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The Monster’s Daughter, free for the next two days!
ETA: It looks like the coupon is good through 23:59:59 Thursday, so download away!
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I meant to give away one book today, but I can’t seem to find the words for that post.
Instead I offer up free copies of my first novel, The Monster’s Daughter. Like the book I meant to give away today, it involves some hard choices for its protagonist. Unlike the book I meant to give away today, it involves monsters:
Ginny Connors doesn’t believe in vampires. There’s totally a rational reason her dad is a lot more bloodthirsty and a lot less interested in food than he used to be.
Still, she hangs a cross on her bedroom door. Just in case.
When Ginny discovers people aren’t the guests but the main course at her father’s New Year party, she wishes she could save the day with garlic pancakes. Instead, she must face the limits of her daydreams, and attempt to stop the monster her father has become.
If you’re looking for a vampire novel, I’m gonna be frank with you: this might not be your thing. Like the novel’s protagonist, I believe most vampires are improved by a stake through the heart.
If what you’re looking for is strength in hard times, you might just find something useful in this book. As reviewer E. L. Faris wrote:
If The Monster’s Daughter is read as simply a coming of age story for
a heroic young woman (and you will have to read the book to see just how
heroic she acts for I refuse to spoil it for you), you will love it. If, however, you
read it as an allegory for the life of an abused child and young woman, then
you will find great satisfaction and perhaps even catharsis as you read the
this amazing first novel by author Deborah Bryan.
Curious? Click here to begin the free download process. If you don’t already have a Smashwords account, you’ll need to create one. Once you have an account, simply add the book to your cart and enter the discount code WW68H. This will enable you to download it free of charge in your favored e-book format before May 3, 2012 (Pacific Time).
Stay tuned for the giveaway I’d actually planned!
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
FTIAT: The Waiting Room
Ben (lifefromthesmallestroom) began his blog to bring a face to Crohn’s disease, with which he was diagnosed in 2009. He’s incredibly forthright about how life sometimes feels like it’s lived from “the smallest room” now, but his forthrightness isn’t limited to Crohn’s. His thoughts on facing cancer are equally difficult to read and empowering.
Recommended post: Learning Family Values
The Waiting Room
Someone once said, ‘Life is a roller coaster and you’ve just got to ride it.’
I don’t think of it as a roller coaster, but I agree you’ve got to hang on and ride it till the wheels come off, you’re blue in the face and you’re ready to throw up all over yourself.
Life isn’t a roller coaster. Life is a battle.
If there is one thing I know how to do, it is fight.
People call me stubborn, but there is a fine line between being stubborn and being determined, and I see myself as determined.
Cancer has shaped my life. In a way, it’s determined my life course so far. I wouldn’t be the person I am now were it not for cancer.
The first time I met Cancer, I was too young to really understand what it meant. I remember a needle in my arm, feeling sick and having my hair falling out. Apart from feeling like I wanted to throw up, I thought it was funny that my hair was falling out. (I still have that dodgy sense of humour!)
It was only when cancer took my grandmother that I really started to know what Cancer was and how it affected people. I was nine when I was told my grandmother had lung cancer and watched her slowly turn from a happy, semi-active older lady to one that ended up bedridden and uncommunicative in the space of two years.
Over my high school years, I saw two aunts fight cervical cancer and breast cancer and live.
Then it came closer to home again.
In the space of two years, I watched my mum’s hair fall out due to chemotherapy for breast cancer. I laughed when it grew back a totally different colour as she beat it.
I dropped out of university to help care for my stepfather as he was dying from pancreatic cancer, which ended up spreading to his liver, stomach and kidneys, and then sat myself in the oncology waiting room to be told I had testicular cancer. I was 20.
I told no one, not even my closest friends. I shaved my head and told people I was going traveling, when in fact I was going into the hospital for surgery and treatment.
Why? Because I didn’t want to be treated how I saw people with cancer treated—how people walk around on eggshells so they don’t upset you and they whisper in corners thinking you can’t hear them.
To the day my mum and brother died they didn’t know, and many people still don’t.
Over the intervening years I’ve had the pleasure and pain of raising money for cancer charities in the UK. I’ve ran marathons for Cancer Research UK. I’ve abseiled down some of the UK’s tallest buildings and walked across hot coals to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, which helps with palliative care, because in my stepfather’s final days they gave me the support I needed to help care for him.
Over the years, I figure I’ve raised around £40,000/EUR49,000/US$65,935, but that still doesn’t relieve that guilt that I’ve survived while those I’ve been closest to died from it. I don’t expect it ever will . . . .
Having cancer has made me determined and more than likely a little stubborn. I know that sometimes this makes people angry, but I live each day as if it’s my last given that one never knows when it could come back.
Three years ago, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Colitis, an auto-immune gastrointestinal condition for which there is no known pharmaceutical or surgical cure. In a strange sort of way, dealing with cancer has enabled me to deal with this condition. It’s showed me to live for the good days, and at the moment I’m having good days . . . even though I’m again spending time in the oncologist’s waiting room.
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last: The Pogues and Parcheesi and afternoon strolls through IKEA | The Far Side of Sanity and Back Again: An Evolution in Thank You : next
One month bald: The walls outside & the light within
“People are like stained glass windows; they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
Many years ago, my brother asked me to picture a mutual friend of ours.
After I had her image firmly in mind, David asked, “Do you see her scars?”
I did not. Her face had seemed perfectly reconstructed in my mind before he asked; in light of his question, I felt ashamed, as if I’d been caught in the act of surreptitiously editing a work not my own.
My brother’s take was different. “You don’t picture it for the same reason you don’t really see it when you’re with her. It’s irrelevant. Her beauty shines from within, not from the specific arrangement of features on her face.”
The conversation was much more extensive than this, and my brother’s overall approach much more nuanced, but this is the part that has stuck with me. It was the part on my mind after I shaved my head for St. Baldrick’s last month.
I expected to be a wreck during the actual shaving. I also expected to be mildly chagrined by how baldness emphasized my already prominent forehead. What I didn’t expect was that I’d feel more beautiful than I ever had before.
I also didn’t expect the staring.
The day after I shaved my head, I caught a couple dozen—yes, a couple dozen—adults staring at me with eyes wide and mouths agape. I felt confident and gorgeous with my newly fuzzy head, so it was easy for me to smile back at strangers even while my discomfiture grew.
I wondered: What if I had lost my hair to cancer treatments? What if I were struggling to feel beautiful and strong in the face of the fight of my life? A fight for my life?
My stomach knotted at these thoughts, yet despite my initial chagrin, I quickly stopped noticing the stares. I even forgot that I’d shaved my head. A neighbor asked, “What did you do?!” following which I launched into an explanation about how she’d heard my son, Li’l D, screaming because I’d forced him to get off the elevator. (The nerve!)
My neighbor gestured to my hair and said, “I mean, to your hair!”
I laughed and said I’d had it shaved for a charity. With her hand to her heart, my neighbor said, “Thank God. I thought you were going through chemo.”
Once in a while, though, someone’s attention is so obvious it’s impossible not to notice. In these cases, I’ve continued my strategy of simply smiling back, an astonishingly effective means to get someone to stop staring.
Out to get lunch in the middle of a recent workday, I caught a woman staring at me with a mixture of sadness, dismay and pity so blatant, it totally disarmed me.
After a moment, I smiled at her and she looked away. For about two seconds. She then resumed staring, looking away again for only as long as I gazed and smiled directly at her.
The scenario played through my head for hours afterward. I wished I’d piped up, as recommended by blogger Counting Caballeros, “Thank you for staring. I shaved my head to raise awareness for childhood cancer, and since I obviously have your undivided attention, would you like your donation to pediatric cancer research to be cash, check, or charge?”
I don’t know what it’s like to fight cancer firsthand. I don’t know what that encounter would have felt like if I were fighting cancer right now. All I have is my imagination, and in my imagination, the feeling was horrible.
The feeling wasn’t about the hair. It was about what hair, or the lack of it, seemed to automatically represent: the presence of illness. The reminder of human mortality.
I felt an invisible wall of “otherness” being built around me as I recalled the emotions reflected in that stare, and those I witnessed right after I shaved my head.
I wondered: Would I be so different if I were fighting cancer? Would I somehow be less human, or less worthy of the common courtesies afforded someone with a full head of hair? Or would I still be me, Deb, just trying to enjoy a bite of lunch without being reminded that I’m not only fighting cancer but that I’m also now set apart in the eyes of those around me?
I can’t go back in time. I can’t redo that lunchtime encounter. But the next time I experience this, I’m going to say something. I don’t know what, exactly, or if it will be inspired by the above recommendation from Counting Caballeros, but something. Something that reminds others that I am human. That we are all human, whether tall or short, skinny or round, black or white, bald or hairy, fighting cancer or cancer-free.
And now, here, I’m going to ask you to say something if you find yourself caught in the act of staring. If you’re curious, or concerned, or just want to say, “I’m sorry, but you’re so radiant, it’s impossible to look elsewhere,” please do. Say hi. Embrace the awkwardness, for words like these connect even as they potentially embarrass us. Instead of building invisible walls between people, they are part of our building bridges of understanding.
I’m glad my neighbor asked what happened to my hair. Her words opened a dialog that brightened my day. In both asking and the way she asked, I felt that no answer I gave would’ve scared her or inspired her to treat me differently, apart from perhaps to share words of support.
If the thought of talking to a stranger terrifies you, consider offering a smile. The power of a smile is enormous.
It’s that smile that shows the light within, and all those beautiful lights within reflected outward that brighten the world for all.
Feeling that light shining
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
FTIAT: The Pogues and Parcheesi and afternoon strolls through IKEA
Mackenzie (Brights Strange Things) means many things to me: late nights listening to Gary Jules and Common Rotation at the Hotel Cafe. Long drives up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in which we talked about everything under the sun. Improvised text message verses to the Common Rotation song “Fortunate.” Awesome book covers for my novels. The goodness of knowing–through having been there and done that, countless times over–I can safely tell her anything without her thinking less or more of me because she already sees and loves me exactly as I am.
It’s been eight years since we lived in the same town and a year since our last visit, but Mack is an ever-present feeling of love in my heart. I think you’ll see why as you read her words below.
Recommended post: Born to Be Free
The Pogues and Parcheesi and afternoon strolls through IKEA
There are many things which have come easily to me, in the course of my life. I took pretty effortlessly to drawing things, and writing, and getting through school with an absolute bare minimum of effort, and I am also, for the record, pretty good at knitting potholders. Things that I am not so much good at include talking, telephones, arguments, coping with ghastly color schemes, and anything to do with relationships of any kind.
It’s not like I was a feral child raised by particularly unsociable dingoes, but it is fair to say that my family could’ve formed our own local chapter of Hermits United. During my formative years, when my classmates were learning how to strengthen or destroy friendships, fomenting drama amongst themselves, and taking every opportunity to practice their fornicating (I’m rather sad I missed out on that part), I was lost in my own mental worlds, for the most part content to completely avoid any sort of human interaction. I had a few friends, certainly, and was on good terms with pretty much my entire graduating class, but I had made a strong and early habit of keeping everyone at arm’s length. I also had what I then would’ve called “quirks” and my mom called “moodiness” which I now would probably classify as an amount of anxiety verging on clinical disorder. These and other factors are why, when I decided to move away from home and across the country after high school, things did not always go well.
It wasn’t that I was stupid. It was just that I was about as well-equipped for independent adult life as a penguin is equipped to survive in Death Valley.
Luckily, I had T. T was my first roommate, and probably my first truly close friend. T is older than I am, and to say that her experience of the world is somewhat broader is a vast understatement. She was well traveled and had gone to college and for some reason random strangers really liked to just walk up and talk to her, whereas I’d never even eaten at a real Mexican restaurant. T invited me to parties, towed me along to dinners, got me out of the apartment and generally did her best to socialize me. It was a fairly thankless job. I was walking social strychnine and I wasn’t always easy to live with, either. I was largely oblivious to everything from basic social cues to table manners to flatsharing etiquette. And yet, somehow, even at her most exasperated, T managed to gently cajole me toward adulthood without making me feel like I couldn’t also be myself.
When Deborah started this guest post series on thankfulness and gratitude, and asked me if I’d be interested in writing something, I thought of T first. Although we’d lost touch over the years, I still thought of her often, and by crazy random happenstance, right around the time I started writing this post, T tracked me down and got in touch again. I was delighted to hear from her, though everything I’ve had to say seems inadequate while “you’re my hero” kind of sounds like an invitation for a restraining order. Hopefully she still knows me well enough to know that if this blog is the best I can do for love letter and apology, that it’s only because I’m still a little emotionally stunted.
In those years of relative silence I’d often contemplated writing T to tell her how much she changed my life, and that I couldn’t think of a single thing I was more intensely grateful for than the friendship that she — and her own very gracious friends — had extended to me at a time when I needed it most, when things could’ve gone either way, when my choices really were to join the human race or to shut myself away from it. The changes she began laid the foundations for the person I became and am in the process of becoming. Because of T, I began to learn the tentative skills that helped me build all of the friendships that came after. And each of those people has also helped to shape me as a person in large and small ways. I carry some little piece of each of them with me, in the form of a memory, a song, a moment, a lesson, a turn of phrase, a regret, an old pain, a fresh joy.
So when you ask what I’m thankful for, I’ll tell you that I’m thankful for friendship and the way it grows, taking root in each part of a person and holding the center together. I’m thankful for The Pogues and Parcheesi and afternoon strolls through IKEA. I’m thankful for sweet potato fries, Hard Core Logo and impromptu cooking lessons. I’m thankful for cold drinks on the deck and a quiet conversation in the hay loft and messages from people who are half a world away but still so close by. I’m thankful for crashing on couches and laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe and knowing what it feels like to miss somebody when they aren’t there. I’m thankful for long meandering conversations from the driver’s seat and the crush of a crowded club and feeling that I can say anything, anything at all, and still be loved, always be loved, because there is no end to a thing that becomes a part of you.
I’m thankful for every minute of every day that another human being, motivated by nothing but kindness and love and camaraderie, reminds me that the only way to fail at life is choosing not to live it.
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last: A Poem, If You Please – I am Thankful for These | The Waiting Room : next
FTIAT: A Poem, if You Please – I am Thankful for These
Katy (k8did)’s a teacher and nurse,
Full up of compassion.
She also writes verse
I’ve got no hope of matchin’.
Her blog’s oft good for a giggle,
A dream, and a sigh;
Others, you’ll sniffle,
And think, “What a guy.”
The poem’s k8’s realm,
And I h8 to defile it!
So I’ll hand her the helm,
At least for a bit.
Recommended post: Give up the peanut butter cup and nobody gets hurt
A Poem, if You Please – I am Thankful for These
A hug before sleep
Awaken to a kiss
Without a doubt
I am thankful for this.
Trust in my marriage
Strength from each other
I’m so thankful that
We have one another.
Sons raised and launched
With kids of their own
My hardest work – done!!
Such joy I have known.
The body I complain about
It’s fluffy – not fat!!!
Is sturdy and strong
And I’m thankful for that.
My home, solid and cozy
Filled with laughter and love
I’m so grateful to be
A proud owner of.
Five healthy grandkids
Whose hugs I adore
Their pure child-love
I am so thankful for.
Work that I love
Where I stretch and I grow
I’m more grateful for
Than you’ll ever know.
Good friends I have made
Both virtual and real
I’m so thankful that
They understand what I feel.
Sisters who love me and
Always have my back
My heart fills with love
No gratitude I lack.
A dog true and faithful
Whose love knows no bounds
I am thankful for Shelby,
The most loving of hounds.
Swaying palm trees
In a soft Gulf breeze
Sparkling white sand
I am thankful for these
Writers and readers
Hours of pure blogging bliss
Enriching my life
And I’m thankful for this.
My life’s filled with blessings
Of that there is no doubt
My heart’s full of gratitude
My thanks I do shout.
May I always know what I have
And carefully tend to my gifts
In pure gratitude and joy
My thankful voice lifts.
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last: The Strongest Woman I Know | The Waiting Room (4/27/12) : next
Better Living Through Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
The newest (and tastiest!) approach to parenting
Before I was a parent, I had certain ideas about parenting. “I’ll definitely do this,” I’d tell myself. “And I’ll never, ever do that!”
Then I became a parent.
With so many debates raging about proper parenting, I assumed parenting would be . . . different. You could even say I envisioned it being complicated. Unwieldy.
Turns out it’s a little bit messy, but certainly not hard!
You might have read about the four different parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved.
If you excel at parenting (like me), you undoubtedly read those four types and wondered, “Where’s the fifth?”
The fifth style, “RPBC,” reflects a much more nuanced and sophisticated approach to parenting. It acknowledges that each of the other styles has its merits, but that they all work better in complement to each other. And with a hefty dose of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Why limit yourself to any one of the other styles when you can pick and choose as circumstances necessitate?
RPBC authoritarian: YOU DO NOT GET PEANUT BUTTER CUPS, BECAUSE I SAID SO.
RPBC authoritative: I trust you understand why I’m withholding peanut butter cups from you.
RPBC permissive: Oh, sweetie. It’s okay that you wrecked the neighbor’s car. You know what helps me feel better when I do stuff like that? That’s right. Third drawer on the left.
RPBC uninvolved: [silent as to location of the peanut butter cups]
When my son, Li’l D, has been good, I like to reward his behavior with a peanut butter cup. If he’s been really, really good, I’ll offer him nineteen or twenty.
If the sugar makes him a little wild and he does something displeasing, I tend to take a firm no-peanut-butter-cup stance with him. “Li’l D, I would have given you another peanut butter cup, but Daddy’s going to miss his computer now that you’ve thrown it over the balcony!”
I say “tend to” because the RPBC parenting style affords the busy parent—and aren’t we all busy?—the ultimate in flexibility. There’s no situation that can’t be resolved with the proper application or withholding of peanut butter cups.
You’ll have to sort out the exact balance for yourself, but there’s even more good news here: you can’t get it wrong!
The RPBC never judges. Not even when you eat it.
Try competing with that, other parenting styles!
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
*** TODAY’S SPECIAL ***
On this historic day, otherwise known as Wednesday, 19 of your favorite humor bloggers are staging a WordPress coup. We have banded together to address the important topic, Better Living Through Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Yes, you read that right. Your eyes are fine. Well, they may not be fine – I really don’t know. But it does say “19 of your favorite humor bloggers” (or who SHOULD be your favorite bloggers). We are all presenting the same topic, each from his or her particularly unique perspective.
Why this topic? Why now?
Why not?
Click on the Reese’s Pieces link to gobble up the entire, yummy bag of 19 posts.
Bon Appetite!
The Big Sheep Blog ☺ Childhood Relived ☺ Go Guilty Pleasures ☺ Fifty Four and A Half
Fix It Or Deal ☺ Play 101 ☺ k8edid ☺ Lenore’s Thoughts Exactly ☺ Life In The Boomer Lane
Peg-o-Leg’s Ramblings ☺ Refrigerator Magnate ☺ Running From Hell With El
She’s A Maineiac ☺ The Byronic Man ☺ The Good Greatsby ☺ The Monster In Your Closet
The Ramblings ☺ Thoughts Appear’s Blog ☺ Unlikely Explanations
Free book! Cover reveal?
The Lucky Mom, Lisha, delighted me by buying not one but a few signed copies of my first novel, The Monster’s Daughter.*
When she announced that one of those copies was for a giveaway on her blog, “delight” was upgraded to “true love.”
If you’d like a chance to win a signed copy of The Monster’s Daughter, check out Lisha’s review and giveaway post. Don’t be in too much of a hurry to leave afterward; there’s a whole lot for a reader to love there! (“The Mistress” is one of my favorite reads there.)
If you’d like to tell me to hurry up with editing its sequel already, you can feel free to do that here. I’ll take your words under advisement, especially if you send them over with an extra hour or so from your day. And I’ll leave you with this tiny preview of a draft of its cover, which Bright Strange Things is crafting and tweaking now!**
Don't you just wish you could see the WHOLE THING?!
* Incidentally, I should be working on editing its sequel right now. But look, I still have 31 whole minutes to edit this morning! (Yes, it remains largely true that if editing were weight-lifting, I’d be benching three ounces.)
** Probably not right now. I’d wager she’s mostly hard at work snoring right now.
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
Skin color & the power of words
This time last week, I was anxious about posting my blog, “Our baby is going to experience racism someday.”
Us and our baby
In addition to being deeply personal, it used a word I hate hearing, seeing or knowing exists. I used the word in quotation, but actually using it myself—within or outside of quotation—made me feel ashamed.
“I’ve been called a ‘nigger.’ Lots of times.”
I didn’t use the word lightly. Indeed, by the time I opened the question of its use to a small group of friends, I’d already discussed the matter at length with my honey (whose Yale degree is in American Studies, and who assessed my questions both personally and academically) and a friend whose vocal opposition to the word in any context meant I was surprised when he agreed I should use it as quoted.
In the end, something I agonized over received exactly zero comments. None.
I’m glad I used the word as spoken. I believe that using a euphemism such as “n-bomb” would have detracted from the shock of being confronted with hateful use of that hateful word today.
Despite the total lack of reader reaction to its use, I’m glad I agonized over it. It’s a word full of hate, and hateful history, and thus not one I feel should be used lightly.
By contrast, use of the words “black,” “brown” and “white” don’t faze me.
Anymore, that is.
They did four years ago.
I clearly recall Ba.D. asking me to describe one of my neighbors, in case he encountered the neighbor later. I faltered after I threw out a few descriptive words. Should I mention his skin at all? Despite nervousness about doing so, I added, “Also, he had gorgeous latte-colored skin.”
“Thank you!” Ba.D. boomed victoriously. “Thank you for saying that!”
“Um?” I faltered. I didn’t know what response I’d expected, but that wasn’t it.
“Thank you for describing his skin color! You wouldn’t hesitate to say someone was ‘blond,’ or ‘short,’ right? So why withhold a piece of descriptive information that distinguishes one person from another? If you’ve got two short-haired guys wearing tweed and glasses standing side-by-side, does it really make more sense to start describing shoe color before skin color?”
My memory’s not good enough to recall what Ba.D. said to me about our weekend plans this morning, so you have my 100% guarantee the above quote isn’t verbatim. Yet this was its content, and it’s been content that’s impossible to forget. It’s been the subject of a lot of discussion and consideration since, and marked a turning point in how I thought about descriptions of skin color. As I wrote here last April:
Help [your kids] see, as you do, that color is descriptive, not determinative, guiding them not to be “color blind”–impossible for the categories kids sort the world into–but instead to be color impervious.
In the four years since I had the above conversation with Ba.D., hyperawareness of loose color-based descriptors and an aversion to their use has come to feel to me like another barrier between people. Touching, in passing, upon a superficial distinction between two people and giving it neither further thought nor weight emphasizes that it is merely that: a superficial distinction. Pretending there is no difference whatsoever, by contrast, serves only to emphasize the “white elephant” in the room about which we’re unwilling to speak, and thus perpetuate the idea that something is so important and so divisive that it must never be discussed. This is the heart of fear.
I don’t believe we’re defined by our skin, or that skin color provides any useful information whatsoever about a person’s heart, soul or proclivities. The only thing it tells me, in very broad strokes, is roughly how much melanin a person has.
In other words, it tells me very, very little.
In practical terms, it tells me just enough to let someone know, with one added, neutrally spoken word, to precisely which short-haired, tweed- and glasses-wearing dude I’m referring.
Using these words isn’t a problem to me anymore. It’s active avoidance of them that makes me uncomfortable now, reflecting as it seems to a conscious effort to not see something that is absolutely seen, and thus leading to questions not about what we see but about why we feel we must see it differently.
It’s not what we see that’s the problem. It’s what we ascribe to it.
So I’ll use those descriptors, and listen to the ones others use, or don’t. What I won’t use—without great care, consideration and a context that benefits by invoking them—are words like “the n-bomb,” which are by their very creation and use meant to describe not only a facet of someone’s appearance but imply unkindly (and incorrectly) who they are beneath their skin.
Words are powerful. This is true not only of the ones we use, but of the ones we avoid at all costs.
© 2012 Deborah Bryan. All rights reserved.
Duplication in whole or substantial portion is explicitly forbidden.
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