Cowboy Jamboree Press is proud to present the entire short story oeuvre of the great Sheldon Lee Compton in one volume. Herein are all of Compton's previously published collections--The Same Terrible Storm, Where Alligators Sleep, Absolute Invention, and Sway--along with eleven previously uncollected gems. Get lost in the Appalachian gothic fiction of one of the best story writers today, the man David Joy has called "the definition of what Faulkner meant when he described the closeness between the short story writer and the poet." "Sheldon Lee Compton is a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown, and Brown Bottle is his best work yet." Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time
A golfer disappearing into thin air from a sand trap is more than new police chief Dan Shepard bargained for when he left the big city for the supposedly quiet resort town of Carmel, California. "Let me get this straight," Shepard said. "Not only does the victim vanish from the scene of the crime, and wind up someplace he really can't be, but somewhere along the way he changed his socks?" As if that problem wasn't enough, Shepard also has to contend with the constant interference of an irascible amateur sleuth, Herman de Portola Bliss. Bliss is an artist with no talent for painting, but an unerring eye for clues, and an even greater talent for getting into trouble. As the case twists and turns its way along the shores of scenic Monterey Bay, the mismatched pair finds themselves drawn into an edgy partnership confronted with more than one dead body. Even Bliss may not be good enough for this one.
This is the third edition of Character Development and Storytelling for Games, a standard work in the field that brings all of the teaching from the first two books up to date and tackles the new challenges of today. Professional game writer and designer Lee Sheldon combines his experience and expertise in this updated edition. New examples, new game types, and new challenges throughout the text highlight the fundamentals of character writing and storytelling. But this book is not just a box of techniques for writers of video games. It is an exploration of the roots of character development and storytelling that readers can trace from Homer to Chaucer to Cervantes to Dickens and even Mozart. Many contemporary writers also contribute insights from books, plays, television, films, and, yes, games. Sheldon and his contributors emphasize the importance of creative instinct and listening to the inner voice that guides successful game writers and designers. Join him on his quest to instruct, inform, and maybe even inspire your next great game.
Go beyond gamification’s badges and leaderboards with the new edition of the book, first published in 2011, that helped transform education. Going far beyond the first edition of The Multiplayer Classroom, forthrightly examining what worked and what didn’t over years of development, here are the tools to design any structured learning experience as a game to engage your students, raise their grades, and ensure their attendance. Suitable for use in the classroom or the boardroom, this book features a reader-friendly style that introduces game concepts and vocabulary in a logical way. Also included are case studies, both past and present, from others teaching in their own multiplayer classrooms around the world. You don't need any experience making games or even playing games to use this book. You don’t even need a computer. Yet, you will join many hundreds of educators who have learned how to create multiplayer games for any age on any subject. Lee Sheldon began his writing career in television as a writer-producer, eventually writing more than 200 shows ranging from Charlie’s Angels (writer) to Edge of Night (head writer) to Star Trek: The Next Generation (writer-producer). Having written and designed more than 40 commercial and applied video games, Lee spearheaded the first full writing for games concentration in North America at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the second writing concentration at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is now a professor of practice. Lee is a regular lecturer and consultant on game design and writing in the United States and abroad. His most recent commercial game, the award-winning The Lion’s Song, is currently on Steam.
The Multiplayer Classroom: Game Plans is a companion to The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game, now in its second edition from CRC Press. This book covers four multiplayer classroom projects played in the real world in real time to teach and entertain. They were funded by grants or institutions, collaborations between Lee Sheldon, as writer/designer, and subject matter experts in various fields. They are written to be accessible to anyone--designer, educator, or layperson--interested in game-based learning. The subjects are increasingly relevant in this day and age: physical fitness, Mandarin, cybersecurity, and especially an online class exploring culture and identity on the internet that is unlike any online class you have ever seen. Read the annotated, often-suspenseful stories of how each game, with its unique challenges, thrills, and spills, was built. Lee Sheldon began his writing career in television as a writer-producer, eventually writing more than 200 shows ranging from Charlie’s Angels (writer) to Edge of Night (head writer) to Star Trek: The Next Generation (writer-producer). Having written and designed more than forty commercial and applied video games, Lee spearheaded the first full writing for games concentration in North America at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the second writing concentration at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is a regular lecturer and consultant on game design and writing in the United States and abroad. His most recent commercial game, the award-winning The Lion’s Song, is currently on Steam. For the past two years he consulted on an "escape room in a box," funded by NASA, that gives visitors to hundreds of science museums and planetariums the opportunity to play colonizers on the moon. He is currently writing his second mystery novel.
Fiction. THE SAME TERRIBLE STORM introduces us to a fierce and lyrical writer who, in his depiction of contemporary Appalachian life, is equal parts uncompromising and compassionate, and able to eerily channel a wide spectrum of distinctive voices—coal miners, musicians, pill poppers, snake handlers, writers, marijuana farmers, brutal men and complicated women, knowing children and dangerous elders—all of them filled with yearning, all of them inextricably bound to their time and place. An extraordinary debut collection.
This is the story of the life of Sheldon Stoudemire. Sheldon has been involved in a number of things. This book will reveal some of his greatest achievements and accomplishments.
Sheldon Lee Compton offers us another stunning collection of short fiction. Where Alligators Sleep is Compton at his best--piquant, compelling, and profound. The collection's dozens of stories bring readers fraught, masterfully crafted tales, seasoned with the good news of destiny, redemption, and catharsis.
The modern lobster boat has evolved slowly over decades to become the craft it is today: seaworthy, strong, fast, and trusted implicitly by the lobstermen and women to get the job done and get them home, each and every time, through the most terrifying--and sometimes life-threatening--conditions that the sea can dish up. “Where do lobster boats come from?” “What is the origin of their design?” “Who builds them?” “How do they work?” The story of the Maine lobster boat needs to be told--before the storied history of this iconic American craft slips away forever into the past, on the heels of what may be the last surviving traditional lobster boat builders. Filled with colorful characters, old maritime tales, and fascinating details, this a definitive look at the origins and lore of Maine's most ubiquitous vessel.
Here's the information you need to make dental decisions in the 21st century. It's no longer deciding whether an implant or a bridge is best; it's using CT scans and computers to do minimally invasive dental implant surgery. It's no longer only impressions of your teeth; it's digital imaging. It's no longer whether you do gum surgery or not; it's how control of oral inflammation may very well improve your general health.
In this superb memoir Sheldon Lee Compton reflects on his own life, his struggles with poverty and divorce and violence and addiction and fatherhood and an early heart attack and trying to make it as a writer in rural Kentucky, all the while trying to trace the life and tragic ending of one of his literary heroes, Breece D'J Pancake. The book is part overcoming, part acceptance, part reflection on Appalachia and its stereotypes, part study in suicide among the creative. Compton seeks closure on Pancake's suicide when he travels to Pancake's last home, to the orchard where Pancake did the deed, and in doing so finds new perspective on the tragic events of his own life. Cowboy Jamboree Press good grit lit.
Many in higher education fear that the humanities are facing a crisis. But even if the rhetoric about “crisis” is overblown, humanities departments do face increasing pressure from administrators, politicians, parents, and students. In A New Deal for the Humanities, Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed bring together twelve prominent scholars who address the history, the present state, and the future direction of the humanities. These scholars keep the focus on public higher education, for it is in our state schools that the liberal arts are taught to the greatest numbers and where their neglect would be most damaging for the nation. The contributors offer spirited and thought-provoking debates on a diverse range of topics. For instance, they deplore the push by administrations to narrow learning into quantifiable outcomes as well as the demands of state governments for more practical, usable training. Indeed, for those who suggest that a college education should be “practical”—that it should lean toward the sciences and engineering, where the high-paying jobs are—this book points out that while a few nations produce as many technicians as the United States does, America is still renowned worldwide for its innovation and creativity, skills taught most effectively in the humanities. Most importantly, the essays in this collection examine ways to make the humanities even more effective, such as offering a broader array of options than the traditional major/minor scheme, options that combine a student’s professional and intellectual interests, like the new medical humanities programs. A democracy can only be as energetic as the minds of its citizens, and the questions fundamental to the humanities are also fundamental to a thoughtful life. A New Deal for the Humanities takes an intrepid step in making the humanities—and our citizens—even stronger in the future.
Where is the Storehouse?" addresses the current social needs in our communities across the nation. People are looking for a change. We are facing accelerating gas prices, food shortages, and even the excruciating mortgage crisis is making more Americans lose what little we have. "Where is the storehouse" clearly explains that God knew that this day was coming and he provided a way of escape for the less fortunate as well as his faithful children. Author Sheldon Stovall states, the money has already been deposited into the Storehouse. You have to go and get it. As a former administrator of one of the largest church organizations in the world, he explains that there is a specific amount of money that not only goes to the pastors, prophets, apostles, bishops and elders but God also includes the fatherless, widows, aliens to receive their fair share. "Where is the Storehouse?" explains how to get the uncollected money that owed to you and where to find the much needed resources.
What can you save with a Mason jar? Money? A life? When Paul heads back to Red Knife, Kentucky for his father's funeral, his visit turns into an extended stay and a search for the people and places that made his dad so dysphoric about life. What he finds is years of tumult and abuse and shame, all centered on one day, long ago, and an accident at an abandoned mine tipple. The hauntings of the past become all too real for Paul, and, as he comes to grips with his father's death, his own life is endangered... A new Appalachian gothic from Sheldon Lee Compton, the man Donald Ray Pollock has called "a hillbilly Bukowski, one of the grittiest writers to come down the pike since Larry Brown.
From Hermione Lee, the internationally acclaimed, award-winning biographer of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, comes a superb reexamination of one of the most famous American women of letters.Delving into heretofore untapped sources, Lee does away with the image of the snobbish bluestocking and gives us a new Edith Wharton-tough, startlingly modern, as brilliant and complex as her fiction. Born into a wealthy family, Wharton left America as an adult and eventually chose to create a life in France. Her renowned novels and stories have become classics of American literature, but as Lee shows, Wharton's own life, filled with success and scandal, was as intriguing as those of her heroines. Bridging two centuries and two very different sensibilities, Wharton here comes to life in the skillful hands of one of the great literary biographers of our time.
ABOUT THE BOOK Eleanor Elliot arises one morning to find her name in the obituary column. Shocked at the news, but appalled at the short summary of her nearly eighty years, she vows to rewrite it. In preparation, she relives her life, recalling her family, the husband and children who sustained her and a friendship that lasted a lifetime. She reviews the decades of momentous change through which she lived. The Revision is about life as most of us live it, one day at a time. Most of those days are much like every other. Some are highlights and become the benchmarks against which we measure other events. Others are sad, if not tragic, and forever clutch at our throats. Taken together, they become our life, which can not be reduced to a few paragraphs. Given EleanorIs opportunity, what would you write?
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