Updates-News

 CONTEMPORARY AUTHOR RANDOLPH RANDY CAMP: LATEST NEWS & UPDATES

 HELPFUL HINTS FOR ASPIRING YOUNG WRITERS:

One of my goals as an author is to hopefully inspire others, especially young people. Whenever I give a Book Talk at a high school I always try to end the session with a few helpful writing tips, and one of my main pointers I make is telling the students to practice DESCRIBING mundane things and objects as they go through their daily routine. For example, as you walk pass the street poles and lamp posts in your neighborhood think about the different words or phrases in which you could use to describe one of them, especially the wooden ones. It’s somewhat easy to write a description of a car (red, dents, ect.), but I like to get the students to practice on more mundane things because you can surprise yourself sometimes by coming up with an unusual or unique word or phrase that’s rarely heard or seen in print. The use of these interesting-but-different adjectives will make your story stand out and give you your unique voice as a writer. To give you a hint in describing the mundane street pole, just take a closer look and see if there are any rusty nails or staples still protruding along the side or if there are any weathered pieces left from an old yard sale sign. And remember, to become an author you must write, write, and write! – R. Camp

 During every classroom book talk that I’ve been invited to at least a handful of students would always ask me about my writing technique or if I had a particular method of writing. Growing up poor in rural Spotsylvania County, Virginia, making up stories and writing became a necessary escape and a form of survival for me. Between my early school years at John J. Wright and Robert E. Lee Elementary, I had a great training ground as a storyteller. During those elementary years, some of the teachers, on the first day of school, would have us stand up and tell the rest of the class what we did over the summer. I remember one particular summer when I was flying high up in the air, walking dangerous trails in another state, and even saw the open mouth of a mountain lion from a few feet away! (Yeah, right.) Actually, that particular summer, the most exciting thing I did was going bike riding through the Spotsylvania Battlefield Parks with my brothers and cousins. When you have classmates speaking about their summer vacations at Yellowstone and Disney World I just had to come up with something to compete with that and my bike trip through the parks wasn’t it. Ever since I was a young boy, I used to have these wild, weird dreams and sometimes I was so excited and fascinated by them that I couldn’t wait to tell somebody else. I remember telling a few kids during recess about this one particular dream that I had and they all looked at me as if I had lost my mind. This was a turning point in my early years because I became very particular about who I would share my stories and dreams with, and I soon became somewhat of a quiet little boy. One of my early teachers told me that I should write my dreams down, and ever since then it seems as though I can’t stop writing. And if you’re an aspiring writer and there are people around you who are giving you a look and maybe calling you crazy, well, don’t worry about it. Just remember that people tend to call anything that they don’t understand ‘crazy’. You just keep on writing. I haven’t changed my method of writing over the years, even with the advent of the constantly-changing techy devices we have nowadays. Whether I’m writing a screenplay, novel manuscript or a short story, I always draw up an outline and I always write out a basic character bible, especially for my main characters. Writing a basic character bible is extremely helpful because it makes it easier for you, as the writer, to remember where your character came from, why he or she talks or behaves in a certain way, and the character bible also helps you (as a writer) to prevent your characters from sounding the same. I would hand-write the first and second draft, and then, typically, the third draft gets typed up. The greatest advice I have for any aspiring writers is to pay close attention to your characters’ voices, and to make sure that each of your characters have their own unique voice, never sounding like anyone else within your story. – Randy Camp
Learn more at http://www.shelfari.com/randycamp  

RANDY'S TV SCRIPTS - CHILDREN'S SERIES

1. Harry's Field (May 2014, Registered with Writers Guild of America, East, Reg#R30871)

2. Time Out Time In (May 2014, Registered with WGA, East)

 RCstories' Children's TV Series

 'VEHICLES'
 You pick me up…take me around
 You use me up when you’re feelin’ down
 Just like vehicles goin’ around and around
 Just like vehicles in my town
 You only need me when you’re down
 Next time when you’re passin’ by
 I’ll remember you…and the smile and the lie
 ‘Cause you’re just another vehicle goin’ by and by
 Yeah, just another vehicle goin’ by and by
 You hold me… You kiss me
 You give me a ride
 Maybe some day…maybe some way
 We may collide.
 "Vehicles" was written by Randolph Randy Camp specifically for the character ‘Teki’ in his novel ‘29 Dimes: A Love Story’

'Vehicles' is about people who pretend to love and care about you only to get to where they're going. In '29 Dimes', the character Teki is confronting this issue with her brother Vince and somewhat with her classmate Kalib. - R. Camp
 https://www.amazon.com/author/randolphcamp

 RIDING BIKES
Some of my fondest memories of my childhood was the long bike rides along dirt roads and single-lane blacktops with my brothers, cousins and other neighborhood kids. Of course, our family couldn’t afford to buy brand new bicycles for us so most often we would go to the local landfill and look for assorted bicycle parts and then we would try our best to piece together a whole bike. On these bike rides I’d always enjoyed seeing a part of Spotsylvania County that I’d never visited before…sometimes it might’ve been just a particular road in which I’d never traveled before that made these bike trips so memorable. The idea of exploring and briefly escaping was absolutely fascinating to me, especially as a child. Looking back, it seems as though I was always, in some type of manner, trying to escape my immediate surroundings. As a kid and even as a teenager, I certainly remember sitting on the bank of the Rappahannock River and just watching the water flow away. I would sometimes sit there for hours just gazing at the flowing water, and I would wonder and think about where the water was actually going to…and as I got older, I also began to wonder about my own life…wondering where my life would take me. When I began to jot down notes, write out poems or short stories as a young boy, it seems as though I really became obsessed with the Rappahannock River….for this was the period of my life when I would often think about where my words and stories might eventually take me…just like the flowing water of the Rappahannock…where is it going?…where will it end up? — Randolph Randy Camp
More at http://www.goodreads.com/randolphcamp

THE LEGEND OF THREE TREES

THE BEAUTY OF KILLING THE MONOPOLY BEAST: A PLEA FOR MORE ON CAMPUS BOOKSTORE COMPETITION......    In order to better serve today’s college students there needs to be an elimination of the single on campus bookstore model and a birth of a new multi-on campus bookstore model. There are great economic benefits to consumers when competition is encouraged and a monopoly is abolished. Ordinarily, a typical college has one retail bookstore on campus. The mammoth Follett Corporation runs the campus bookstore at Erie Community College (ECC), the school in which I currently attend. Additionally, the giant Follett Corporation is the nation’s largest operator of college bookstores and generates $2.7 billion in annual sales.  Smartly planting itself on many college campuses across America puts the mighty Follett Corporation at a strategic and economic advantage over any potential bookstore competitors. The incredible cost of college textbooks today is a direct result of having little or no competition within the very lucrative college textbook marketplace.

               Just one of my required textbooks for the Spring 2013 semester at ECC has a price tag of $164! No student in America should be paying such an outlandish price for a textbook, but until there’s enough of an uproar to get our college officials and government representatives to abandon the monopolistic tentacles of the powerful Follett Corporation, these price tags will continue to rise. Inviting and encouraging other retail bookstores to set up shop on campus would definitely cause the college textbook prices to drop significantly. There needs to be a serious demand to get rid of having only one college bookstore on campus.

             The beauty and benefits of dismantling a monopoly is evident in our marketplace today, especially within the telephone industry. In 1974, the Bell System Corporation, commonly known as “Ma Bell”, had $150 billion in assets, $70 billion in revenue, and a million employees.  Clearly, Ma Bell solely controlled the American telephone market with no real competition during this time. With information and backing from the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Justice Department had determined that Ma Bell had grown too big and filed an antitrust lawsuit against them under the Sherman Antitrust Act. After years of back and forth litigation, the case was settled and the huge Bell System Corporation agreed to basically break up into 22 smaller companies, sometimes referred to as “baby bells.” Thanks to the Federal government breaking up Ma Bell, our telephone bills today are reasonable and affordable. If Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Cricket didn’t exist, a sole cellular company could charge customers whatever rates they want to. Stopping a monopoly such as Ma Bell creates competition by expanding the market, brings down cost, and helps to lower prices to consumers.

                In my own community I see the economic benefits of fair competition every day. When I’m in the food court at the Main Place Mall in downtown Buffalo, I already know beforehand that, regardless of which food vendor I choose to patronize, I probably won’t be spending over $7 for a quick lunch. To draw and keep customers coming back, Tijuana Taco, Hoagie Brothers, Gino & Joe’s Pizzeria, and Ding How Chinese Express must keep their prices similar to the food vendor next door to them. Nearly every day I pass two gas stations that are almost directly across the street from the other near Bailey Avenue and Langfield Drive. To stay competitive and to ensure that it doesn’t lose customers, FAST TRAC sells its regular unleaded gas at $3.93 per gallon, the same price as WE PUMP YOUR GAS, their rivals directly across the street.

          I hope that my grandkids and the next generation of students will see college textbook prices fall to under $60 per print copy. It would be a wonderful sight to one day see, on the second floor of ECC-City Campus, two or three separate bookstores there, instead of just the one. Although the monopolistic Follett Corporation has turned the college textbook market into a scam and a clever white collar rip off, it’s not too late to destroy this big monopoly beast and revamp the on campus bookstore model into a more competitive and student-friendly model. Let’s get the word out and start this ball rolling!- Randolph Randy Camp   March 2, 2013

  NEW K.A.N.S.A.S.

Dissatisfied with the way the adults are running the nation, a well-organized, underground society of intelligent kids demand the right to vote and to be given their own statehood or else. (The kids believe that voting should be based upon a person’s IQ, not their age.
Synopsis: ‘NEW K.A.N.S.A.S.’ (Kids’ Alliance National Society And Sanctuary): Discouraged with his lack of ability to control his own destiny fueled by his parents’ divorce and already fed up with the way the adults are running the country, a twelve year old boy forms a society to give children the Right to Vote and attempts to establish their own State in which to do it. All hell breaks when the U.S. Government starts to hunt down the leader and his underground network. In the meantime, the secretive children’s society is growing to an unbelievable size and there’s no stopping them now! TAGLINE: “Don’t underestimate the power of kids”
Although I’d originally wrote ‘NEW K.A.N.S.A.S.’ as a live action feature, it could also work as an ANIMATED feature-length movie as well. (The ‘Kansas’ in NEW K.A.N.S.A.S. stands for Kids’ Alliance National Society And Sanctuary)
U.S. Copyright: PAu002651984 (Original Screenplay Draft/ Author: Randolph Camp)
Learn more at AUTHORS DEN http://www.authorsden.com/randolphrcamp and WRITERS NET http://www.writers.net/writers/81919


 ‘NEW K.A.N.S.A.S.’ (Kids’ Alliance National Society And Sanctuary)