Celebrating Creators: Filmmaker Cindy Di Xin

 

Credit: Cindy Di Xin

Meet Cindy Di Xin

Cindy Di Xin was born and raised in Nanning Guangxi, China.  At 16 years of age,  she started to study abroad in the United States. During her school years, she lived in Florida, California , Michigan and New York.  She  attended the University of Florida for her bachelor’s degree, School of Visual Arts in New York for her first master’s degree in Directing, and then Chapman University in California for her MFA in Film Production. Currently,  she makes her home in Pasadena, CA, next door to Hollywood.  She plans to submit her films to such film fests as the Berlin International Film Festival, British Independent Film Festival and the Palms Spring International Short Fest.  She is currently working on her first feature film, a family drama, that is based upon her short film The day, at the Beach. Stay tuned for her upcoming interview with Authors by Sasha where she discusses how she approaches her craft of film making to create powerful performances. Learn more by visiting here.

Credit: The day, at the Beach

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

 

Credit: Zero to One

Overview

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.  Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.  Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique. Credit: Zero to One; Good Reads.

Credit: Peter Thiel, Founders Fund

Meet the Author - Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and investor. He started PayPal in 1998, led it as CEO, and took it public in 2002, defining a new era of fast and secure online commerce. In 2004 he made the first outside investment in Facebook, where he serves as a director. The same year he launched Palantir Technologies, a software company that harnesses computers to empower human analysts in fields like national security and global finance. He has provided early funding for LinkedIn, Yelp, and dozens of successful technology startups, many run by former colleagues who have been dubbed the “PayPal Mafia.” He is a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded companies like SpaceX and Airbnb. He started the Thiel Fellowship, which ignited a national debate by encouraging young people to put learning before schooling, and he leads the Thiel Foundation, which works to advance technological progress and long-term thinking about the future. Credit: Amazon

Author Neil Gaiman Shares Writing Insights

 

The Second Mrs. Astor

 

Credit: The Second Mrs. Astor

Overview

Madeleine Talmage Force is just seventeen when she attracts the attention of John Jacob “Jack” Astor. Madeleine is beautiful, intelligent, and solidly upper-class, but the Astors are in a league apart. Jack’s mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York’s most formidable socialite. Jack is dashing and industrious—a hero of the Spanish-American war, an inventor, and a canny businessman. Despite their twenty-nine-year age difference, and the scandal of Jack’s recent divorce, Madeleine falls headlong into love—and becomes the press’s favorite target.

On their extended honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds finally find a measure of peace from photographers and journalists. Madeleine feels truly alive for the first time—and is happily pregnant. The couple plans to return home in the spring of 1912, aboard an opulent new ocean liner. When the ship hits an iceberg close to midnight on April 14th, there is no immediate panic. The swift, state-of-the-art RMS Titanic seems unsinkable. As Jack helps Madeleine into a lifeboat, he assures her that he’ll see her soon in New York. Learn what happens next here. Credit: The Second Mrs. Astor: A Heartbreaking Historical Novel of the Titanic.

Meet the Author Shana Abe.

Credit: Shana Abe, BiblioLifestyle