky

(Kids; Rendi has run away from home and is now working at the inn in the remote Village of Clear Sky. The moon is missing there, but only Rendi seems to notice. He also notices the village's peculiar inhabitants and their problems. A mysterious lady arrives at the Inn with the gift of storytelling, and slowly transforms the villagers and Rendi himself. As the days pass, Rendi begins to realize that perhaps it is his own story that holds the answers to all his questions) $17.99

Lovecraft/Lockwood

The Lovecraft Anthology Volume 2

 (Full color graphic novel; adaptations of Lovecraft stories) $19.95

Lovegrove, James

Red Eye

(Redlaw #2: PBO; In the U.S. to investigate a series of vicious attacks on vampire immigrants, Redlaw uncovers a conspiracy that could give journalist Tina Checkley the career break she's been looking for. It could also spell death for Redlaw) $8.99

Ma, Roger

The Vampire Combat Manual

 (PBO; A humorous guide to fighting the bloodthirsty undead) $15.00

MacAlister/Harper/Sims

The Undead in My Bed

 (PBO; Anthology; 3 vampire romance novellas) $7.99

Maguire, Gregory

Out of Oz

(Wicked Years #4: The Emerald City plans to invade Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law, and look who's knocking at the door: Dorothy. Amid the chaos, Elphaba's granddaughter Rain comes of age, and will now take up her broom in an Oz racked by war) $15.99

Mallory, H.P.

Something Witchy This Way Comes

(Jolie Wilkins #5: PBO; Jolie must protect her Underworld realm from the Lurkers, half-humans bent on conquering the undead. At least she has her boyfriend, warlock Rand Balfour, by her side. But why can't she forget dangerously alluring vampire Sinjin Sinclair?) $7.99

Mallory, Michael

The Science Fiction Universe and Beyond: Syfy Channel Book of Sci-Fi

 (A look at sf in films and television, from the Saturday matinee serials to modern times) $40.00

Mariconda, Barbara

The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons

(Kids; An enchanted flute that warns of danger, a mist that unlocks a drawer of family secrets, a bookcase that expands to conceal her: since her parents drowned at sea, magic has been helping Lucy keep her house out of the hands of her greedy uncle) $16.99

Massey, Brandon (ed)

Voices from the Other Side

 (Anthology; 20 horror and suspense stories by African-American writers) $6.99

McCormack, Una

Brinksmanship

(Star Trek: Typhon Pact: PBO; The independent Venette Convention becomes the flashpoint for a tense military standoff between the United Federation of Planets and the Typhon Pact) $7.99

McDevitt, Jack

Firebird

(Alex Benedict #6: Nebula Award finalist. Decades ago, renowned physicist Chris Robin, known for his theories about alternate universes, vanished. Alex and Chase discover that Robin had several interstellar yachts flown far outside the planetary system, where they too vanished. Now they're planning to follow Robin's trail into the unknown) $7.99

McGhoul/Kilbane

The Brain Eater's Bible

 (A field manual and manifesto for the reanimated dead) $16.99

McIntosh, Will

Hitchers

(PBO; Contrary his grandfather's dying wish, Finn has resurrected the old man's newspaper comic, and it's more popular than ever. Then Finn realizes he has a hitcher within his skin: his grandfather, who isn't happy about the changes Finn has made) $14.99

McKillip, Patricia A.

Wonders of the Invisible World

 (PBO; Collection of short fantasy fiction) $14.95

Meloy, Colin

Wildwood

(Wildwood Chronicles #1: Kids; After her brother is abducted, Prue and her friend Curtis head into the Impassable Wilderness to find him. There they find warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with dark intentions, and their rescue mission turns into a struggle for the freedom of Wildwood) $8.99

Meloy, Colin

Under Wildwood

(Wildwood Chronicles #2: Kids; A growing threat draws Prue back into Wildwood, where she and Curtis face their greatest challenge yet. To save themselves and the lives of their friends, and bring unity to a divided country, they must go under Wildwood) $17.99

Meluch, R.M.

The Ninth Circle

(USS Merrimack #5: On the distant world of Zoe, an expedition finds DNA-based life - and alien invaders. And it seems that the Ninth Circle and the Palatine Empire have also found Zoe. Glenn Hamilton calls on the  

USS Merrimack

 for help) $7.99

Modesitt Jr., L.E.

Scholar

(Imager #4: Begins a new story arc set hundreds of years earlier. Quaeryt is a scholar, concealing the fact that he's an imager. To escape the intrigues of the capital city, he convinces his ruler to send him on a reconnaissance mission. On the journey, he must face pirates, storms, poisonings, and attempted murder, as well as discovering that he is not quite who he thought he was) $7.99

Morgan, Richard K.

The Cold Commands

(Land Fit for Heroes #2: Aging warrior Ringil Eskiath is growing more comfortable with his return to the hero's life. But the stakes against him are being raised - a major threat is gathering on the horizon, one that Ringil cannot defeat by himself) $16.00

Mosley, Walter

Merge / Disciple

(Crosstown to Oblivion #2: Two novellas: a lottery winner notices something in his apartment that seems ordinary but reveals itself to be from a very different world; a data entry clerk realizes he has become a pawn in a battle that threatens the prime life force on Earth) $24.99

Niven, L/Barnes, S

The Moon Maze Game

(Dream Park #4: 2085: The first lunar live-action role-playing game turns ugly when a dozen gamers are kidnapped. But the gamers are brilliant, unpredictable, resourceful, and addicted to problem-solving - they're going to play this new scenario to win) $7.99

Oliver, Lauren

The Spindlers

(Kids; One morning, 12-year-old Liza realizes that spindlers have stolen her younger brother's soul. Armed with little more than her wits, and with a huge talking rat for a guide, she sets out to rescue him) $16.99

Pivarcsi, Istvan

Just a Bite

(Nonfiction; a Transylvanian historian peels away the effects of pop culture to set the record straight about the history and evolution of vampire folklore) $16.95

Pratchett, T/Cabell, C

Terry Pratchett: The Spirit of Fantasy

(A detailed biography of the beloved writer, including his battle with Alzheimers, over forty years of irreverent artistic achievements, and a note about cats) $14.95

Pratchett, Terry

Dodger

(YA; In an alternate London ruled by a young queen Victoria, Dodger is an enterprising lad, smart and lucky. Everyone likes him, which is good, because his life is about to get seriously complicated. When he sees a girl leap from a carriage in an attempt to escape her captors, will he stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not. He's not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl - not even if her fate affects some of the most powerful people in England)

[musicmurrell-blog]

Mastery: The Road to Success

When starting the Mastery Personal Development and Leadership class, Professor Counsman gave all of us the project of creating a Tumblr page.  With this page, we were asked to develop a Mastery Journal that we would build upon each month.  After twelve months, this is the last posting.  From month one, my favorite assignment was getting to write about someone that inspired you.  I decided to write about my grandfather, who passed away almost ten years ago.  While writing that assignment, I knew that I had made the right decision to come back to Full Sail and pursue my Masters degree.

For Mastery Personal Development and Leadership, my objective was to see if I was cut out to work a full-time job, freelance and go to school all at the same time.  I can proudly say that I never missed an assignment, got one B and the rest were A or A+ and I managed to work all the time.  This class helped me get into a positive work flow that helped me on my journey towards Mastery.

In Executive Leadership, I discovered my leadership style is fully based off of John C. Maxwell’s book, Developing the Leader Within You.  I made that decision based off of my personality.  Greene’s law of turning friends into enemies if you don’t have any enemies, is something I could never do because I value my relationships.  Also, the ideal jobs I hope to possess in the future require me to have leadership qualities like Maxwell’s book entails.  The job of a leader is to build their team up, not break them down. Motivating your team can go a long way in the growth of your business.

For me, the most vital project from this class was the leadership research paper.  It helped me realize from a different view that a leader can be anyone if they have the passion and dream to do so.  Writing this paper gave me the motivation to keep pursuing my dream and not to give up, even when it becomes too much.

“Learning Objective: Students will apply creative thinking, brainstorming skills to generate industry-related project ideas for a Project Management Plan.”  The beginning of what lead to be one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve ever completed across all of my schooling. Getting to start with nothing, developing an idea and watching it grow over the course of the next nine months was amazing.  Project and Team Management helped me realize that I have gifts and talents in business that I didn’t even know existed.  I remember thinking that this class was going to be a major headache, due to my non-existing business background, but I had never been so wrong.

All of the assignments that we received helped me realize how important it is to build my brand.  Each assignment was able to assist me in completing projects the rest of the program.  I fully intend on using these assignments as a guideline to any project I may work on in the future.

In Business Storytelling and Brand Development, we began the process of building our personal brands to help advance ourselves closer to mastery.  Like I had stated in the previous month, Project and Team Management, I needed to work on building my brand and this class did.  This class provided a greater knowledge of what it means to brand yourself and your business via our websites we began to create.

The, now completed, website I created, is ready to promote my personal brand in a positive and professional manner.  Updating the website was accomplished over many months of projects.  The most important thing I walked away with, from this class, was how vital of a role your brand plays in your walk towards true mastery.

Entertainment Business Finance was one of my favorite classes while at Full Sail getting my Masters degree.  Growing up, I was always strong in mathematics and that strong suit played an important role in this class.  All of the projects were great learning elements that gave me a better understanding of looking into the financials of a company.  Unfortunately, with this class, I failed an assignment, but that was a learning point for me that helped push me to work even harder towards getting my degree.

Two projects from this class, will benefit me in the future in job searching and working on a project.  First, we took our resumes and completely redid them.  The goal was to create a professionally appealing resume and I got to do just that.  It was a very beneficial project for me due to the massive list of past works I have completed.  The second project that benefited me significantly was the Pro Forma Income Statement.  With this project, we created the budgets, figured out start-up costs and made a spreadsheet with the assumptions.  This assignment will be one that I am able to carry with me into the professional industry to further advance any project I’m a part of.

Although I had tried marketing myself over social media and the internet before, nothing was the same once I completed Digital Marketing.  Throughout this class, we were presented with the lessons and projects to further our ability to promote ourselves and our content.  For this month, I was hoping to explore the area of growing my brand, and company, through social media and my professional website.

For me, the most beneficial assignment we completed was the Lynda tutorial and Tumblr post for marketing.  I completed the Instagram for Business Lynda training to help me advance my digital marketing campaign on, what I believe, has become the number one social media site.  Since taking the course, my following and freelance work has increased.  Instagram has become a major platform for promoting businesses and products in all industries.

Negotiation and Deal-Making gives students a greater look into the entertainment industry and how to communicate and negotiate.  My favorite assignment of this month has been the research case presentation.  It takes students deeper into finding out more about negotiations that have happened in the entertainment industry. This assignment was particularly my favorite in this class because of the topic I got to write about, Friends. This assignment helped us develop our researching skills through the use of EBSCOHost and other research databases.  

Another fun segment from this month was getting the chance to take a deeper look into our negotiation styles and how each style communicates.  We did this by taking a Buzzfeed test to help us figure out which type of communicator we are.  This will help better our negotiations in the future in order to steer the conversation in a way best suited for the people we are communicating with.  The knowledge that I gained from both assignments, and this class, will help further myself in my career after graduation.

Throughout the Product and Artist Management class, I discovered that I enjoy artist management over product management.  After countless hours of reading, video watching and research for projects, I believe that this class gave me a greater understanding for product and artist management.  I don’t have a huge business background and this class was a little bit harder for me than most classes have been, but I always enjoy any challenge thrown my way.

The skills that I learned from this class has helped me in the entertainment industry on my path towards being a leader.  In addition, the digital portfolio assignment for this month helped me improve my personal brand strategy.  For this assignment, I got the chance to share a playlist of music that I was the live broadcast audio engineer for.

Advanced Entertainment Law was the most threatening sounding class that I feared was going to doom my GPA. I now find myself with a better knowledge of the legal side of the entertainment industry.  Through all of the work I completed and information I gathered, the biggest takeaway from Advanced Entertainment Law I gained is how to search for red flags in contracts.  

The first discussion post helped me grow my knowledge and skills the most in this class.  For me, the interview with Julee Milham helped me find key concepts that I will be able to take with me into the future and use professionally and personally.  Also, I have a better sense of how to research legal liability cases in my area to help prevent anything from happening to me. 

When starting Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution, I had goals set of wanting to gain a knowledge about social media sites that have the most popularity in the entertainment industry, learn what the best ways are to avoid distributing stolen material and to grow and learn how to distribute/promote artists work to the best of my ability.  Thankfully, this class answered all of the goals/questions I had set.

Like every class prior, there is one assignment that stood out above the rest to help further my understanding of the subject I was learning.  The Case Study Analysis assignment gave me the opportunity to test my knowledge of what I had learned.  We were given multiple scenarios where potential clients had asked questions regarding the publishing and distribution of their entertainment media content.

At the beginning of Business Plan Development, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of work set before me, but then I stepped back and remembered all that I had learned before. Every assignment in the past is what has brought me to this moment and it was time to put my knowledge to the test.  The goals I set back at the beginning of the program, learning to successfully create and pitch my business, was met by creating a business plan and financial spreadsheets.

This course has helped me rounded the sharp edges of an idea, Contouring Production Group, I came up with just ten months ago.  From the business plan assignment, I have learned how to pitch my business to investors and how to write professionally in a way that will positively affect my business.

Last month, two of my goals were met, but I had set the goal of expanding upon it in this class.  Learning to successfully pitch my business, was expanded upon just like I had hoped for.  By completing the Elevator Pitch Assignment and Business Plan Presentation, I have a better ability to pitch my ideas and business plans.  This final class has given me the opportunity to combine all that I have learned across the past eleven months and put it to the test in finalizing my business plan.

The process of learning what it takes to start a business has come from every course that I have completed in the past.  Each assignment, class and professor has taught me how to grow my business and grow in professionalism.  Everything that I learned will be applied towards my personal life and professional career in the industry.  Full Sail has taught me so much on my journey towards mastery and I will always remember what I have learned.

P.S.  If anyone is reading this, other than my professors, and you are interested in going to school for anything entertainment related, I highly recommend Full Sail University.  Always be willing to apply yourself and apply what you've learned.

[acsversace-news]

For months during the filming of American Crime Story, Ricky Martin found himself back in the closet—this time playing Antonio D’Amico, the longtime lover of the late Gianni Versace. In the pilot episode of the FX series, a detective with the Miami Police Department interrogates D’Amico after the designer is murdered. Unsure what D’Amico means when he refers to Versace as his “partner,” he questions the nature of their relationship, invoking the young men D’Amico would procure for him, some of them duly compensated, and asking, “Did he pay you?”

“To love him?” responds D’Amico, still covered in the blood of his boyfriend of 15 years, though he seems more wounded by the detective’s callous assertion—the idea that two men could ever be in a committed relationship is completely foreign to him. Yet the moment illustrates one of the overarching themes of the second installment of American Crime Story, based on Maureen Orth’s 1999 book Vulgar Favors, and adapted by British author Tom Rob Smith. Just as The People v. OJ Simpson before it offered an all-too-timely commentary on racism, The Assassination of Gianni Versace promises to tackle issues like homophobia, gun violence, and the dark allure of fame.

“I believe that the story of injustice this series will bring to the table will spark a lot of conversations about things that we, as the LGBTQ community, were dealing with in the ’90s, and that we’re still dealing with,” says Martin, though he shies away from revealing too many details about The Assassination. “At this point in our lives, there shouldn’t be stigmas over the things that we are going to be talking about.”

The show, another jewel in showrunner and creator Ryan Murphy’s television crown, will examine the lives of two gay men and their radically different paths: Gianni Versace (played by Édgar Ramirez)—the Italian designer who injected the world of fashion with a wild dose of ostentation, sensuality, and celebrity glamour—and Andrew Cunanan (Glee's Darren Criss), the 27-year-old Versace fanboy who left a trail of death and devastation in his quest for fame, ultimately finding it, and landing on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, by murdering the man he so idolized.

Cunanan was born in National City, Calif., on August 31, 1969, to a mostly absent, class-conscious Filipino-American father and a deeply religious Italian-American mother. He was a brilliant child with a reported IQ of 147. Growing up in a strict Catholic household, he struggled with his sexuality from a young age, so that later in life he was open to some, but closeted to others. He also had a reputation for being a pathological liar. After dropping out of the University of California, San Diego, he tried his hand at hustling, drug dealing, and petty robbery—anything to avoid a traditional nine-to-five. He charmed his way into a meeting with Versace on the evening of October 21, 1990, in San Francisco. Versace had designed the costumes for Richard Strauss’s opera Capriccio and was in town for the premiere. It was a brief encounter—Orth dedicates just three pages to it in Vulgar Favors—but for Cunanan, it was significant. Versace was the only celebrity he claimed to know with whom he had any ties, no matter how tenuous. According to Orth, when the FBI asked Philip Merrill, a friend of Cunanan’s, where the wanted murderer would go and whom he would try to contact, Merrill said: Florida and Versace.

By the time Cunanan gunned down the 50-year-old designer on the steps of his palatial estate, Casa Casuarina at 1116 Ocean Drive in South Beach, Miami, on the morning of July 15, 1997, he had already killed four men, including Jeff Trail, a 28-year-old Navy veteran, and David Madson, a 33-year-old architect, three months earlier in Minneapolis—both men were gay and at least one of them, Madson, was a former lover. But the nation didn’t take any real notice until Cunanan had traversed thousands of miles over several months. By then, Versace was dead.

“The whole city of Miami was in shock and never recovered,” says Martin, who was living in Miami but touring Europe at the time of Versace’s death. “Obviously what was happening in fashion was massive, but there was also what was happening in the film industry, with all these great actors moving to Miami because it was the Riviera of the United States. After Versace’s death, everything stuck because everybody was afraid. It has taken many, many, many years for Miami to return to where it was and maybe it will never be the same.”

On July 7, eight days before Versace’s murder, Cunanan visited the Cash on the Beach pawn shop to sell a gold coin he had stolen from his third victim, Lee Miglin, a 72-year-old married real estate developer he had killed and tortured on May 4 in Chicago, which eventually led to the FBI adding Cunanan to its infamous fugitives list. As required by the pawn shop, the serial killer had signed his name—his real name—and had even given the address where he was staying. Vivian Olivia, the owner of Cash on the Beach, turned over the identifying paperwork to the Miami Police the following day, yet no action was taken. Meanwhile, the red pickup truck of William Reese, the 45-year-old caretaker Cunanan had murdered in Pennsville, N.J., just days after Miglin, sat in a parking garage for weeks. The FBI, insistent that Cunanan’s sexual orientation was irrelevant to their investigation, refused to distribute Most Wanted posters of Cunanan or to work with local gay organizations and publications.

“For a number of reasons, the authorities at the time never considered Cunanan to be a public threat because he was only killing homosexuals,” says Ramirez, the Venezuelan actor whose startling resemblance to the late designer helped secure him the title role in ACS. “The word assassination has a political and a social overtone because Versace was targeted. In a way, this was a tragedy that could have been prevented. Basically, homophobia killed Gianni Versace.”

Giovanni Maria Versace was born in Reggio Calabria, Italy, on December 2, 1946. The region’s Hellenic heritage—it had been part of Magna Graecia (Latin for “Great Greece”), the coastal areas of Southern Italy populated by Greek settlers—had a lasting influence on Versace and his work, most notably in the Medusa head and Greek keys of the label’s logo. His mother ran a dressmaking business, so fashion was a part of young Gianni’s DNA. He briefly went to work for his mother after graduating high school but fled the nest for Milan in 1972, bringing his formidable talents to the Italian ateliers Genny, Complice, and Callaghan. With his older brother Santo and younger sister Donatella, he launched his own company, and in 1978 debuted his first collection.

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Versace elevated sexy to an art form. As the adage, at times attributed to Anna Wintour, goes: Armani dressed the wife and Versace dressed the mistress. His looks were brash, bold, and sometimes delightfully tacky, rendered in luminescent metallics, sadomasochistic rubbers, and industrialized plastics that pushed the boundaries of fashion and “good taste.”  More than any other designer, before him or since, Versace permeated then all but defined the zeitgeist: from Elizabeth Hurley’s iconic safety-pin black dress (recently reappropriated by Lady Gaga), to Elizabeth Berkley’s doe-eyed infatuation with “Versayce” in 1995’s Showgirls, to rap group Migos’s 2013 breakthrough hit “Versace.”

Versace’s South Beach mansion was a monument to his grandeur, outfitted in Grecian opulence. Built in 1930 by trust-fund playboy and retired architect Alden Freeman, Casa Casuarina is now a hotel and popular tourist destination. Versace was enamored by the house’s Kneeling Aphrodite statue and bought the property for $2.95 million and the old Art Deco Hotel Revere next door for $3.7 million, which he promptly demolished, angering the Miami Design Preservation League—the neighborhood had been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1979. Versace invested an additional $32 million in renovations to realize his palace, decorating every inch with his exacting eye. In the opening minutes of The Assassination, Ramirez, in a resplendent pink robe, greets his army of servants with a measure of benevolence and unquestioned authority. The effect is that of an emperor surveying his mighty kingdom. From there, the series plays up the Greek-like tragedy of Versace’s life and death.

“His life was fated in a way,” says Ramirez. “There is something very classic about this real-life story that was captured by Tom: the characters, the archetypes, their relationships. You have Gianni as an emperor, and then you have his prince, Antonio, and you have his sister, Donatella, who is the empress-to-be. Sometimes there were scenes that really felt like we were doing theater, like Macbeth or Madea.”

Versace used his majestic property to entertain, and occasionally shelter, his circle of VIPs. In awe of the power of celebrity, he cultivated a loyal, glitzy following that included Princess Diana, Elton John, Madonna, Cher, and the supermodels he regularly employed, and in whose rise he was instrumental: Naomi, Cindy, Linda, Claudia. These famous clients and friends populated his front rows, appeared in his ad campaigns, and frequented his homes around the world. And his ambition wasn’t limited to the runway—Versace expanded his empire, designing costumes for operas, films, ballets, and concert tours.

“We basically live in the world that he created,” Ramirez says. “Before Gianni, glamour and sensuality were on two separate planes. Somehow he glamorized sexuality. He had a rock ’n’ roll approach to couture, and he essentially laid the ground for celebrity culture. From then on, for better and for worse, we’ve had this obsession with it. The sociopath who killed him was seduced by fame and by luxury.”

Versace was also one of the few openly gay celebrities of his day, having been with D’Amico, a former model, since 1982. Though, according to Martin, there was a limit to their openness.

“For many months in this series, I kind of went back into the closet,” the 46-year-old says. “They were not completely out. The fear of being seen holding hands in the streets is not an issue for me anymore, but I relived all of that, and it kinda set me back and gave me a lot of discomfort. But I was playing a part, and I used it. I used that anger and I used that frustration.”

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is the gayest thing FX or Ryan Murphy has ever done. And for anyone who’s seen Popular, or Glee, or the last few seasons of Nip/Tuck, or the musical number in American Horror Story: Asylum, that’s saying a lot. But it’s also a profound statement. Murphy, an openly gay showrunner and one of the most powerful and successful visionaries in Hollywood, has produced a series about an openly gay fashion designer (who was killed by a gay serial killer), featuring an openly gay pop star playing his boyfriend. Martin, who came out publicly in 2010, hadn’t even considered this level of out-and-proudness, but he’s acutely aware of how the show’s themes resonate in today’s terrifying political climate.

Ricky Martin has been in the public eye for the majority of his life—first in the popular boy band Menudo, which he parlayed into a successful music career in Latin America and a featured role on the long-running soap opera General Hospital. But it was a 1999 Grammy performance of “The Cup of Life,” the official song of the previous year’s World Cup, and the subsequent release of his U.S. breakthrough single, “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” that skyrocketed him to superstardom and ushered in the so-called “Latin explosion.”

With increased exposure, however, came increased scrutiny, and for years rumors regarding his sexual orientation persisted. Male pop stars have rarely been allowed to be openly gay, and those that were, like Elton John and George Michael, waited until relatively late in their careers to come out. For Martin, consequently, The Assassination of Gianni Versace offered a unique and personal challenge because, to paraphrase executive producer Brad Simpson, it’s about the politics of being out in the ’90s. Today, Martin is much more comfortable in his own skin. Not only is he in love (he’s been in a relationship with Syrian-Swedish painter Jwan Yosef since 2015), but he’s a father of two—and adamant that his family be an inspiration for other nontraditional families.

“A lot of people tell me, ‘Well, your kids are on the covers of magazines and blah, blah, blah,’ and I'm like, ‘Yes because I want to normalize this,’ ” he says. “I want people to look at me and see a family and say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’ It's part of my mission. It’s part of my kids’ mission as well. My kids ask me about having two daddies and I tell them we are a part of a modern family. This is a beautiful sense of freedom.”

By taking on the role of Antonio D’Amico, the singer-actor had to conjure those years of hiding who he was, but in doing so he knew he was paying tribute to the love that Versace and D’Amico shared. Martin’s first day on set and his very first scene were also his most dramatic. “They didn't even let me warm up—I went straight into the murder,” he says. “I went straight into the moment where I find the body on the steps of the villa outside. It was a really long day. I was locked in this room for many hours just to be there in the moment when I looked out the window and saw Édgar’s feet. I went crazy and said, ‘Let’s shoot now! Please let’s shoot now!’ ”

After seeing production shots of Martin cradling a bloody Ramirez, D’Amico derided the tableau as “ridiculous” and a product of the “director’s poetic license.” In an interview with The Guardian last July, he also contradicted Martin’s assertion that he and Versace ever had to conceal their love. Martin then reached out to the 59-year-old D’Amico, whom he says was “incredibly generous” and “really honest.”

“The first thing I said to him was, ‘Antonio, I just want you to know that we all are working on this story with the utmost respect to what Gianni Versace represents to the world, and then we go to love,” says Martin. “ ‘My role here is for people to understand you, and see what the love you guys had was made of.’ They were together for 15 years. It’s a lifetime. And like Antonio says, there was no end to this love. There is no end to this love.”

“There are two love stories,” Ramirez adds. “One with Antonio, Ricky’s character, and the other with Penélope Cruz’s character, Donatella. Gianni was very devoted to both of them. Ricky and I wanted to be respectful of their relationship and open about how supportive they were of each other. According to everyone I talked to, Gianni was very protective of Antonio, and Antonio was very protective of Gianni.”

There is, however, no love lost between D’Amico and Donatella Versace. The two always had a contentious relationship. In his will, Versace provided D’Amico with a $30,000-a-month lifetime allowance and the right to live in any of the late designer’s homes, but because of a feud with the Versace family, D’Amico received a portion of what he was owed.

Family was of the utmost importance to Gianni Versace, but his own didn’t want to be involved in the show’s production. Ramirez, no stranger to playing biographical characters—he earned an Emmy nomination in 2011 for his portrayal of Venezuelan revolutionary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez in Carlos—approached the series with immense compassion, but out of respect (and for legal reasons) he chose not to approach the designer’s surviving family members.

“Whatever hesitations or reservations they have about the series, I understand,” Ramirez says of the Versace family. “This is a tragedy. It should have never happened. We want to enforce our own empathy. I hope that in the end they will be satisfied.”

What is a historical or cultural moment for the rest of the world is a story of intense personal tragedy for the family and former partner of Gianni Versace, so a production of this scale and caliber—this isn’t, after all, the Gina Gershon Lifetime movie House of Versace—is bound to reopen old wounds and draw renewed scrutiny. And yet: That’s fame. One’s life—and death—are no longer one’s own. But what made The People v. OJ Simpson so successful was how it took a tragedy and articulated its significance to the world we live in: a world with a 24/7 news cycle, a world of continued racial animus, a world of keeping up with the Kardashians.

While LGBTQ people have more rights and freedoms than in any other time in U.S. history, the rapid progress of marginalized communities over the previous years has revealed the cracks in this country—ugly truths barely hidden just below the surface have been exposed. This America abets white supremacists, bolsters an accused pedophile who believes homosexuality should be illegal, and neglects the victims of a mishandled natural disaster because they’re not quite “American” enough.

“We've been taking four airplanes with 150,000 pounds’ worth of basic necessities,” Martin says of the relief effort in Puerto Rico, of which he’s been a part. “It’s been very difficult because four million US citizens are still without power or clean drinking water. My family is there and luckily, I can bring them out to take a break, but there's a very intense passion about where we come from, and they don't want to leave.”

And, of course, it’s impossible to deny that if homophobia killed Gianni Versace, so did a gun. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fl., killing 49 people and wounding 58 others. The overwhelming majority of his victims were queer people of color in what was, until 15 months later, the deadliest mass shooting on American soil. “I want to be very respectful about this because I am not American,” Ramirez begins, cautiously. “But I have a very hard time reconciling how easy it is to gain access to guns here. And I come from one of the most violent countries in the world.”

Though mass shootings remain a uniquely American phenomenon, the conversations around gun control and mental illness have ultimately gone nowhere. For 35 years, the United States has rarely gone a year without a mass shooting. In 1997, the year of Andrew Cunanan’s murderous spree, more than 32,000 people were killed by guns. That number has remained stable, so that on any given day, 93 people are shot to death.

After Versace was killed, speculation ran wild regarding Cunanan’s motive. Some claimed an HIV-positive diagnosis triggered his murderous streak, but an autopsy debunked that theory, itself a form of homophobia. In 1997, homosexuality and AIDS were still inextricably bound so that a gay serial killer was automatically linked to the disease—as if Gregg Araki’s The Living End had come to life. But whereas that 1992 film glamorized its killers, the Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a pitiable figure—a lost soul grasping at a fantasy embodied by his final and most famous victim. Cunanan, too, was a victim—of homophobia, both internalized and externalized; of his own desires; of his upbringing; of the world in which he lived. Through his detestable actions, he finally got what he wanted: It’s now impossible to discuss the legacy of fashion’s one-time emperor without also remembering the man who cut his life short that July morning.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/tech-mn-faq-friday-privacy/

tech.mn – FAQ Friday: Privacy

Welcome to our latest FAQ Friday — on privacy— where industry experts answer your burning technology and startup questions. We’ve gathered Minnesota authorities on topics from software development to accounting to talent acquisition and everything in between. Check in each week, and submit your questions here.

This week’s FAQ Friday is sponsored by The Jed Mahonis Group. The Jed Mahonis Group helps businesses strategize, design, develop, and deploy custom iOS and Android mobile applications. The company has partnered with many startups and large brands over the years to deliver software that is used by millions of people around the world, including companies such as Great Clips, Green Mill, VSI Labs, and Kwikly.

Meet Our FAQ Expert

Tim Bornholdt, Partner at The Jed Mahonis Group | @timbornholdt

Tim got his start in web development in the first grade, so he’s been building websites and apps for more than 20 years. In addition to being an accomplished software developer, Tim is also an award-winning videographer and podcaster. He currently edits the C Tolle Run podcast hosted by Olympian Carrie Tollefson, and he hosts the Constant Variables podcast where he breaks down complex mobile app development topics for entrepreneurs and product managers.

How can I design my product with privacy in mind?

This isn’t a question we’re often asked at the onset of a project but designing with privacy in mind is something we’re proactive about in our development process.

We employ Ann Cavoukian’s Privacy by Design approach when dealing with our apps.

Seven Privacy Principles

1. Privacy considerations should be proactive, not reactive

All it takes is one hack or one step of negligence from an employee, and you’re showing your users that you can’t be trusted with their data. At best, that means your users will leave to go to your competitor, and at worst, they’ll leave you with a PR and financial nightmare. Treating your customers’ data with care and respect from the moment it’s given to you will pay dividends.

When you are dealing with customer’s private data, you should do everything you can to prevent an infraction from occurring. Instead of reacting to bad actors, you should think through possible scenarios from day one and mitigate those risks right off the bat.

2. Privacy as the default setting

When you download a new app, how often is the first, second, or even twentieth thing you do within that app is look at the privacy settings? Making a users’ information private by default and giving them the control to share their data inspires trust and being a product people trust can be a key differentiator among your competitors.

To learn how consideration of user privacy can be a market differentiator, especially when targeting Millennials and younger generations, listen to this interview with security expert Adam Stone of Secure Digital Solutions.

3. Embedding privacy into the design

Making privacy considerations an integral part of the design process, from ideation to launch to new feature rollouts, keeps privacy at the forefront of every decision without affecting functionality.4.

4. Using a positive sum approach, not negative sum

A negative sum approach to privacy would be an app that requires personal information in order to use it. But it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Designing an app with a positive sum approach balances full functionality with the minimally required data requested of a user, meaning a user who doesn’t want to share their data can still download and use your app with the same functionality as a user willing to share their information.

5. End to end security

Data should be secure from its creation to its destruction. When a user types in their email and password into your system, that information should be secured and encrypted from the time it leaves their device until it reaches your servers. Once you are in possession of it, you should secure it until the data is ready to be destroyed. When the time comes to delete it, it should be destroyed securely and completely.

6. Transparency

Be open about how a user’s information will be stored and used. An independent party should be able to verify that you, in fact, handle your customer’s data with the care you promise in your privacy policy.

7. Respect for user privacy

Keep your options and terms user-centric and user-friendly. For example, you should make your privacy policy easy to find and easy to understand, which leads well into our next question.

Why should my product have a privacy policy and what should it include?

A privacy policy outlines how user information is collected, stored, used, and shared, with contact information provided for anyone with questions. Users have a right to know how their information is being used, a right that is generally protected by law, as laws differ in regards to what and who is protected and are dependent on where you live or do business.

A privacy policy not only protects your users, but it also protects you in the event your product is hacked and private information is stolen.

What your privacy policy covers will depend on your industry, your location, and even your clients’ locations.

The Better Business Bureau provides tips on how to write a policy and what to address, and it’s always a good idea to seek legal counsel to make sure your privacy policy fully protects you in the event of an issue.

Still have questions? Ask Tim and The Jed Mahonis Group team questions on privacy and more on Twitter at @timbornholdt.

[ananya111]

Key Benefits of Virtual Offices

Colombo is one of the most preferable place for many businesses. Many entrepreneurs are trying to start their businesses in this city.

In this era of intense competition, corporates need to work extra hours . Virtual offices, on the other hand, create an opportunity for people to work at any time they want to from any location.

The use  of virtual offices saves time and money which are the most important resources for any business. The key advantage factors of virtual offices in Colombo are:

1. Cut back in Commute time

If your employees are commuting from distant places, they need approximately two to three hours to reach the workplace every day. This traveling time becomes unproductive for the company. .. Virtual offices help in reducing  this commuting stress of the employees and pushes them to be more productive  in their work.

2. The efficiency of Employees Increase

According to studies, the productivity of employees is likely to decrease if they are working on an average of 8 hours per day sitting on a chair. . 

Providing leisure time in between working hours can improve the overall health of your employees in the long run. 

3. Exposure to talent across the globe

Since the online/virtual platform has no restrictions or boundaries, you can hire people from different countries for getting particular tasks done. There are many companies that collaborate with contractors from various parts of the world to fulfill the needs of their clients.

4. Increases Cost Efficiency 

Virtual Offices help you save money. 

It will also save you money in the implementation of technology in your office. When your employees are working remotely, they can work with their preferred technology 

Make sure that all your work is encrypted and secured with a password to prevent any data from being stolen..

5. Increase in Productivity 

Working in a virtual office makes employees enjoy more freedom and makes them happy. This will alternately increase the productivity of the employees to a great extent. 

These are some of the key advantages of virtual offices. It will help you set up a versatile team with higher efficiency and productivity.

If  virtual offices cannot fulfill your needs, you can prefer  serviced offices in Colombo.

[imdoglover]

Why You Should Learn Ethical Hacking Nowadays??

today’s digital era, one of the biggest threats comes from cybercriminals. Hackers were not taken seriously until a few years back. Recently, some big names in the Indian industry had to pay hefty sums of money to hackers to keep confidential information from being disclosed to the government. According to surveys conducted by cybersecurity firms in the country, Indian firms lost more than $4 billion in 2013 alone because of hackers.

With more and more companies entering the e-commerce ecosystem and adopting new technologies like cloud computing, the threat from imminent security breaches is clearly demanding the need for efficient information security systems. The rising threat from cyber-attacks has exposed a severe shortage of talent in this sector.

As per 2015 figures reported by Nasscom, India needed more than 77,000 white hat hackers as against only a mere 15,000 certified professional ethical hackers in that year.

What is ethical hacking?

Ethical hacking is a way of objectively analyzing an organization’s data security structure. A new league of IT professionals called white hat hackers or ethical hackers is emerging and gaining prominence. The job of an ethical hacker is to purposefully penetrate security systems to fix these weak points.

These professionals employ methods similar to that used by malicious hackers, but they are required to be a step or two ahead of their vicious counterparts. Ethical or white hat hackers may be employed by the government, banks, or private firms to prevent cybercrime. They hack the system with permission from the client and present a maturity scorecard for the network that highlights their overall risk.

Penetration testing or pen testing is a way of evaluating Internet applications, networks and computer systems for the level of vulnerability. This test helps in gauging the network and giving it a real-world assessment.

Ethical hacking includes services like the following:

Application Testing: Done to uncover flaws in the system at the very core or logical level

Remote or war dialing: Used to test open-ended modem connections that remotely connect to a network

Local network testing: Deals with testing of services, protocols, system devices and virtual private networks

Wireless security: A method of measuring the level of security available in the framework as a whole

System hardening: Done to strengthen the host and mend weaknesses

Stolen laptop: Done using the PC of an important employee, this test examines for passwords and personal information stored in a dial-up software

Social engineering: This type of hacking is very difficult to carry out as it involves people, personalities and employees.

The need for ethical hackers

Cybercrimes are becoming more common and attackers more sophisticated with rouge nation-states and terrorist organizations funding criminals to breach security networks either to extort hefty ransoms or compromise national security features.

Businesses are faced with the challenge of dealing with complex security requirements that need to be updated as per changing hacking tactics, handling hidden vulnerabilities and evolving technologies. Ethical hacking firms with specially trained professionals come to the rescue of businesses while ensuring the effectiveness of service and confidentiality.

While many new businesses are better prepared in case of cyber attacks, traditional businesses still lack a proactive understanding of the need for ethical hacking. For example, in India, banks have faced the brunt many-a-times are hiring professional help to secure their networks. Still, the investment infrastructure for banks against cybercrime is quite minuscule compared to that of banks in the US.

Hotels and other service wings of the industry seem to be lagging behind. Recently, many hotels in the country were being attacked by a malware called ‘darkhotel’ in an attempt to spy on or stalk corporate travelers and gain access through the hotel’s WIFI services.

With new worms, malware, ransomware, and viruses springing up every day, there is a need to create more awareness among businesses and how ethical hacking can help them to safeguard their networks.

Ethical hacking as a career offers immense opportunities. A fresh certified ethical hacker could attract a salary anywhere between INR 3.5 and 4 lakh per year. Experienced professionals in this field such as security consultants, information security analysts, and ethical hacking experts can command salaries in the range of INR 9 to INR 20 lakh.

Conclusion

The security of an enterprise should be analyzed for effectiveness from time to time. Since businesses work in a structured yet complex environment comprising of security, policies and changing technologies, involving complex interactions and interoperations, there is a need to assess the system with a holistic approach. Ethical hacking solutions are possibly the best way of examining such systems and fine-tuning any minor gaps that may lead to the compromise of the entire organization.

[pupinpants]

Security Everywhere Explanations

So I discovered during my Job application development that I don’t really explain my Security Everywhere information so I will be providing the context and explanation of the posts.

June 5th: I posted a meme about Huawei controversy with their potential security threats in their phones. Australia and America’s fear of potential Chinese military spying through Huawei’s phones have spiralled to national actions where Huawei infrastructure is now banned in both the countries. These meme is just a joke about it but it was something on my Facebook newsfeed so I decided to share it.

June 8th: At that time, there were news about ANU student and staff account information being hacked and stolen by Chinese hackers. The article discusses about the effects of such hacks and reasoning behind such cyber attacks and the impact of it to a University like ANU. This was highly relevant to the topics being discussed in Week 2 as one of our tasks was to draft a potential letter or recommendation to a recent UNSW email that attempted to raise Cyber Security Awareness. The article brought up an interesting observation where a potential outcome of the Cyber breach is that the information isn’t going to be sold to scam companies, but used by the Chinese government to track career progress of potential students that may impact Australia or China. ANU is a highly political and science driven University and holds alot of research and relationship value to China’s interest and thus leaking such information would allow the Chinese government to intervene on potential talents or projects.

June 15th: During this period of time, the Hong Kong protesting has risen over to 1 million protestors and was drawing alot of international news. The article that I read outlined China’s effort in intervening protestor’s communication through DDoSing an application called “Telegram” which was the protestor’s choice of messenger application to communicate with other protestors and organisers. Through Telegram, China was able to arrest protestors by tracking their actions throughout the riots. While this demonstrates notions of leaving digital footprints, it also poses another issue of Centralisation which we learnt in Week 3 Lectures ass all communication occurs on the Telegram application. Since all data is gathered in one place, it is also a single point of failure and if compromised, could lead to the endangerement of more rioters.

June 18th: I was recently told by my mum that her colleague/friend’s business was infected by a Wannacry virus in which they were forced to give bitcoins to the attacker in order to get their computers back. 

A brief description of the WannaCry is that it is a malware where it infects all computers in the network and locks the computer up with a screen that tells the victim to send bitcoins to a certain account in order to get their computer back. The Wannacry attack works by having a worm that tunnels through all the computers and networks in order to look for a specific file that does not exist and only when the bitcoin is sent, will the worm stop tunnelling. The WannaCry attack became rampant in 2017 where major companies around the world  were hit with this virus due to having computers connected to the same network, either through a local network or intranet and is usually initiated when an individual opens a suspiscious file. This bug mainly affected Window Operating systems ranging from Windows XP to Windows 10 however, individuals who had the most updated version of their OS at the time were not affected. This was because the Wannacry Virus exploits a backdoor bug that had existed in older versions of the Window operating system for more than a decade as the US Government were using this to access Russian systems through their own exploit called Eternal Blue. Microsoft eventually found the backdoor bug and fixed it in an update a month before the WannaCry virus began popping up and thus only Operating systems that were recently updated were unaffected by the WannaCry Virus.

Now the whole point of explaining that is since this is the year 2019, 2 years after the Wannacry outbreak, my mum’s friend got hit with the Wannacry attack. This meant that her operating systems weren’t updated and that was bad. Companies usually don’t update their operating systems as they may have applications or outdated systems that only work with older versions of Operating systems. As updating an operating system also meant that the company had to update their applications, it wouldn’t be cost efficient to update all their computers and would be cheaper to just use an outdated operating system to sustain their current applications. The risk assessments of Companies when using this strategy is that the likelihood of being hacked is quite low especially if they are a small company, and thus they trade security with cost efficiency. Although low probability, when they do get cyber attacked, then the impact would be huge as they are a small company. 

Update your operating systems please.

June 29th: I posted about an observation I had made when I was researching about a game called Rage 2. Rage 2 is a game made by Bethesda Softwork and was released on the 14th of May and was released on the PC and purchasable on Bethesda’s game client and Steam client. Ironically, I was researching methods on ways of torrenting Rage 2 as I wanted to play the game without actually purchasing in order to try it out as I was new to the genre. However, the biggest fear I would have about games like Rage 2 is that since it is a game made by a Triple A company like Bethesda, it would be reasonable to assume that there were extensive measures in trying to keep individuals from torrenting and playing the game for free. Many companies would opt to use Denuvo to prevent individuals from torrenting the game as the game is only playable if the client they are using is able to supply the correct key. The key can only be generated by Denuvo which uses a complex cryptogaphic algorithm to generate it and hence “cracking” the key would be very difficult. Thus, trying to play the game through the Steam Client for free would take a long time as people would need to find the key first. 

HOWEVER, Bethesda Softwork is very well known to be extremely slack when it comes to Quality Assurance and resolving bugs in their system and apparently this applies to their own Game Client Application. Apparently, Denuvo was never implemented to Rage 2 if you were to play the game through Bethesda’s game client. Thus the fear of not being able to “crack” the game was immediately dissolved as people were able to exploit Bethesda’s own client and thus Rage 2 was “cracked” in less than a day. 

Moral of the story is that no matter how many security measures you place on your system, if there is a single point of failure, then all defence measures are done in vain if that point is breached. The single point of failure in this case is Bethesda’s Client.

July 13th:  I can’t really explain about this one as it requires you to have already watched Spiderman Far from Home. However, I’ll say, Peter Parker does an oopsie and the cause of his actions resulted in a disaster occuring. However, he was the single point of failure as he was assigned a system whos User, Administrator and Owner is himself. Thus, everything that happens is a result of his actions and thus he is the single point of failure as there were no security measures that would’ve prevented his decisions or even resolved his decisions.

July 19th: I did this one for fun but basically, during the Week 7 tutorial, someone asked how to stop spam calls. I was getting alot too and found this solution that may help. I have received less phone calls now but I’m not sure if it’s because of the solution or if the companies have given up since I never pick up any of their phone calls.

July 21st: This was really random but one moment I was logged in on my own account in Piazza, and next moment I was in someone elses account. Apparently the account user was Natasha Wong and she went to Arizona University and she was using Piazza to do some maths course. Weird.

[dankesdarkman]

Fate/Grand Order Shinjuku Ending Notes

By fallacies from Beast’s Lair

a) The Alliance version of Moriarty was, of course, Baal; the Moriarty traveling with the protagonists was the real Moriarty. For the purposes of their plan, Baal and Moriarty found a means to temporarily erase / modify their memories and personalities. Baal took on the appearance and memories of Moriarty, without any knowledge of the ruse or the true nature of the alliance. Likewise, Moriarty reduced himself to nothing but a functional personality with barely any personal memories. The "brainwashing" was designed to undo itself only when certain conditions were fulfilled. That is to say, Moriarty wasn't lying when he said that "somebody" had stolen his name and appearance. More details on this below. b) The term "Ma-Jin" in the context of "The Phantasmal Alliance of Ma-Jin" refers not to demonized humans / Fiends (Majin), but to "Demons (Ma) and Humans (Jin)." That is to say, the name reflects the accord established between Moriarty (a Human) and Baal (a Demon). Moriarty's motive was to exceed Sherlock Holmes, while Baal's motive was to take revenge for Goetia. c) Baal has been preparing his revenge for over 3000 years; following Goetia's defeat, he's reformulated himself as an existence of passion, built around a dedication to the cause of taking revenge on Gudako. Specifically, the "motive" underlying his actions is that Gudako is too "normal." If Gudako had been some sort of legendary hero or villain, Baal could've accepted Goetia's defeat at her hands -- but Gudako is a perfectly average human with no particularly outstanding talents. For somebody so "average" to defeat Goetia is to Baal an utterly unacceptable outcome. Thus, unlike Goetia, Baal isn't committed to defeating Gudako for the purpose of destroying the world; he's engaged in a plot to destroy the world for the purpose of killing Gudako. d) Baal has spent the past 3000 years independently researching methods by which to merge Phantoms and Heroic Spirits to generate hybrids -- a feat considered by Da Vinci to be an impossibility. Ergo, this was not actually a technique developed by Moriarty. Despite qualifying as a Caster, Moriarty was never a magus -- and though he was aware of the Clock Tower, he never liked associating with them. e) Baal either "anticipated" or "designed" the manifestation of the Shinjuku Singularity; specifically, his plan required the existence of a world in which the Common Sense of Man was inactive. It is due to the inactivity of the Common Sense that the district has an air of "unreality" about it, as if it were a location from out of a story or an urban legend; the laws of science / reality normally implemented by the Common Sense are not in effect, permitting that Baal is able to enact the merging of Phantoms or Heroic Spirits unimpeded. Basically, the entirety of the Shinjuku Singularity has become something like the interior of Araya Souren's magical apartment complex; the Counter Force has abandoned this world. f) After backstabbing Holmes / doing something with Holmes' Saint Graph, Moriarty explains his real plot: He chose to assist Baal because Shinjuku suits his needs as a stage of confrontation with Holmes. He describes the Domain of Man as a World wherein good is inevitably due to prevail over evil; this is simply how timeline mechanics operate. Within the context of the Domain of Man, the existence known as Moriarty is physically incapable of attaining a victory over Sherlock Holmes -- in accordance with some theory that respondents have an advantage over a party that makes the first move. (Ergo, within their shared history, Holmes never acted against Moriarty until the latter initiated a plot; Holmes could therefore easily dismantle the plot as an interloper. It's easier to destroy than to build.) Moriarty believes this "inevitability" could be described as an action of the Counter Force, in the broad sense. g) Ergo, to prevail against Holmes, Moriarty would have to be on Holmes' side; he could not be the "first actor" against which Holmes goes on the offensive. The plot was therefore to have Baal serve as bait, while the real Moriarty assists Holmes in his efforts -- with the condition of full memory restoration being Baal's defeat while posing as the Alliance Moriarty. Simply acting or pretending to assist wouldn't be enough to fool Holmes; and so the elimination of memory was mostly complete on both the parts of Baal and Moriarty. While Moriarty assisted in taking down Alliance Moriarty, he was doing so in the conscious belief that he was acting in the service of justice. h) Emiya Alter was hired by "an unidentified party" to infiltrate the Alliance and assassinate Baal. He was waiting for Baal to reveal himself to act; it's possible that he wasn't able to independently confirm the identity of the Alliance Moriarty prior to the reveal. The identity of Emiya Alter's client is unknown; how he managed to infiltrate the Shinjuku Singularity is unknown. i) Not really interested in repeating Der Freischutz spoilers. Moriarty explains the aesthetics of his plot: The protagonists (Holmes included) are oriented to hold an advantage over "evil" -- but a disadvantage if their opponent is "good." Thus, if "poison" must be used to fight "poison," it is only fitting that "medicine" be used to fight "medicine." In brainwashing himself, he overwrote his own absence of morality with this in mind. j) JAlter survived the confrontation with Lobo where she apparently suicided; she dropped into a manhole. She shows up during the final battle, along with the real Dantes and Shakespeare and Andersen. Shakespeare and Andersen summon over 200 fictitious "Great Detective" Phantoms, who lend you their powers during combat (charging your NP, etc.). In response, Moriarty uses the Grail that Baal left him with (which he actually had all along, even when he was traveling with the protagonists) to summon a massive wraith. k) The "Great Detectives'" collective Noble Phantasm is the "pronouncement of guilt." They ask Gudako to say to Moriarty, "The culprit is you, James Moriarty!" Once these words are spoken, Moriarty is locked into the behavior pattern of the revealed criminal in a detective novel, and summarily defeated. Originally, he was going to launch a (fourth) wave of attack, but he's prevented from doing so due to the Detectives' NP. l) In the end, Moriarty says that he can't comprehend how he could be defeated; in every possible respect, he and his organization outperform Gudako and her allies. Gudako and Mashu theorize that it's because, having finally experienced what it feels like to act for the side of justice, he too desired that he could enact justice; unconsciously, he desired that justice would prevail. Ultimately, he desired that Gudako could trust in him. m) Once Bennu manifests in the upper atmosphere, it becomes "impossible" for Gudako to rayshift out of Shinjuku. The outcome of Gudako's death is phenomenally "unavoidable," enforced by the Noble Phantasm of Der Freischutz. However -- possibly because the Noble Phantasm of Der Freischutz is acting on the asteroid -- Emiya-Alter's "Unlimited Lost Works" is capable of shattering the stone. This alone, however, is incapable of saving Shinjuku from the debris. To resolve the threat once and for all, Alter unleashes Excalibur Morgan. As the denial of Gudako's rayshift only concludes when the debris is eliminated, it's likely that Der Freischutz's Noble Phantasm was still in effect following the asteroid's shattering. n) Dantes mentions right before he vanishes that he was "hired" by "one of Shakespeare's fans" to come and resolve the situation. o) JAlter has the ability to interfere with Chaldea's transmissions at will. She does so to secretly dance with Gudako just before she vanishes. p) Sherlock somehow survives whatever it is Moriarty did with his Saint Graph. When Gudako arrives back in 2017, Holmes is somehow there. He informs you that according to records left behind by Baal, three other Demon God Pillars besides Baal survived the confrontation with Goetia. After deciding not to explain to you some other secret he uncovered, he offers his services in falsifying Gudako's information within Chaldea's internal records. q) Prior to the events of the London Singularity, the Charles Babbage summoned by Makiri Zolgen calculated that even in the event that Goetia's plan fails, the History of Man cannot advance beyond the year 2017; certain "anomalous existences" are due to interfere with the continuation of the Human Order in the condition that Goetia is defeated. To investigate the reasons behind this, Babbage engaged the services of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes elected not to assist the protagonists in their quest during the Incineration beyond giving hints because he judged that the matter could be resolved without his involvement. r) It's hinted (?) that after the Singularity is resolved, the Hessian Lobo might still exist somewhere within real Shinjuku. Possibly, he's fused with Alter's dog, Gaius II, maybe becoming a DRRR-esque Urban Legend ... (?)

[andreaeppolitoevents]

How to Tell If a Wedding Planner (or Pro) is Real

With so many instagram accounts and social media profiles “sharing” other people’s work, how can you tell if what you are looking at is truly the work of the wedding pro you are considering?

If you have read the book “Steal Like An Artist” by Austin Kleon, you know that there is very little in the world that is completely, wholly original. As artists and creatives, we are inspired by the world around us. To be inspired by the world is to take that which you see and make it better. I take colors, textures, and patterns and I mix them in a new way. I make note of the weddings, events, and interior designs that I love so that I can dissect and dismantle them. I break the world into tiny pieces, and then put it back together in a way that - hopefully - makes people feel things other than that which they felt before. This is not theft. It is inspiration and, in so many ways, art. I honor the work that has come before me by pushing it further.

Theft in the wedding and event space is about showing work that is not your own and failing to properly credit the appropriate individuals. It is taking an idea or an image and knocking it off in a way that degrades the value of the original work. When I talk to my clients about design, I find myself saying, “You wouldn’t carry a knock off Chanel or YSL bag. Why would you pay for a knock off wedding?” My advice for clients and creatives alike is always this: Be better. Be better than Pinterest. Be better than Instagram. You deserve more than a knock off; especially a bad one.

How do you as a couple know whether or not the work a wedding pro is showing is actually theirs?

Over the last month, many of us have been made aware of the fact that our work has been “stolen” and is being shared by other wedding pros as their own. As a professional and a business owner, it is incredibly frustrating to see work be abused in such a cavalier manner. Many of us have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of this work. We have spent decades honing our craft and invested thousands of dollars and countless hours in order to develop ourselves as creatives. Our ability to see the world in an utterly unique way, to imagine a world more beautiful than the one we live in, and to manifest that into reality is an artform. Having it pilfered and passed around as if it is nothing is not only wrong, but incredibly hurtful. It is hard to understand how one professional can do this to another.

As maddening as it is for us as creatives, the real damage to is to our clients. Newly engaged couples begin their search for inspiration online. Social media sites such as Instagram and search engines such as Pinterest are the go-to sources of inspiration for brides and grooms. Couples find an image they love, trace the clicks back to a website, and book a particular vendor based on what they have seen online. The relationship starts with a lie, and nothing good can come from that place. As the process moves forward, couples find themselves struggling with their vendor (be it a planner, designer, photographer, etc.) because the hired team cannot meet their expectations. There is a gap between the perceived talent of the vendor and their actual ability. The faulty pro has sold their clients a lie, and the unknowing couple is left confused about where they have gone wrong. This leads to heartbroken clients and a negative impression of our beloved wedding industry.

So how can you, as a couple and potential client, determine if the work you are seeing online is truly the work of the professional you are considering? Here are three ways that you can suss out the legitimacy of a wedding professionals’ presented work:

5 Tips for Validating a Wedding Pro’s Authenticity

COMPARE: Compare the image you love to the rest of the wedding pros portfolio. Does the image you love fit in with the rest of their presented work? Wedding planners will plan to the desires of their clients, but there should be a sense of style and a vibe that carries through their work. For example, I love production. My weddings will all feature a major design element and there will be a sense of transformation and storytelling. My images are captioned with ways that explain how and why I created a certain environment. Every element I add to a design is personally vetted, and there is a reason behind each decision I make. As , have a very specific style and vibe. Their composure, the lighting, and the way in which they frame their subjects will have a thread of consistency. If you look at a photographer’s site and there are inconsistencies in the filter and tone of the images, it is a good indicator that the work you are seeing may not be theirs.

FOLLOW THE FEED: Scroll through the feed of the company you are considering in search of other images from the same wedding or event. Legitimate pros will have multiple photos of the same wedding, and those photos will also appear on their website. Beware of new accounts that are featuring over the top work that appears to be their own. New businesses need time to develop their own original portfolios. If you see something that you adore but the pro seems too new to have perhaps produced it, reach out and ask about the origin. Some new businesses have approval to share work they contributed to while they were employed with another company. In that case, the pro will likely direct you to the original source and explain how they worked on the project. Always double check, and ask the actual wedding planner or photographer what they can tell you about the posting pro’s involvement.

IMAGE SEARCH: Did you know that you can search for an image via google? Simple drag the image you love into the search bar and do a little digging. You would be able to trace back the original origin of the photo, and also see where else the image has appeared. Pay particular attention to weddings that have been published by third party blogs and magazines, as the editors will list the legitimate vendors that were involved in the project.

TAGS AND COMMENTS: From time to time, vendors will share the work of other pros to showcase inspiration or to highlight a relationship. Legitimate vendors will note clearly that the work they are sharing is not their own. They will list detailed credits in the captain and note that the images and videos shared are not from events that they have produced. However, less scrupulous people will share work without specifically saying who it belongs to. They will craft comments and captions that make it seems as if they did the work, and they will “hide” the real vendors as tags in the image. This is tricky, as the poster will say things such as “I never claimed it was mine” or “well, I tagged you in the image” to deflect responsibility. I know that it sounds crazy, but you should always do your due diligence and ensure that there are no hidden tags or credits that you may be missing.

ASK FOR FULL SET OF IMAGES: It is very easy for someone to repost one piece of work and claim it as their own. It is much more difficult to hijack an entire gallery. While qualifying your vendors, ask to see the full set of images from the weddings you love. Not just the public gallery that they are showing; ask for the full set of images. Wedding pros who have actually worked an event will have their own behind the scenes photos they can share.

It may sound like a lot of work, but vetting your wedding professionals - especially your wedding planner - is one of the most important things you will do while building your team. Hire the right person with the right credentials - one that also sees the world as you wish it were - and you are all but guaranteed to love not just the final product, but the process. However, if you fall victim to someone who claims work that is not their own or that overly embellishes their experience, and you are likely doomed to find yourself steeped in regret. (For a real-couple’s account of their experience having hired the wrong wedding planner, watch my VIDEO or listen to my PODCAST.)

How can we as wedding professionals protect ourselves from unsavory “pros” who pass our work off as their own?

Perhaps you are wedding professional that has had your work “borrowed” by your competition; what then? Every established wedding professional that I know has experienced this. Some attempt to prevent theft and unauthorized usage by putting large logos and watermarks on their images. This is an awful look and prevents the real pros from properly showcasing their art. Additionally, anyone who wants to take any image can and will easily get around a logo. I do not believe in compromising the work to prevent the bad behavior of others. I do believe in addressing the behavior, however, and doing your best to stop others from being actively injurious.

I am not a lawyer, but I have taken the following steps with great success over the years:

If you find that your work is being used without your consent, the first thing to do is to send a message directly to the offending party. Let them know that you have become aware of their unauthorized use of your work. State clearly that you do not give this person permission to use your image/video/design/words and request that they take it down. Next, you should reach out to all of the pros that worked on the wedding or event in question and let them know that another business is sharing their work inappropriately and without credit. In my experience, other vendors will be just as disgruntled by this action as you are, and they will also reach out to the offending party. Peer pressure is a powerful influence, and often encourages the poster to remove the images they have posted. If, after all this, you still find that your work has not been removed, make your plea public. Post a comment on the image that clearly states that the work being is yours, and that it does not belong to the posting business. Request that they remove the image and make a note to follow up and ensure that they take it down. Screengrab the image, and keep a detailed record of your requests and the business’ response to them. If a week passes with no resolution, you can escalate your request by sending a cease and desist letter. In layman’s terms, “cease” means to stops doing something and “desist” advises them not to resume the behavior. This type of notification will typically be the last step you need to take in order to resolve the issue. After this, you need to either bring in an actual attorney or you need to let it go.

Personally, I struggle in letting things like this go. But I also believe that every moment I spent policing the behaviors of others takes away from the time and energy I can put into creating something new. That doesn’t mean that I stand by and allow others to wantonly steal my work. It just means that I won’t allow them to steal my time or my joy along with it.

Instead, we fight the good fight. We do the best we can. We share the work of others to celebrate them and to share inspiration, and we protect that which we created in honor of not only our work, but for the clients that we created it for. Anything else disrespects the process, the journey, and the story. If we fail to honor those things, then we have nothing. And pretty without purpose will always fall flat.

And so my engaged friends, continue to seek inspiration online. Pin the photos you love, save the Instagrams that inspire you, and use the many resources available online to educate yourself about who you are working with and what you are buying. Buy from and work with the best, and remember that integrity and art are a winning combination.

Always….

PS - My friends at Anee Atelier recently published their own account of having not only their work but their entire site plagiarized. (You can read their incredible article here).

[bharatiyamedia-blog]

Why knowledge breaches preserve taking place

http://tinyurl.com/yx8n95mm Information breaches stay prevalent within the enterprise. Be taught what firms are doing proper—and mistaken—in the case of prevention. Why enterprise cannot preserve the general public secure from knowledge breaches Cyber-threats pose an existential problem, says RedSeal CEO Ray Rothrock. In my 26 years working as an IT skilled I have been lucky to avoid a serious knowledge breach, which has adversely impacted my office both from a monetary or reputational standpoint.  I’ve had some shut calls: One group had a proxy server hacked and used to ship spam emails and one other had an exterior Google account compromised. Thankfully, in each circumstances the menace was minimal, and no precise breach of confidential data occurred. SEE: Windows 10 security: A guide for business leaders (Tech Professional Analysis) Nonetheless, I can not declare any particular exemption from the menace; some days it is a matter of talent, luck, or largely each. I spoke to Matthew Honea, director of cybersecurity for Guidewire Cyence Risk Analytics, a software-as-a-service supplier primarily based in California, to debate the most recent knowledge breaches. Newest knowledge breach developments Scott Matteson: What is the newest information within the knowledge breach area? Matthew Honea: Information breaches are more and more extra widespread—61% of IT professionals have experienced a serious data breach. This development is essentially attributed to elevated reliance on know-how, which will increase an organization’s vulnerability, and hackers are quickly adapting to new developments. Hackers use a variation of strategies—reminiscent of knowledge mining and AI—and goal a spread of entryways, from the cloud to home equipment to entry knowledge. As new applied sciences reminiscent of 5G and broader IoT capabilities come to mild, considerations about how this can additional allow cyber dangers are rising. Whereas these developments present vital enterprise benefits, in addition they require new and superior safety protocols to handle the escalated breach strategies they foster. What firms do mistaken Scott Matteson: What are firms doing mistaken? Matthew Honea: Lagging schooling round threat. In line with IBM, 27% of data breaches are caused by human error, which means greater than 1 / 4 of breaches might have been simply prevented with higher schooling. That is seen throughout all ranges of expertise, as many firms nonetheless lack the right protocol and protections to assist mitigate dangers for them and their clients. For instance, Hiscox found that 27% of US companies do not have plans to purchase cyber insurance.  Moreover, firms lack reporting requirements that would assist present insights into how breaches occurred. Whereas tighter regulation throughout the nation and markets would assist enhance whole requirements, that may take time. Within the meantime, firms ought to work intently with insurers, and different related events to supply as a lot perception as potential so that each one concerned have a greater understanding of what’s wanted to guard themselves. SEE: 10 dangerous app vulnerabilities to watch out for (TechRepublic obtain) What firms do proper Scott Matteson: What are firms doing proper? Matthew Honea: Corporations are more and more extra aware of knowledge breaches and their threat. For instance, we’ve got seen cyber insurance coverage acquire traction in buying following the fallout of bigger assaults just like the Marriott breach.  In the end, understanding knowledge issues. It isn’t solely essential to have knowledge; it have to be used. Corporations want to investigate knowledge, decide what it means, and find out how to use it. Understanding breached knowledge has a big impact in severity modeling and determines good fashions from defective ones, as current assaults such because the one on Norsk Hydro have proven. Lingering issues Scott Matteson: What issues nonetheless linger? Matthew Honea: Human error continues to be an element, as does the lack of awareness of dangers by leaders and executives. Corporations want to know that they can not stay stagnant on the problem, significantly as hackers proceed to evolve. Moreover, firms usually are not taking correct steps to guard their data. As an example, encryption can stop found knowledge from being stolen. Yet, only 41% of companies have an encryption strategy in place according to Thales.. Lastly, firms must embrace reporting breaches. Whereas many keep away from reporting as a result of perceived negativity round information protection, that is additionally associated to an total lack of normal understanding round various ranges of breaches and the way widespread they really are. We have to break the silence to higher educate. Scott Matteson: What issues are new? Matthew Honea: Technological advances create new dangers. Adoption of IoT gadgets enable even fridges to be hacked to realize entry to an organization’s knowledge data. As 5G pushes ahead, assaults will change into extra frequent as we change into extra linked. Moreover, as cloud suppliers more and more develop in scale, and extra firms share cloud servers to economize, the dangers of the cloud being hacked might put many firms in danger on an unprecedented scale. SEE: Encryption: A guide for business leaders (free PDF) (TechRepublic) Scott Matteson: What issues do you foresee sooner or later? Matthew Honea: New strategies of hacks will proceed to be discovered, as new applied sciences are utilized. Together with that, firms will proceed to undertake new applied sciences shortly with out absolutely understanding the dangers, and correctly making ready for it. IoT particularly carries an enormous quantity of threat and is rising at a staggering charge. It’s essential that firms conduct a full threat evaluation and implement strict protocol earlier than leaping on any new development. Scott Matteson: How are governments/legislation enforcement businesses dealing with this? Matthew Honea: Governments proceed to suggest new reporting procedures, with Ohio and South Carolina passing legislation to enhance processes. All types of authorities, from native to federal, must proceed pursuing laws to assist the general public and enterprises acquire extra information round cyber-attacks and the way finest to organize for them. Regulation enforcement businesses additionally want to enhance reporting time in order that an assault could be addressed quicker, lessening the prospect that it’ll unfold or be repeated. Cybersecurity Insider E-newsletter Strengthen your group’s IT safety defenses by retaining abreast of the most recent cybersecurity information, options, and finest practices. Delivered Tuesdays and Thursdays Join right now Join right now Additionally see Picture: Getty Pictures/iStockphoto Source link

[kellykperez]

How important are featured snippets and how can you get them?

Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.

Despite the fact that featured snippets are a vital part of contemporary marketing and SEO success, however, many still struggle when it comes to properly leveraging featured snippets to the greatest extent possible, with some unlucky few having no idea where to begin at all.

Just how important are featured snippets, and how can you go about getting them?

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of featured snippets and how you can bolster your SEO.

Today’s searchers are dominated by featured snippets

If you’re familiar with just about any popular search engine, from Google to Bing, you’ve likely already encountered featured snippets many times, even if you’re unsure of what they are.

To put it simply, featured snippets are those tidbits of information and links to websites that appear the highest in search results. When customers plug a question into Google, the first link and answer that comes up is known as the “zero position.”

It’s this option that gets the most clicks and pageviews.

It’s thus naturally desirable to have featured snippets in as much search queries as possible, as it necessarily directs customers towards your page and information rather than that of your competitors.

So how do I get a featured snippet?

The easiest way for you to ensure that your business or website can cash in on featured snippets? Make your content search engine optimized. This helps the algorithms which power sites like Google direct curious web-surfers towards your content.

There are many ways to make your content SEO, though some dated methods are still in use when they’ve long-since grown out of fashion.

Focusing your content on a single word or search term, for instance, used to be a staple strategy for getting featured snippets. However, it’s no longer ideal as the way algorithms operate has changed with time.

To avoid relying on these outdated methods of getting featured snippets, you should take some time and study up on the common SEO mistakes that too many small businesses make when trying to stand out in the digital realm.

You need more than digital expertise to make your content stand out – sometimes, you just have to make sure it’s not ladled with common errors and simple mistakes that a little homework ahead of time could have prevented.

As brutal as it may sound, the next step is scouting out your competition to steal their techniques and swipe away their snippets to make them your own.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and your business needs to do whatever’s necessary in order to stand out from the crowd. Finding and stealing major snippets that drive traffic to your rival sites is thus an imperative part of success in the 21st century economy. 

The exception being, of course, that you have zero intention of cashing in on the ongoing digital boom.

By targeting the snippets your competitors rely upon the most, you’re building your market share by swiping away their consumers and luring them to your superior products or services.

Stealing snippets from your competitors

Don’t be uncomfortable with the notion of “stealing snippets” from your competitors. First of all, you’re not actually “stealing” anything in the illegal sense.

Furthermore it’s a necessary part of success in today’s market that everyone is aware of. You should rather view this as a natural consequence of the cut-throat nature of modern marketing, where only those on the top get any page views at all.

The first thing you should do is head to a service like SEMrush and type in the URL of your competitors so that you can get a glimpse at their site analytics.

By heading into the “organic research” tab and clicking on “position,” you’ll be able to view the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their site.

Be sure to mirror this language as closely as possible if you’re trying to mimic the success of a thriving competitor.

Other low-hanging fruit that you can focus on includes the social media posts of others in your industry. These are likely jam-packed with viral content which you can study so as to embrace the better parts of their ad campaigns.

Recovering snippets that have been stolen from you

You should also take some time to learn about how to recover snippets which have been stolen from you. After all, your competitors aren’t going to stand idly by as you swipe their customer base out from under them.

Mastering the art of tracking down and reclaiming your lost featured snippets can seriously bolster the traffic you enjoy on a monthly basis, and it can even become a sense of pride for entrepreneurs when they reclaim their lost mantle at the top of the search results in their economic niche.

Take a deep dive into the art of recovering stolen snippets and don’t be afraid to run an audit to see if your competitors have been sniping away at your customer base.

This brutal aspect of running a business should serve as a constant reminder of how fierce competition can be, which is why it’s so important to distinguish yourself from the crowd and establish your links as credible and click-worthy.

Making your featured snippets last

Many small business owners are enthused when they get their first featured snippet, as they rightfully recognize this moment as the turning point in their digital careers. Sustaining the momentum you’ve started to develop is easier said than done, however, and making your featured snippets last once you have them should be at the top of your to-do list.

By tapping into ever-spirited nature of social media, you can guarantee that your brand and links are always generating a buzz.

Making your featured snippets last isn’t always possible; sooner rather than later, someone may kick you out of your spot, or worse yet your content might just become dated and thus unable to attract viewers at all because it’s simply stale. Producing engaging content on a regular basis is thus an essential part of staying at the top of the featured snippet scoreboard, and to do that you should be mastering today’s leading social media platforms.

SEO-content and social media boards go together hand in hand, so you need to integrate your strategies for the two if you want your digital brand to endure. Content promotion and link-building aren’t easy and investing in advertisements and SEO-content that helps you bolster the potential of securing a featured snipped doesn’t always come cheap. Getting a featured snippet to prominently display your brand or services online can be a godsend, however, and generate tons of business for even the smallest of companies.

Consider enlisting the help of some social media talent to help you generate a digital buzz, and never stop on your quest to produce engaging, SEO content that will cut through the noise and reach out directly to users when they search.

Chris Porteous is the CEO of Framestr / My SEO Sucks, building high performing sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.

The post How important are featured snippets and how can you get them? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/27/featured-snippets-how-important/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-important-are-featured-snippets-and.html

[alanajacksontx]

How important are featured snippets and how can you get them?

Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.

Despite the fact that featured snippets are a vital part of contemporary marketing and SEO success, however, many still struggle when it comes to properly leveraging featured snippets to the greatest extent possible, with some unlucky few having no idea where to begin at all.

Just how important are featured snippets, and how can you go about getting them?

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of featured snippets and how you can bolster your SEO.

Today’s searchers are dominated by featured snippets

If you’re familiar with just about any popular search engine, from Google to Bing, you’ve likely already encountered featured snippets many times, even if you’re unsure of what they are.

To put it simply, featured snippets are those tidbits of information and links to websites that appear the highest in search results. When customers plug a question into Google, the first link and answer that comes up is known as the “zero position.”

It’s this option that gets the most clicks and pageviews.

It’s thus naturally desirable to have featured snippets in as much search queries as possible, as it necessarily directs customers towards your page and information rather than that of your competitors.

So how do I get a featured snippet?

The easiest way for you to ensure that your business or website can cash in on featured snippets? Make your content search engine optimized. This helps the algorithms which power sites like Google direct curious web-surfers towards your content.

There are many ways to make your content SEO, though some dated methods are still in use when they’ve long-since grown out of fashion.

Focusing your content on a single word or search term, for instance, used to be a staple strategy for getting featured snippets. However, it’s no longer ideal as the way algorithms operate has changed with time.

To avoid relying on these outdated methods of getting featured snippets, you should take some time and study up on the common SEO mistakes that too many small businesses make when trying to stand out in the digital realm.

You need more than digital expertise to make your content stand out – sometimes, you just have to make sure it’s not ladled with common errors and simple mistakes that a little homework ahead of time could have prevented.

As brutal as it may sound, the next step is scouting out your competition to steal their techniques and swipe away their snippets to make them your own.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and your business needs to do whatever’s necessary in order to stand out from the crowd. Finding and stealing major snippets that drive traffic to your rival sites is thus an imperative part of success in the 21st century economy. 

The exception being, of course, that you have zero intention of cashing in on the ongoing digital boom.

By targeting the snippets your competitors rely upon the most, you’re building your market share by swiping away their consumers and luring them to your superior products or services.

Stealing snippets from your competitors

Don’t be uncomfortable with the notion of “stealing snippets” from your competitors. First of all, you’re not actually “stealing” anything in the illegal sense.

Furthermore it’s a necessary part of success in today’s market that everyone is aware of. You should rather view this as a natural consequence of the cut-throat nature of modern marketing, where only those on the top get any page views at all.

The first thing you should do is head to a service like SEMrush and type in the URL of your competitors so that you can get a glimpse at their site analytics.

By heading into the “organic research” tab and clicking on “position,” you’ll be able to view the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their site.

Be sure to mirror this language as closely as possible if you’re trying to mimic the success of a thriving competitor.

Other low-hanging fruit that you can focus on includes the social media posts of others in your industry. These are likely jam-packed with viral content which you can study so as to embrace the better parts of their ad campaigns.

Recovering snippets that have been stolen from you

You should also take some time to learn about how to recover snippets which have been stolen from you. After all, your competitors aren’t going to stand idly by as you swipe their customer base out from under them.

Mastering the art of tracking down and reclaiming your lost featured snippets can seriously bolster the traffic you enjoy on a monthly basis, and it can even become a sense of pride for entrepreneurs when they reclaim their lost mantle at the top of the search results in their economic niche.

Take a deep dive into the art of recovering stolen snippets and don’t be afraid to run an audit to see if your competitors have been sniping away at your customer base.

This brutal aspect of running a business should serve as a constant reminder of how fierce competition can be, which is why it’s so important to distinguish yourself from the crowd and establish your links as credible and click-worthy.

Making your featured snippets last

Many small business owners are enthused when they get their first featured snippet, as they rightfully recognize this moment as the turning point in their digital careers. Sustaining the momentum you’ve started to develop is easier said than done, however, and making your featured snippets last once you have them should be at the top of your to-do list.

By tapping into ever-spirited nature of social media, you can guarantee that your brand and links are always generating a buzz.

Making your featured snippets last isn’t always possible; sooner rather than later, someone may kick you out of your spot, or worse yet your content might just become dated and thus unable to attract viewers at all because it’s simply stale. Producing engaging content on a regular basis is thus an essential part of staying at the top of the featured snippet scoreboard, and to do that you should be mastering today’s leading social media platforms.

SEO-content and social media boards go together hand in hand, so you need to integrate your strategies for the two if you want your digital brand to endure. Content promotion and link-building aren’t easy and investing in advertisements and SEO-content that helps you bolster the potential of securing a featured snipped doesn’t always come cheap. Getting a featured snippet to prominently display your brand or services online can be a godsend, however, and generate tons of business for even the smallest of companies.

Consider enlisting the help of some social media talent to help you generate a digital buzz, and never stop on your quest to produce engaging, SEO content that will cut through the noise and reach out directly to users when they search.

Chris Porteous is the CEO of Framestr / My SEO Sucks, building high performing sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.

The post How important are featured snippets and how can you get them? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from IM Tips And Tricks https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/27/featured-snippets-how-important/ from Rising Phoenix SEO https://risingphxseo.tumblr.com/post/183094887155

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How important are featured snippets and how can you get them? Search Engine Watch

Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.

Despite the fact that featured snippets are a vital part of contemporary marketing and SEO success, however, many still struggle when it comes to properly leveraging featured snippets to the greatest extent possible, with some unlucky few having no idea where to begin at all.

Just how important are featured snippets, and how can you go about getting them?

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of featured snippets and how you can bolster your SEO.

Today’s searchers are dominated by featured snippets

If you’re familiar with just about any popular search engine, from Google to Bing, you’ve likely already encountered featured snippets many times, even if you’re unsure of what they are.

To put it simply, featured snippets are those tidbits of information and links to websites that appear the highest in search results. When customers plug a question into Google, the first link and answer that comes up is known as the “zero position.”

It’s this option that gets the most clicks and pageviews.

It’s thus naturally desirable to have featured snippets in as much search queries as possible, as it necessarily directs customers towards your page and information rather than that of your competitors.

So how do I get a featured snippet?

The easiest way for you to ensure that your business or website can cash in on featured snippets? Make your content search engine optimized. This helps the algorithms which power sites like Google direct curious web-surfers towards your content.

There are many ways to make your content SEO, though some dated methods are still in use when they’ve long-since grown out of fashion.

Focusing your content on a single word or search term, for instance, used to be a staple strategy for getting featured snippets. However, it’s no longer ideal as the way algorithms operate has changed with time.

To avoid relying on these outdated methods of getting featured snippets, you should take some time and study up on the common SEO mistakes that too many small businesses make when trying to stand out in the digital realm.

You need more than digital expertise to make your content stand out – sometimes, you just have to make sure it’s not ladled with common errors and simple mistakes that a little homework ahead of time could have prevented.

As brutal as it may sound, the next step is scouting out your competition to steal their techniques and swipe away their snippets to make them your own.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and your business needs to do whatever’s necessary in order to stand out from the crowd. Finding and stealing major snippets that drive traffic to your rival sites is thus an imperative part of success in the 21st century economy. 

The exception being, of course, that you have zero intention of cashing in on the ongoing digital boom.

By targeting the snippets your competitors rely upon the most, you’re building your market share by swiping away their consumers and luring them to your superior products or services.

Stealing snippets from your competitors

Don’t be uncomfortable with the notion of “stealing snippets” from your competitors. First of all, you’re not actually “stealing” anything in the illegal sense.

Furthermore it’s a necessary part of success in today’s market that everyone is aware of. You should rather view this as a natural consequence of the cut-throat nature of modern marketing, where only those on the top get any page views at all.

The first thing you should do is head to a service like SEMrush and type in the URL of your competitors so that you can get a glimpse at their site analytics.

By heading into the “organic research” tab and clicking on “position,” you’ll be able to view the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their site.

Be sure to mirror this language as closely as possible if you’re trying to mimic the success of a thriving competitor.

Other low-hanging fruit that you can focus on includes the social media posts of others in your industry. These are likely jam-packed with viral content which you can study so as to embrace the better parts of their ad campaigns.

Recovering snippets that have been stolen from you

You should also take some time to learn about how to recover snippets which have been stolen from you. After all, your competitors aren’t going to stand idly by as you swipe their customer base out from under them.

Mastering the art of tracking down and reclaiming your lost featured snippets can seriously bolster the traffic you enjoy on a monthly basis, and it can even become a sense of pride for entrepreneurs when they reclaim their lost mantle at the top of the search results in their economic niche.

Take a deep dive into the art of recovering stolen snippets and don’t be afraid to run an audit to see if your competitors have been sniping away at your customer base.

This brutal aspect of running a business should serve as a constant reminder of how fierce competition can be, which is why it’s so important to distinguish yourself from the crowd and establish your links as credible and click-worthy.

Making your featured snippets last

Many small business owners are enthused when they get their first featured snippet, as they rightfully recognize this moment as the turning point in their digital careers. Sustaining the momentum you’ve started to develop is easier said than done, however, and making your featured snippets last once you have them should be at the top of your to-do list.

By tapping into ever-spirited nature of social media, you can guarantee that your brand and links are always generating a buzz.

Making your featured snippets last isn’t always possible; sooner rather than later, someone may kick you out of your spot, or worse yet your content might just become dated and thus unable to attract viewers at all because it’s simply stale. Producing engaging content on a regular basis is thus an essential part of staying at the top of the featured snippet scoreboard, and to do that you should be mastering today’s leading social media platforms.

SEO-content and social media boards go together hand in hand, so you need to integrate your strategies for the two if you want your digital brand to endure. Content promotion and link-building aren’t easy and investing in advertisements and SEO-content that helps you bolster the potential of securing a featured snipped doesn’t always come cheap. Getting a featured snippet to prominently display your brand or services online can be a godsend, however, and generate tons of business for even the smallest of companies.

Consider enlisting the help of some social media talent to help you generate a digital buzz, and never stop on your quest to produce engaging, SEO content that will cut through the noise and reach out directly to users when they search.

Chris Porteous is the CEO of Framestr / My SEO Sucks, building high performing sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

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How important are featured snippets and how can you get them?

Featured snippets are one of the main engines of economic growth today, with countless businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs relying upon them to get their message out to prospective clients.

Despite the fact that featured snippets are a vital part of contemporary marketing and SEO success, however, many still struggle when it comes to properly leveraging featured snippets to the greatest extent possible, with some unlucky few having no idea where to begin at all.

Just how important are featured snippets, and how can you go about getting them?

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of featured snippets and how you can bolster your SEO.

Today’s searchers are dominated by featured snippets

If you’re familiar with just about any popular search engine, from Google to Bing, you’ve likely already encountered featured snippets many times, even if you’re unsure of what they are.

To put it simply, featured snippets are those tidbits of information and links to websites that appear the highest in search results. When customers plug a question into Google, the first link and answer that comes up is known as the “zero position.”

It’s this option that gets the most clicks and pageviews.

It’s thus naturally desirable to have featured snippets in as much search queries as possible, as it necessarily directs customers towards your page and information rather than that of your competitors.

So how do I get a featured snippet?

The easiest way for you to ensure that your business or website can cash in on featured snippets? Make your content search engine optimized. This helps the algorithms which power sites like Google direct curious web-surfers towards your content.

There are many ways to make your content SEO, though some dated methods are still in use when they’ve long-since grown out of fashion.

Focusing your content on a single word or search term, for instance, used to be a staple strategy for getting featured snippets. However, it’s no longer ideal as the way algorithms operate has changed with time.

To avoid relying on these outdated methods of getting featured snippets, you should take some time and study up on the common SEO mistakes that too many small businesses make when trying to stand out in the digital realm.

You need more than digital expertise to make your content stand out – sometimes, you just have to make sure it’s not ladled with common errors and simple mistakes that a little homework ahead of time could have prevented.

As brutal as it may sound, the next step is scouting out your competition to steal their techniques and swipe away their snippets to make them your own.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and your business needs to do whatever’s necessary in order to stand out from the crowd. Finding and stealing major snippets that drive traffic to your rival sites is thus an imperative part of success in the 21st century economy. 

The exception being, of course, that you have zero intention of cashing in on the ongoing digital boom.

By targeting the snippets your competitors rely upon the most, you’re building your market share by swiping away their consumers and luring them to your superior products or services.

Stealing snippets from your competitors

Don’t be uncomfortable with the notion of “stealing snippets” from your competitors. First of all, you’re not actually “stealing” anything in the illegal sense.

Furthermore it’s a necessary part of success in today’s market that everyone is aware of. You should rather view this as a natural consequence of the cut-throat nature of modern marketing, where only those on the top get any page views at all.

The first thing you should do is head to a service like SEMrush and type in the URL of your competitors so that you can get a glimpse at their site analytics.

By heading into the “organic research” tab and clicking on “position,” you’ll be able to view the keywords your competitors are using to drive traffic to their site.

Be sure to mirror this language as closely as possible if you’re trying to mimic the success of a thriving competitor.

Other low-hanging fruit that you can focus on includes the social media posts of others in your industry. These are likely jam-packed with viral content which you can study so as to embrace the better parts of their ad campaigns.

Recovering snippets that have been stolen from you

You should also take some time to learn about how to recover snippets which have been stolen from you. After all, your competitors aren’t going to stand idly by as you swipe their customer base out from under them.

Mastering the art of tracking down and reclaiming your lost featured snippets can seriously bolster the traffic you enjoy on a monthly basis, and it can even become a sense of pride for entrepreneurs when they reclaim their lost mantle at the top of the search results in their economic niche.

Take a deep dive into the art of recovering stolen snippets and don’t be afraid to run an audit to see if your competitors have been sniping away at your customer base.

This brutal aspect of running a business should serve as a constant reminder of how fierce competition can be, which is why it’s so important to distinguish yourself from the crowd and establish your links as credible and click-worthy.

Making your featured snippets last

Many small business owners are enthused when they get their first featured snippet, as they rightfully recognize this moment as the turning point in their digital careers. Sustaining the momentum you’ve started to develop is easier said than done, however, and making your featured snippets last once you have them should be at the top of your to-do list.

By tapping into ever-spirited nature of social media, you can guarantee that your brand and links are always generating a buzz.

Making your featured snippets last isn’t always possible; sooner rather than later, someone may kick you out of your spot, or worse yet your content might just become dated and thus unable to attract viewers at all because it’s simply stale. Producing engaging content on a regular basis is thus an essential part of staying at the top of the featured snippet scoreboard, and to do that you should be mastering today’s leading social media platforms.

SEO-content and social media boards go together hand in hand, so you need to integrate your strategies for the two if you want your digital brand to endure. Content promotion and link-building aren’t easy and investing in advertisements and SEO-content that helps you bolster the potential of securing a featured snipped doesn’t always come cheap. Getting a featured snippet to prominently display your brand or services online can be a godsend, however, and generate tons of business for even the smallest of companies.

Consider enlisting the help of some social media talent to help you generate a digital buzz, and never stop on your quest to produce engaging, SEO content that will cut through the noise and reach out directly to users when they search.

Chris Porteous is the CEO of Framestr / My SEO Sucks, building high performing sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.

The post How important are featured snippets and how can you get them? appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/02/27/featured-snippets-how-important/