Call for Submissions: Share Your ‘One Kind Act’ Story

September 27, 2009 at 12:50 pm (Books)

My friend Matt and I are editing an anthology about Kind Acts. If you want in, now’s the chance. Below are links and submission guidelines. -Julie

Have you been the recipient or giver of a small act of kindness? Tell us about it for a book we’re writing. You can be credited or anonymous. Just tell us your story and help us pay your One Kind Act forward. Make the world a better place! Be a part of something big! Be featured in The One Kind Act Book! All of the details are below.

One Kind Act

One Kind Act is now accepting submissions for its first anthology. One Kind Act is a social movement aimed at making lives happier and more fulfilling while making the world a better place … One Kind Act at a time.

Life is all about interacting. We forget that as we speed past other people in shiny boxes on the highway, or buy our morning coffee from a stranger in a window, or pump gas next to five other people never lifting our heads to see who they are.

But when we choose to notice the people around us and we act with kindness, we cause a chain reaction. A smile in the grocery store. An open door for a mother struggling with a baby carriage. A double batch of soup so there is extra for a neighbor. When we give and receive these gifts, we realize it really is the small things that matter.

We at One Kind Act have heard a lot of your stories and now we want to anthologize them to inspire and motivate others. We are looking for stories of both givers and recipients of Kind Acts. They may be with strangers, family members, or friends in private or professional settings. Don’t think your story isn’t what we’re looking for. If a Kind Act popped into your head, send it to us. And tell your friends. The more diverse, the merrier.

Guidelines

  • Nonfiction stories and essays can be between 200 – 2000 words in length.
  • Please submit your stories electronically as an attachment (word or pdf format) or in the body of your email to stories@onekindact.com. Subject line: “Anthology.”
  • You may submit anonymously. However, if you would like to be credited, please include you name, city, state, country, age, profession, or any other pertinent details you would like us to include. Limit is a 65-70 word bio. Inclusions of web address will be considered.

Other Details

  • You retain all rights to your work. We just need one-time and electronic reprint rights.
  • Will reserve the right to edit your story for consistency, grammar, and spelling.
  • You may submit as many stories as you like for consideration. Please send individual submissions separately.
  • Deadline for submissions is midnight February 12, 2010. You will be informed by the end of February if your story will be included in the anthology.
  • Publication is anticipated mid 2010.

Stay up-to-date about the anthology’s progress at: www.onekindact.com

The Bottom Line

Publishing this anthology is a labor of love for One Kind Act. Hence, we can not pay for contributions. However we will actively promote the anthology and your writing.

Thank you for considering a submission.

About the Editors

Matthew Costello is an e-commerce guru and CEO of Web Marketing Advisors, a strategic marketing and business development firm. Matt is also the founder of One Kind Act, a social movement designed to change the world by motivating others to leap in and really live, just One Kind Act at a time. He is dedicated to helping people focus on kindness and energize their lives.

Julie Luongo is the author of The Hard Way (Forge, 2008), her debut novel, which was met with unanimous critical praise. She holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Temple University and a Bachelor’s from Penn State in Advertising. She is a former writing instructor, editor, and playwright. She always thanks cashiers; waves people through in traffic, and sometimes even smiles at strangers. In addition Julie played a large role in the creation of One Kind Act.Com and continues to do so.

Reprint Notice

Permission to reprint or redistribute altered or excerpted material from this post is allowed only if you do the following:

  • Include, all links, bio’s and credits.

Or

  • Provide a direct link back to the post, and email us, to let us know about the link.

website stats

6 Comments

The Numbers Are Bad

September 23, 2009 at 12:59 pm (Entertainment, News)

“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.” ~Scott Adams

lost_numbers

Two time Bulgarian Lottery Numbers:

4, 15, 23, 24, 35, 42

LOST Numbers:

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42

So, maybe not all of the numbers are bad. Only four…or two, depending on how you look at it, I suppose. (Apologies to non-LOST fans. You really should watch it, though. Not just so you’d know what I’m going on about, but because it’s so very good.)

website stats

4 Comments

You Might Want To Wipe That Off Before You Drink From It

September 17, 2009 at 4:07 pm (News)

“He who distributes the milk of human kindness cannot help but spill a little on himself.” ~James Matthew Barrie

The Milkmaid by Vermeer

The Milkmaid by Vermeer

I’ve always been particularly skeeved by the idea of wet nursing. It’s probably because it brings to mind upper crusty women who couldn’t be bothered nursing because they were too engaged in being playthings to their important husbands and staving off melancholy with alcohol while their hearty and appropriately cowed maids (milk maids?) kept lactating long after their own children were weaned. Lazy, classist bitches can’t even feed their own kids. (I blame books for this bias.)

Also, the term. Wet nursing. It’s like “wet work” to describe killing missions. Gah. Go and ruin the word wet for me. I guess I wasn’t all that fond of it. But really, nursing wasn’t descriptive enough? Had to add wet to it? I really don’t think anyone would have been confused if Mrs. Haversham said, “Sally nursed baby Charles until he was out of diapers.” Nursing does the work, and context picks up the slack.

Of course I know that women giving milk to other people’s babies is probably more common in those tight, matriarchal-type communities where women clatch together and work and play and raise kids while the men do what they do (smoke and fart and hunt?) with their own kind. I get that it’s natural and practical… so are holes in the ground for pooping. But, whatever. I don’t come across a lot of references to wet nursing in my life. I don’t raise kids and only hunt in the grocery store. I don’t talk about baby feeding with my friends who have babies. As far as I know they’re cross-nursing and baking placenta although I doubt it…er, I hope not.

I bring it up because a while back a Chinese policewoman breastfed a bunch of kids after an earthquake (May, 2009). She was on the scene, her body was in the lactating way, and she eventually ended up nursing 9 babies whose mothers were too traumatized to give milk. (The kids were in a shelter without milk, powdered or otherwise). She probably saved their lives. Or at least prevented severe malnutrition. She was given all sorts of commendations and a promotion to Vice Commissioner of the Public Security Bureau. So, you know, another woman got a promotion because of her boobs. (Bah-dum-dum. Sorry. I didn’t know that’s where this was going when I wrote it.)

website stats

4 Comments