AnnaQ is a month and four days older than I am, another water dragon. The 18 May 2009 issue of Newsweek Magazine contains her resignation from her gig writing LAST WORD, which she's had for the last nine years.

THE LAST WORD - Anna Quindlen (18 May 2009 issue of Newsweek)

This page, this place, is an invaluable opportunity to shed some light. But if I had any lingering doubts about giving it up after almost nine years, they were quelled by those binders on my desk, full of exemplary work by reporters young enough to be my children. Flipping through their pages, reading such essential and beautifully rendered accounts of life in America and around the world, I felt certain of the future of the news business in some form or another. But between the lines I read another message, delivered without rancor or contempt, the same one I once heard from my own son: It's our turn. Step aside. And now I will.



Boy, am I feeling like a dinosaur.

Labels: news, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:32 PM|| |

Dickensurl.com

Convert your URL to a Dickensian quote.

Mine?

Under an accumulation of staggerers, no man can be considered a free agent. No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.

From The Old Curiosity Shop

Above quote has been attributed to
http://www.towse.com/blogger/blog.htm

[via Bella Stander's twitterfeed]

Labels: app, URL, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  9:41 AM|| |

This Is Your Wake-up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing

[...]

The underlying problem facing the industry is twofold: there are too many books, and too many of them are derivative of each other. You've heard of Gresham's Law—the idea that bad money drives out good. Our industry has long suffered from Grisham's Law, where opportunistic authors and publishers try to imitate John Grisham and other category leaders with books modeled on someone else's commercial success. That strategy might make sense if there were great demand for these imitators, but in today's overcrowded, competitive marketplace, this kind of thinking is dangerous, because it devalues the environment into which we present our work.

[...]

[link via Dystel & Goderich Management blog]

Labels: book promotion, books, publishers, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:34 PM|| |

I found a good home for my softcover edition of The ALICE B. TOKLAS COOKBOOK. I have an older, hardcover, first edition that I intend to keep but, really, there aren't many differences 'twixt these two.

One difference, the newer edition has a foreword by MFK Fisher.

One other crucial difference, for those of us who spent our young adult years in the sixties and seventies, this edition contains the recipe that (for legal reasons) the publisher could not include in the first edition. Yes, the recipe for Haschich Fudge -- no, not brownies ... fudge, even though the talk was always of Alice B. Toklas brownies.

The Haschich Fudge recipe is not a Toklas original, but rather came to Toklas from painter and film-maker Brion Gysin, according to the notes.

-------------
Haschich Fudge (which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)

This is the food of Paradise -- of Baudelaire's Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies' Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one's personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by 'un évanouissement reveillé.'

Take 1 teaspoon of black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon of coriander. These should be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together. A bunch of canibus sativa [sic] can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.

Obtaining the canibus may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as canibus sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called canibus indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.
-------------

Now that I've saved the recipe (although for what reason I don't know), I can pass the copy of the later edition on to someone who will give it a good home.

Labels: books, food, history, recipes, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:46 PM|| |

Mary Jane Maffini and I met over dinner at Left Coast Crime. She'd arrived in Hawaii from Canada and was hungry. I'd arrived from California and was hungry. Why not share a table?

We exchanged names and stories. I told her that I'd almost been named "Mary Jane" by my parents after a distant ancestress. Turns out one of her sleuths is named MacPhee. A name in my family tree too. Zounds. Who couldn't like someone as nice as Maffini, who is also probably a cousin if we go back far enough?

MJM just posted a link on Facebook to her new book trailer.

Labels: books, writers

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:07 AM|| |

 

No, actually. That's Ripley, Borderlands Books' hairless cat.

Ripley sat in my lap purring and snoozing during Sawyer's talk and was reluctant to leave it when the presentation was over.

We hied off to Foreign Cinema afterwards for a late dinner, Sawyer having signed my copy of WAKE before the event kicked off.

Check out the book and the other seventeen books and zillions of short fiction items Sawyer has written.

The pilot for a FLASH FORWARD series is up for consideration in the next few days. Good luck to Sawyer on that.

After dinner at Foreign Cinema it was home again home again via the #14 Mission and the #30 Stockton, and a quarter mile walk up Telegraph Hill and home. The transit connections, though, were perfect. Maybe a four minute wait for the #14 and another four minute wait for the #30. Can't get much better than that. Thanks, Muni.

Labels: books, bookstores, photographs, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:41 PM|| |

Letter from Joseph Conrad to his agent, J.B. Pinker

Hotel Continental
place de la Comedie
Montpellier
21st Febr '06

My dear Pinker.

    I send you the first 13 pp of Verloc partly that you should see what the story is going to be like and partly as evidence that the Capri fatality is not likely to overcome me this year. After all, considering that we have been just a week here and that it takes some time to feel settled I haven't done so badly. There is a good bit more MS actually written but I can't part with it yet. I've also worked at the text of the M of the Sea. That and the balance of Verloc you'll get in the course of a week. Meantime I hope you won't think I am stretching the point unduly if I ask you to send me £20 on the day you receive this -- which I imagine will be Friday -- either in English notes or by draft on the Credit Lyonnais who have a house here -- whichever is less trouble.
    Don't imagine that the story'll be unduly long. It may be longer than the Brute but not very much so. What has delayed me was just trying to put a short turn into it. I think I've got it. I haven't done anything to Chance of course. I imagine it would go easiest at the Pent. But that or some other MS you are sure to have from here. I feel well and have a few ideas.

Yours always
Conrad.

PS Would you have the extreme kindness to buy for me and send out by parcel post a fountain pen of good repute -- even if it has to cost 10/6. I am doing much of my writing in the gardens of Peyron under a sunny wall and the horrible stylo I've got with me is a nuisance.


===========

n.b. Verloc became The Secret Agent

Labels: paperpensandglue, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:49 PM|| |

Query Shark

How an agent =really= feels. Query critiques for the strong-at-heart.

e.g. Please don't ever put I look forward to hearing from you soon in a query letter. It sets my teeth on edge. Other agents may not have quite the ..ah...toothy! reaction that I do, but why risk they do. Be safe. Don't say it.

Hosted by Janet (Jet) Reid at FinePrint Literary.

Her voice may sound familiar to you.

Shhh.

Labels: agents, books, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:49 AM|| |

Lost in Fiction - WSJ.com: Alexander McCall Smith on the intense personal relationships readers form with characters and the ways that complicates the lives of authors.

[...]

It can be very inhibiting for an author if he or she knows that what happens in fiction is going to be taken so seriously. I write serial novels in newspapers and have learned the hard way that people will readily attribute the views expressed by characters to their authors. In one of my "Scotland Street" novels a character called Bruce, a rather narcissistic young man, made disparaging remarks about his hometown. Although these were not the views I hold about that particular town, I was roundly taken to task, with the local member of the Scottish Parliament suggesting that I should be forced to apologize to the offended citizens. I pointed out that these were the views of a fictional character, who was just the type to make such remarks. That did not help.

In another novel, I had Isabel Dalhousie give up breastfeeding rather too quickly for the liking of the leader of a pro-breastfeeding organization. Again I was told that I should make a public apology to those who believed in persisting with breastfeeding. That sort of thing is quite alarming, and it is such people who need to be told, politely but firmly, that it is just a story.

[...]

Labels: writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:04 AM|| |

Book Promotion Tips from the Pros: Featured Author: Marc Acito

Some interesting insights.

Labels: book promotion, writers

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:30 PM|| |

Read-it-First with Suzanne Beecher

Join St. Martin’s Read-it-First e-mail book club and sample a hot NEW release each week. Each weekday morning, we’ll send you a taste of the week’s featured title right to your inbox. By the end of the week, you’ll have read approximately a few chapters, enough to decide whether it is the right book for you…sometimes just before it even hits the stores!

And it’s all completely FREE!

I signed up just in time. Next week (April 13th) is featuring Louise Ure's latest: LIARS ANONYMOUS.

    Click cover image for more info.

Labels: books, mystery, writers

   posted by Sal Towse at  6:48 PM|| |

TV interview on ABC News 10's Sacramento and Co.

Simon talks about dyslexia and his writing and the back doors you learn to use to do what you want to do when the dyslexia is holding you back. Simon, for those who don't know him, writes thrillers (as Simon Wood) and horror (as Simon Janus) and (under yet another pseudonym, Simon Oaks) has a nonfiction book out last month, WILL MARRY FOR FOOD SEX AND LAUNDRY.

Simon's Web site

Labels: books, mystery, video, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  5:41 PM|| |

Christopher G. Moore was at Left Coast Crime 2009.
Christopher Moore was not.

The book dealer who brought Christopher Moore's books to sell to conference attendees didn't know the difference, or thought that conference attendees didn't. No excuse, really. The list of conference attendees included a hot link to Christopher G. Moore's Web site where 'tis obvious he writes a very different tale than Christopher not-G Moore.

Imagine your surprise if you'd purchased a Christopher Moore book from the book dealer and, having reached the head of the "have Christopher Moore sign your book" line, you discovered the Christopher Moore (Christopher G. Moore) in front of you looked nothing like the author photo on the (Christopher Moore) book you had in hand.

Here's the basic difference 'twixt the two:

"Think Dashiell Hammett in Bangkok." —San Francisco Chronicle (Christopher G. Moore)

"Moore's storytelling style is reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams." — Philadelphia Inquirer (Christopher Moore)

Now you know ...

Buy either. Buy both. Different reads. Very different reads. Both worth reading.

Labels: books, writers, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:59 AM|| |