Helen O'Reilly's Spunky Blog
Reading, for me, leads to writing, as day leads into night and night back into day; they are halves of a whole. I was one of those kids who cracked the code early; I've been reading since I was three, and the writing came later once I'd learned to hold a pencil, but when it came, it really burst forth. Everything a working writer does I have done-- I have written and published everything, from corporate annual reports, to radio ads, children's poetry, -fiction and -non-fiction, to memoir and now, my first novel for adults. Spunk, a Fable is a lot like me; "just dirty enough."
Why Not Ban WAR in War Zones? Why Stop at Rape?
Although she's widely considered one of the world's great beauties, Angelina Jolie was never one of my choices to play a role in Spunk, a Fable (I admit, I've thought about who would be my choices to portray my heroines in a movie version). Then again, Spunk is not so much a book about beautiful women; it's about "powerful women in desperate circumstances," as Dr. Judi Hollis, author (From Bagels to Buddha) describes it.
Angelina Jolie is not only an accomplished actress, she is also a UN commisioner for refugees, and her remarks urging the world’s nations to make the fight against rape in war a top priority are commendable; but I wonder. Why not just fight to make war itself a thing of the past?
Horrible as it is, is rape in a war zone any worse than so-called date rape, domestic-violence rape, or stranger-rape? It's all pretty horrible.
