Instagram, born yesterday – October 2010 – , is already a giant, over 200 million users busily sharing pictures in that weird square format typical of antiquated Polaroid photos. When Facebook bought it in April 2012, paying one billion dollars in stock and cash, it knew what it was doing! In 2013, Instagram grew at…
Author: Claude Forthomme
Writer, essayist, poet, painter. Columbia U graduate in economics; United Nations expert (25 years in FAO; ended career as Director for Europe and Central Asia). Presently Senior Editor at Impakter Magazine and Deputy Observer Order of Malta at Rome-based United Nations Agencies (FAO, WFP, IFAD)
Writes in English and Italian under various pen names (Nougat for fiction in English; Forthomme for non-fiction). So far, publications include 2 books in Italian (including an award-winning children's book of tales) and 6 books in English (including one non-fiction essay on development aid).
All fiction in English is available on Amazon and major e-platforms, uncer pen name Claude Nougat.
What’s Wrong with the UN Security Council
Here’s another article about the UN I wrote for the magazine Impakter under my real name: Claude Forthomme (published on 9 June, 2014) – after all, after 25 years of service in the United Nations, I believe I know a thing or two about it! Enjoy and let me know what you think! What’s…
Ready to self-publish? Don’t rush and here’s why
All the advice I’m giving here is based on my own experience in self-publishing. Be warned, it’s a steep learning curve! You’ll find that you can quickly master the technical aspects of uploading a file on KDP, Amazon’s platform for self-publishing, or on Smashwords to get your book on other e-platforms like Sony, Kobo, the…
A Novel Rejected by Big Publishers Wins a Major Literary Prize
There’s hope for recognition for all of us poor writers… The lesson is: never give up, keep trying! That’s what Irish author Eimar McBride did, she never gave up and this week-end the news came in: she just won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction for her debut novel, “A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing”. …
Is Google Plus on its Way Out?
I just published one of my articles on a new cool magazine, Impakter. Here’s the opening: The geeks are convinced of it, Google is about to snuff out Google Plus. The younger generations, the Millenials in particular, consider Google+ a social media disaster. Something totally useless, even laughable. A month ago, Google Plus’ founding father,…
BOOKS ARE NOT BREAKFAST CEREAL
I totally like this! BOOKS ARE NOT BREAKFAST CEREAL.
What’s Life Like When You’re a Writer Married to a Writer? To Find out, Rome Calls Chattanooga, choo-choo!
Couples engaged in the same occupation are rare and don’t always have a happy life together. It may be harder for writers than for other artists to achieve serenity in their life as a couple – perhaps because writers are more given to analyzing their feelings and expressing them into words. That can easily turn…
A Writer’s Life: Can Blogging Help You Sell Your Books?
Conventional wisdom has it that blogging helps to sell books, and the more successful your blog, the more books you will sell. Not so. Yet, marketing gurus and hugely successful bloggers like Adrienne Smith maintain that with blogging you can “make a living” (see here). Perhaps you can if you sell something else than books….
CLI-FI – A DISCUSSION WITH AUTHOR CLAUDE NOUGAT
If this is a good interview, you should thank best-selling author Bob Rector, he had really good questions! CLI-FI – A DISCUSSION WITH AUTHOR CLAUDE NOUGAT. Some of the books discussed: – New York under water: Monarch butterflies invade a small corner of the Appalachian mountains causing a scary “flight behavior”: Climate fiction also includes…
The 6-Word Novel: For Sale, Wedding Ring, Never Worn!
For Sale: Wedding Ring, Never Worn Ok, I plead guilty: the original 6-word short story, a.k.a. the six word novel, an extreme form of flash fiction, is Hemingway’s and it’s not about a failed relationship but a dead baby or perhaps an unborn child, precisely this: For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn. He dreamt…
Black on Black? Soulages!
Lithograph, 67 by 52 cm Who’d ever guess that painting black on black would get you a million dollars and more? The miracle – because it is another Contemporary Art miracle – is called Soulages, a 94 year-old, 6 foot tall Frenchman who still paints everyday, spreading his favorite color, black, searching for the perfect…
Too Much “Noise” on the Net: is “milq” the Answer?
We can all agree that we are bombarded with information and that most of it is useless. It’s coming at us from all directions: Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Goodreads, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, online magazines, blogs, the list is endless. We’re deafened with “noise” on the Net. And in all that “noise”, do you find what…
Claude Forthomme 