Author Updates
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Blog postAt the end of a very long road, bumpy and laden with hazards too many to list and capable of disabling the most seafaring of vessels, I took a chance and hitched a ride traveling another route to a different destination. One sweet deal later, I headed south.
I had, starting very early in life, for my entire life, lived deeply in a life that wasn’t really mine, immersed in an image of who I was, an image cultivated by others, by people who hadn’t a clue on how to direct their own li -
Blog postJackson Dunes Photography
Photos of the beach available in many different formats.It's all about inspiration. Many years ago when I was living in New Hampshire in a town that was a two hour drive away from the ocean, I was inspired by images of the beach that I found in magazines or online. When I finally moved down to a latitude little enough to have summertime temperatures all year, I started taking pictures.
At first, I took pictures because I was in awe of my wonderfully tropical -
Blog postAs a writer I know that words carry a certain weight. Words have the power to hurt or to heal. In my books I string together certain words in a certain way to illicit certain emotions from my readers. I have to craft a mental image to get my point across.
Pictures are a different matter altogether. Without much effort, pictures evoke memories and emotions more than words can. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. They're also worth a thousand memories.
As you scrol -
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Blog postI like to do a walking meditation on the beach. It's really quite simple. My focus is entirely on what's in front of me: the sand, the shells, the waves as they reach the shore. If my mind starts to wander simply pausing for a moment to take a few deep breaths will help me get centered again.
Biddeford Pool, MaineTry a walking meditation next time you're out and about. On the beach, in the mountains, or on a city street, walking meditation is a good way to stay mindful and at peace. -
Blog postDespite tender correction, the mistakes continued. And they were awful mistakes too, not just the kind of careless errors one might be prone to when the speed of the mind far surpassed the fluidity of fingers on a keyboard. These were the kind of mistakes that dare a person to give up because the transparency of self loathing and subsequent need to be punished had grown to tiresome proportions.
Just like sandy beach shoes worn indoors, the insidiousness nature of it reached -
Blog postI like to say I have three dogs, two real and one virtual. Pug is my virtual dog. Buddy and Lilly are my real dogs. They're poodles. Buddy is a mini and Lilly is a toy. These are a few of my favorite dog things.
We call this Buddy's "Happy Shirt" because it really does make him happy. What is it? Well, it's a combination of swaddling cloth and straight jacket. Buddy is terrified of thunder so this shirt works wonders. He settles down right away. It wraps around the dog's torso an -
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Blog postCairn at Biddeford Pool, Maine.
Generally I like little latitude beaches with white sand and warm, really warm, water. So I wasn't sure how much I'd miss my southern beach when I traveled up to Maine this past summer.
My beach is a five minute bicycle ride from my house. The beach in Maine was 14 miles and 25 minutes away by car. That's really nothing considering I used to live 100 miles and a two hour drive away from the ocean. But for a person who uses the sea as a tool for -
Blog postYou've seen these things around on packages, in print ads, and on the web. But what are they? They're a type of bar code that will, when scanned with your smartphone, redirect you. In this case, you'll be redirected to my Amazon Author Page.
Books about the beach. http://amzn.to/BeachBooks
Scanners are easy to use and free in most cases. I use i-nigma because it was highly recommended by someone. Try it. And while you're at my Amazon page check out my new book, More Adventures F -
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Blog postPug At The Beach. A small dog teaches us all how to live an abundant and authentic life.
A common perception of Pug At The Beach is that it's a children's book. It is not. Well, sort of. It's a book written for an adult audience but one that kids happen to enjoy as well. Everybody loves Pug and he is indeed a book for all ages, but children will need guidance in grasping the deeper concepts of the Pug philosophy as well as some of the language. And I've found that kids are eager to step in -
Blog postHavana, Cuba"It was down a cobble stoned, palm lined street in Old Havana that Andre Kazanas last walked before his untimely and self inflicted death at the age of thirty-two.
He was a painter from childhood, at first making crude stick figures which seemed somehow more refined than those of the other children his age and then later, as he grew into adolescence and even later still, inevitably, manhood, he painted daily. Over the years he experimented not just with the various mediums -
Blog postNo Preview Available
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Blog postBooks by Jackson Dunes.
A while back I wanted to buy a particular book online but it came with $1,200 of "free" downloads. Included in the sales pitch was a long list of secondary products along with a description of those products. But something just didn't feel right about this deal. It felt contrived. Later I found out about the philosophy behind the deal.
It's called the "psychology of the second interest" and it's a way to get you to buy something by of -
Blog postOn AmazonAt Barnes & Noble<*(((><
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Blog postThis is the introduction from the second book in the Pug At The Beach book series,More Adventures From The Beach.Availability and purchasing info follows the introduction.
Introduction
Long ago in a faraway land,on a remote island at the end of a string of islands,surrounded by warm, clear, turquoise green waters,where pirates and carpenters with PhD’s live,(each having reputedly escaped from a former life),in a quaint little house on Petronia Street,a small dog was born.
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Blog postFlorida is called the sunshine state but we do have cloudy days. Here are just a few of the more interesting cloud formations I've seen. .
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Copyright 2011 Pug At The Beach
Photo credit: all photos by Jackson Dunes/Diana Taylor
For more information on using or buying my photos visit my RedBubble site.
Sprea -
Blog post"The fact is your work has inspired me in my darkest of times, and that is such a GIFT to give to anyone! Gary and I are both still struggling to find jobs in this depressed economy, but you have given me such a boost with your "Pug At The Beach" book, that I do not find myself in a daily black hole, as I had been. Frankly, your book is WAY better than the antidepressants I have been on!!! Love and Blessings to you ever and always! ♥"
~ Candace McCabe
It brings me -
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Blog postFrom the second in the series of Pug At The Beach books:
"More Adventures From The Beach"
available now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Many years ago I was MIS-diagnosed with a terminal liver cancer and given 6 months to live. It was a mistake. An error in the lab. And it was a very important lesson for me that included, among other things, to live each day to the fullest.
The truth is we may not be given advanced notice of our passing and as such, it -
Blog postAmazon.com Widgets
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Blog postThe next in the series of Pug At The Beach books is now available on Amazon & Barnes & Noble.
Available now.
In this second in the Pug At The Beach book series, the island dog takes us on more adventures with a background of white beaches and turquoise blue water. He reveals to us the life lessons he learned while walking the beach everyday including: the importance of playing a little bit everyday, why we shouldn’t try to fit into the image other people have of us, ho -
Blog postBicycles in and of themselves are magical. Personalize them and they become that much more special. Pug, being about as individual as an island dog can get, rides a unicycle. In this Pug At The Beach adventure, he's tweaked his bike to make it a fantastic adventure machine. This adventure is from the new book: Pug At The Beach, More Adventures From The Beach.
Pug’s Bike In a time almost forgotten, playing cards fastened to the spokes of a bicycle turned it into an engine driven magi -
Blog postGroup of plein air artists paints scenes at Delray Beach park And Pug is one of them!
For people who think that inspiration follows rules, this one is for you.
I "paint" with a group of plein air artists on a monthly basis. The only thing is that I don't paint. At the meetings, which are held outdoors, I choose to either sketch Pug or something Pug related or I photograph interesting sites around town.
Step outside of your comfort zone today b -
Blog postI have a friend who is really, really busy at work right now. It's starting to catch up with her. I reminded her of what her pal, Pug, said about the importance of play. Take 15 minutes today to do something fun just for yourself. Here's a photo I posted on Facebook of the fun I engaged in one morning with a popular kid's toy.
For more of Pug's Adventures, visit my Amazon Author Page here:
http://amzn.to/JacksonDunes -
Blog postAt the end of a very long road, bumpy and laden with hazards too many to list and capable of disabling the most seafaring of vessels, I took a chance and hitched a ride traveling another route to a different destination. One sweet deal later, I headed south.
I had, starting very early in life, for my entire life, lived deeply in a life that wasn’t really mine, immersed in an image of who I was, an image cultivated by others, by people who hadn’t a clue on how to direct their own live -
Blog postThe sense of smell is a powerful thing capable of traversing decades to bring to the forefront memories of long ago.
Lately, here in South Florida, where December’s temperatures are reminiscent of late spring in New England, I’ve gotten a whiff of times, nearly 25 years ago, when I was a student at a small, private college far away from the place I now call home. A converted estate of one of the 20th century’s wealthiest men, the campus sat on the banks of a river and part of my ye -
Blog post“On the many beaches Pug visited he always found a name left behind, its owner carving the letters with a stick in the sand or forming them with seashells or seaweed or sometimes with random lengths of driftwood cast ashore by the ocean. The discovery delighted his heart every time, but he wondered – why do people engage in this seemingly futile act when the tide simply and without fail, washed it all away? The island dog philosopher reasoned that all people crave immorality through a legacy whe
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Blog postI was in Miami last week. There with a friend for business, I couldn’t help but play tourist and take lots of photos.
As I was choosing which images I wanted to share in this piece, two things occurred to me:
I’ve lived in the country for far, far too long and I’m just a little bit of a dweeb as a result.
The skyscrapers I walked past last week were a very different image than Stonewall Farm, the cow farm that I drove by nearly every day when I lived in New Ham -
Blog postI hadn’t ever seen anything like it before; not in the movies, not in books, never - anywhere. So when I saw it lying on the beach, it was with a fair amount of caution that I approached the bizarre looking creature.
About two feet long, it was brown with stripes and spots that were astriking shade of electric blue, and it had a freakishly large orange eye whichblinked when I got close enough to touch it.
The trumpetfish is “Named for its long, thin snout and body to match, -
Blog postHer laughter filled the room. “That is just so you!” She was referring to the notepad clipboard and the Kooky Pen I had hanging in my shower.
As a writer I’ve come to accept that words and ideas come to me sometimes out of the blue and more often than not when I’m ill-equipped to jot them down. Long ago I made it a practice to be prepared because no matter how much I think I’ll remember a perfectly worded phrase that’s popped into my head, or how many times I repeat it aloud, I alw -
Blog postFor the uninformed, Pugisms are tidbits of Zen Wisdom from Pug, the island dog philosopher.
If you don't know who Pug is, click here.
Originally, Pugisms were left page filler text for the Pug adventures in the first book.
(Click on the "book" link and Amazon will give you an insider's look into the first Pug book.)
Pug Adventures themselves are roughly 100 words of text in 3 sentences accompanied by an illustration of Pug. In the illustr -
Blog post"With realization of one's own potential and self-confidence in one's ability, one can build a better world." ~ His Holiness the Dalai Lama
It wasn’t until I walked out of my neighborhood Publix Supermarket into the warm, South Florida night that it came to me. My links were broken.
I had been working steadfast all day to create a new store for the Pug At The Beach website. This involved many different aspects of web work all of which I hadn’t had a clue about -
Blog postI love Ocracoke Island!
Called "The Pearl Of The Outer Banks" it's the last inhabited island in this string of islands which lie 30 miles off the North Carolina coast.
Most of the island is designated as National Seashore which means its rugged charm is free of condos and billboards. Striking in its beauty, it makes my heart race just thinking about it.
Imagine my surprise when I received the following blog post from Ocracoke Island Realty's blo -
Blog postThe great thing about being artistically inclined is an inherent eye for fun. The creative person can take a normally boring object and tweak it until it becomes an invitation to linger.
It’s less about generating smiles or a sense of awe as much as it is about self expression.
Requiring a fair amount of self confidence or a blatant lack of concern for the finger wagging of others, the person who creates does so out of necessity. It’s only after the completion of a pr -
Blog postI’m amazed at the amount of traffic out on the ocean.
Sailboats, shrimpers, yachts, jet skis, kayaks. Having seen them all from this and other shores, I am most intrigued by the freighters that regularly pass by my beach.
Cargo ships off Delray Beach, Florida
In his book, Looking For A Ship, John McPhee “…provides the reader with stories and tales of modern seafaring life and the problems of making a living as a merchant mariner.” It i -
Blog postDavid McRee is the author of Florida Beaches: Finding Your Paradise on the LowerGulf Coast, a guide to the beaches of southwest Florida. A third-generation Floridian, David is the creator of BeachHunter.net, and BlogTheBeach, a website and blog, respectively, both devoted to the unique beauty of the Florida Gulf Coast beaches. He has a broad knowledge of the native and exotic plants and animals of the Gulf Coast.
I asked David to write a guest post for Pug's News From The Beach. Thi -
Blog postHe was picked up on the streets of Miami. Alone, hungry, and afraid, I could only imagine what he had been through. Without the skills to process what had happened to him, the daily hardships must have been terrifying. And yet, he kept going.
Enduring one change after another, each more frightening and new and completely foreign, he hung in there. Maybe it was an inherent resilience. Maybe tenacity. Maybe he knew, just like I did, that there was something out there for him, so -
Blog postBefore I lived in my house by the sea, I owned an old Victorian farmhouse built in 1860.
In its original condition, the staircase leading to the second floor was worn and dreary. The former owner had painted it an odd anduninspiring shade of brown. One winter I decided to change that.
Click on this image to listen to Kenny's The Key's In The Conch Shell while you read.
The transformation included teal green steps, pink risers and 14 conch shells -
Blog postThere’s always an abundance of activity at the beach.
Sometimes when I’m casually walking the at water’s edge, I look down and there’s the most perfect shell right at my feet. The harmony of it all is simply magical. It’s then that I become aware of exactly how blessed I am. This week I have two perfect shells of a different kind to share with you.
Steve Gamlin is a professional speaker, stand up comic, and writer. His new book, 20 to Life – In a good way! is a straigh -
Blog postLast week I played hooky. Instead of working at Pug At The Beach, I visited a local zoo, went shoe shopping, and hung out at the beach. My youngest kid was here last week for a visit, her last before going off to college this week. If you'd really like to read a story, click on any of the previous entries from the main menu. They're all timeless in nature. Otherwise, enjoy this compilation of photos from previous posts.
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Blog postI have a surfboard. It’s an In The Eye, 6 footer, with fixed fins, and I got it in a game of chance.
In The Eye surfboard by Natural Art
I was betting that the guy who crashed into my car out on that isolated beach road didn’t have adequate car insurance so I negotiated his surfboard as a marker. Turns out I was right.
Ignoring his scornful expression as he assessed the damage to both cars, (and, I was to later to find out, his lack of both car insurance -
Blog postRip currents have the power to lure people to their death. It’s not so much act of deceit, if you’ll allow me to personify this act of nature, but a false sense of our own powerlessness that gets us.
According to the National Weather Service rip currents form...
“As waves travel from deep to shallow water, they will break near the shoreline. When waves break strongly in some locations and weakly in others, this can cause circulation cells which are seen as rip currents: narro -
Blog postIt’s funny how sometimes things can change so quickly. One day life is going along in its usual fashion and the next thing you know you turn around and wham, things are completely different.
That’s the way the beach is. Literally. One day it’s flat with little or no distinguishable features and the next day huge sand cliffs have formed and you ask yourself, how on earth did that happen?
Those cliffs in the beach are called scarps. They’re the result of rapid erosion and -
Blog postI’m a firm believer in celebrations. They are an expression of gratitude, and gratitude is an essential component in making our dreams come true. We must first be thankful for what is before we can invite the what is to be into our lives.
My reasons to celebrate run the gamut from the seemingly mundane to the awesomely profound. Sunny days are always cause for celebration as are births and marriages. The lizard who stops outside the French doors in my office every afternoon, a littl -
Blog post“On approach, it became instinctive: throttle back, prop on full, mixture rich. Check the flaps. Check the wave pattern and look for the wind. No landing gear to worry about, just those big old floats underneath. Left hand on the wheel, right on the throttle, ready to add that dash of power just before touchdown to grease the landing, and a wiggle of the rudder pedals, just to be sure they were loose and ready to use. Complete focus, no distractions. These few minutes, and those right afte
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