For Jane Green fans!

The Penguin Group would like to invite you to join bestselling author Jane Green for a chat about her newest novel, Dune Road, on Monday, July 6th at 2 PM EST. You can join the chat by visiting The Water Cooler at the scheduled time.

Dune Road is the story of life in an exclusive beach town after the tourists have left for the summer and the eccentric (and moneyed) community sticks around—from the bestselling author of The Beach House. Warm, witty and gloriously observed, Dune Road is Jane Green at her best, full of brilliant insights into challenges that come with forging a new life.

The chat, which is the first in what will be a monthly feature in the newly launched “From the Publisher’s Office” network on the Penguin website, will allow readers to ask questions of the author, after having had the first three chapters of the book serialized on the site. The reading experience will be rounded out with a complete Readers Group Guide once the chat has been completed. If you can’t take part, all chats will be archived on the site, so check back at any time.

We’ll also be letting participants in on a special offer to express our thanks for taking part in the chat.

I can make it, I'm at work then but I'd love to hear about it if you do go!

Win a copy of BAD MOTHER!

BAD MOTHER: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace by Ayelet Waldman

In the tradition of recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Perfect Madness comes a hilarious and controversial book that every woman will have an opinion about, written by America’s most outrageous writer.

In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers.

Today we have only Bad Mothers.

If you work, you’re neglectful; if you stay home, you’re smothering. If you discipline, you’re buying them a spot on the shrink’s couch; if you let them run wild, they will be into drugs by seventh grade. If you buy organic, you’re spending their college fund; if you don’t, you’re risking all sorts of allergies and illnesses.

Is it any wonder so many women refer to themselves at one time or another as “a bad mother”? Ayelet Waldman says it’s time for women to get over it and get on with it, in a book that is sure to spark the same level of controversy as her now legendary “Modern Love” piece, in which she confessed to loving her husband more than her children.

Covering topics as diverse as the hysteria of competitive parenting (Whose toddler can recite the planets in order from the sun?), the relentless pursuits of the Bad Mother police, balancing the work-family dynamic, and the bane of every mother’s existence (homework, that is), Bad Mother illuminates the anxieties that riddle motherhood today, while providing women with the encouragement they need to give themselves a break.

READ AN EXCERPT

To win your own copy of BAD MOTHER, please send an email to contest@gmail.com with "BAD MOTHER" as the subject. You must include your snail mail address in your email. All entries must be received by June 18, 2009. Five (5) names will be drawn from all qualified entries and notified via email. Each name drawn will receive a free copy of BAD MOTHER by Ayelet Waldman, courtesy of Doubleday. This contest is open to all adults over 18 years of age in the United States. One entry per email address, please. Your email address will not be shared or sold to anyone. All entries, including names, e-mail addresses, and mailing addresses, will be purged after winners are notified.


Ayelet Waldman is the author of Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace , Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Daughter's Keeper and the Mommy-Track Mysteries. Her personal essays have been published in a wide variety of newspapers and magazine, including The New York Times, the Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, Elle Magazine, Vogue, Allure, Cookie, Child, Parenting, Real Simple, Health and Salon.com. Her radio commentaries have appeared on "All Things Considered" and "The California Report."

Ayelet's missives also appear on Facebook and Twitter.

Her books are published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand, the Netherlands and China, Russia and Israel.

The film version of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits is now in post-production, with Don Roos as screenwriter and director, Natalie Portman in the lead role, and Lisa Kudrow and Scott Cohen also starring.

HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND

In case you missed Janice Lieberman on THE TODAY SHOW talking about her new book, HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND, you can see it here:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/30727287/

"After years of dating misery, I finally took matters in hand. After all, this was the most important shopping trip of my life, wasn't it? And shopping was certainly a topic I knew a lot about. So I decided to approach dating in a smart, systematic way, as if I were making the purchase of a lifetime. Slowly but surely, and almost before I even realized it, I began to apply the rules I had learned as a consumer reporter - caveat emptor, don't get scammed, learn where to shop, and know how to close a favorable deal - to shopping for a husband."

Now is the time to learn… HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND
By Janice Lieberman with Bonnie Teller

Janice Lieberman, the "Today Show" Consumer Smarts correspondent, brings her shopping expertise and her personal knowledge of the dating marketplace together to tell you how to shop for the most important "purchase" of your life - your spouse. In HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND (St. Martin's Press; May 12, 2009; $22.95) Janice uses shopping principles to formulate rules that will help women select a spouse and "close the deal".

And Janice really knows what she's talking about - the tips she shares in HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND are the same ones she implemented in meeting and eventually marrying her own husband!

This savvy shopper's guide provides a shopping list all women can use in their hunt for the ultimate bargain - highlights potential pitfalls and outlining the ever important Rules of the dating (and marriage) game.

Rules such as:
#5) Let Him Think He's Doing the Shopping
#9) Sorry, but…You May Need to Repackage (Yourself, That Is!)
#10) Know a Guy's History - Is He a Marrier or a Player or, Worst of All, Both?

And personal shopping tips like:
" Get online, now! It's all in the numbers. The internet is a man-shopping mecca, so learn how to master it and you will in-deed be a dating diva.
" Forget the old adage that opposites attract and look for common ground. If you find it, you'll be enjoying your purchase for years to come!
Lieberman opens women's eyes in HOW TO SHOP FOR A HUSBAND to demonstrate how they typically shop for the wrong things in a mate (forget about what his shoes look like, and try to figure out the content of his character) and sabotage their own happiness with a long "must-have" list instead of seeing the value of the men who are right in front of them.

It's time to go shopping!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Janice Lieberman has been the featured Consumer Smarts correspondent on NBC's "Today Show" for ten years and was previously the consumer correspondent on "Good Morning America". Lieberman also anchored "Steals and Deals", which appeared nightly on CNBC. She is also the author of Tricks of the Trade: A Consumer Survival Guide with Jason Raff. Janice is a contributing editor to Reader's Digest for their "Here's the Deal" column. Janice currently lives in New Jersey with her husband - who she shopped very, very, wisely for.

MAYHEM IN THE MIDLANDS

Beth Groundwater’s Report on the Mayhem in the Midlands Conference

After a weather delay at the Denver airport, I’m finally home from a wonderful weekend in Omaha, Nebraska spent hobnobbing with fellow mystery authors, readers, and lovers of all things mysterious. The conference, known for being intimate because of its cap on attendees set at 200, was even more intimate this year due to the economy, but those intrepid souls who came all had a great time, as far as I could tell.

I arrived late morning on Thursday, checked into the room at the Embassy Suites hotel (the conference site) I was to share with mystery short story author Kaye George, and walked into the Old Market area to eat lunch. After a refreshing swim in the hotel pool, I checked my consignment books into the booksellers, Tom & Enid Schantz at Rue Morgue and Kathy Magruder at Lee Booksellers, all lovely people. I highly recommend you patronize both of these independent booksellers.

Kaye found me at the hotel’s afternoon guest reception, where we drank our share of the free alcoholic beverages offered to hotel guests. This daily ritual was a big hit with the mystery convention crowd! Hearty munchies (enough to be considered dinner) and drinks followed at the conference’s cocktail party and 10th anniversary celebration. The speeches were short and sweet and the distinguished guests were welcomed: Guest of Honor Dana Stabenow, Toastmaster Jan Burke, and International Guest of Honor Zoe Sharp.

The Embassy Suites offered a breakfast to hotel guests the next morning that included made-to-order omelets and pancakes. Conference goers raved about the complimentary breakfasts almost as much as the complimentary cocktail receptions. The conference swung into full gear at 9 am with three tracks of panels, and I was on stage right off that bat as a member of the humor panel: “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Crime”. Pat Dennis, stand-up comedian and publisher of the humorous anthology of bathroom mysteries titled Who Died in Here, among others, soon had the audience in stitches, while the rest of us authors limped along trying to keep up. At the end of the panel, Margaret Grace, author of the miniature mysteries series, presented me with a commissioned outdoor scene including a sleeping bag, campfire, books (including my own), flashlight, woodland animals and trees, and a gift basket complete with wine, glasses, and a gun. I was thrilled with it!

Next, I sat in on the panel, “Putting the Ms. in Mysteries, Tough Female Protagonists,” consisting of Kate Flora, Ann Parker, and Dana Stabenow, three tough broads themselves. Kate said her character Thea has made her learn how to shoot a gun, defend herself, go through a police citizen’s academy, and more. Dana said that growing up in Alaska automatically makes a woman tough, and that her mother was one of the first female deck hands on a fish tender. This was followed by a fascinating presentation by scientific illustrator and forensic artist Sue Senden, who described how skull shape and texture can be used to determine the sex, rough age, and race of the victim and how facial reconstructive sculpture is done using tissue depth markers.

In the afternoon, I attended the “What Difference Does Age Make? Senior vs Younger Sleuths” panel, where Radine Trees Nehring elicited laughs by remarking, after Claire Langley-Hawthorne said she found writing love scenes difficult, that “I love all the parts, and especially the research.” At the end, I presented panelist Margaret Grace with her payment for my miniature scene, signed copies of both of my books, A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Then I and a standing room only crowd had the pleasure of watching Zoe Sharp and Dana Stabenow pretend to beat each other up in a Self-Defense Demonstration. Zoe gave us the handy tip that when organizing a bar fight, you should have a designated sniper—someone who stands back while the others pile on, then administers pokes and punches to those on the other side while they’re occupied.

That evening was the Sisters in Crime light supper reception, followed by a live auction of items donated by authors and others to benefit the Omaha Public Library’s children’s books collection. Talented and humorous auctioneer Donna Andrews got everyone to loosen their pocketbook strings as well as their funny bones. Afterward, David Housewright organized a pub crawl for a group that included me, Kaye George, Kate Flora, Michael Mallory, Kent Kruger, and others into the Old Market area.

The Guinness Ale that went down so smoothly Friday night made it hard to look bright-eyed and bushy tailed Saturday morning, but I soldiered on and moderated a panel at 9 am on “The Art of Brevity: Writing Short Stories.” We learned that Kaye George has a “short mind” and that Pat Dennis finishes diets, jobs, men, and short stories all within a three-month time period. When the talk turned to rejections, an audience member shared his worst: “I’m returning these pages. Someone seems to have written all over them.”

Next, I sat in on the “What Would Your Characters Do” panel with Carl Brookins, Donna Andrews and David Walker. Donna said she usually tries to start with a short-term situation that generates a lot of stress and characters enter into a gentile pastime with an extreme passion. David suggested “competitive Buddhism” to audience guffaws. Then came lunch at a Persian restaurant with my fellow panelists on the “Shake Well and See What Happens: The Writer’s Life” panel. We decided the title had to refer to martinis, and brought suitable props, including martini glasses, olives, and cocktail shaker. Gary Bush started the discussion with a demonstration of the proper way to make a dry martini.

After chatting with the booksellers and others in the book room, I snuck in late to a late afternoon writing game session led by Ann Parker and Margaret Grace, with much-appreciated chocolate prizes for opening and closing lines that best mimicked the style of varoious mystery authors. After fortifying ourselves with free drinks from the hotel bar, a well-lubricated group stumbled to the downtown library for a murder mystery dinner. The setting was a twenty-year class reunion that also commemorated the mysterious death of Jean Harlow, and audience members were recruited to play the parts of movie stars from the 1940s. Kate Flora portrayed an alluring Veronica Lake, but David Housewright won a standing ovation for his amazing and gut-splittingly funny portrayal of Peter Lorre.

Sunday morning came too soon, with an interesting and wide-ranging interview of Dana Stabenow by Toastmaster Jan Burke, a fitting end to a wonderful conference. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole gathering, renewed connections with old friends, made lots of new friends, and was so thrilled to find out that two people were fighting over my character name in the silent auction that I offered to name characters after both of them if they each made a donation. I’ll definitely return to Mayhem in the Midlands in the future! And I’ll upload photos soon to my blog, http://bethgroundwater.blogspot.com/. If you comment there or here on my report, the photos, or your own Mayhem experiences, you’ll will be entered into a drawing for an autographed set of both books in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series: A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Good luck!

Many thanks to Beth Groundwater for this very special report.


Beth Groundwater’s first mystery novel, A REAL BASKET CASE, was published in March, 2007 and was nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award. The second in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, was released May 15th. It is set in Breckenridge, CO and opens with a death on the ski slope. As Kirkus Review said, "Groundwater's second leaves the bunny slope behind, offering some genuine black-diamond thrills." Between writing spurts, Beth defends her garden from marauding mule deer and wild rabbits and tries to avoid getting black-and-blue on the black and blue ski slopes of Colorado.
Please visit her website at http://bethgroundwater.com/

Q & A with JOHN HART

I was thrilled when my editor at Library Journal asked me to do a short Q&A with Edgar-award winning author, John Hart, as his latest book, THE LAST CHILD, hits the stands. An abbreviated version of this interview appeared in the March 15, 2009 edition of Library Journal. Here is the interview in full.

In 2007, North Carolina lawyer-turned-novelist John Hart burst upon the literary thriller scene with his acclaimed debut, The King of Lies, which garnered several award nominations, including the Edgar and Anthony Awards. His second book, Down River, won the 2008 Edgar, and now his forthcoming third novel, The Last Child (LJ 3/1/09), is being billed as his best work to date.

BookBitch: The Last Child joins a rich Southern tradition of fine literature and will undoubtedly draw comparisons with Harper Lee's masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird. Your hero is a very smart, rather unusual 13-year-old boy with a powerful story. Why did you choose to use his voice to tell this story, and what were some of the challenges that created?

John Hart: The idea for Johnny Merrimon came from the opening scene of Down River, my last novel. In that scene, the protagonist, Adam Chase, returns home after a long, self-imposed exile. He stops at the river that defines the county’s northern border. While there, he meets a young boy who is there to fish. Writing the scene, I fell in love with the idea of this kid. He was about ten, happy on his old bike and in his blown-out shoes, wearing a fishing knife in a cracked leather scabbard. I never named the boy, but he had what, in my mind, was this perfect childhood. A home and security, the simple pleasures of his small world. In fact, I describe him as, “a dusty boy in a soft yellow world,” and that’s exactly how I saw him. He never reappears in the book, but I thought of this kid as I wrote the rest of Down River, and I found myself asking two questions: 1) what could happen to take such a wonderful life away from a boy like that, and 2) how would he react to the brutality of his changed circumstances. The Last Child takes place in a different county, so I can’t say that it is exactly the same boy, but that’s where the idea of Johnny Merrimon originated: I just loved the idea of this kid.

Writing any kind of thriller with a child as its protagonist presents a huge challenge. Specifically, it was tough building sufficient danger and action around one so young while still making the novel work as a thriller. There were other challenges, too: finding a convincing voice for a traumatized thirteen year old kid; believable dialogue between boys that age; the relationship between parent and child when their world has fallen apart; the way that Johnny was forced to perceive the world; thinking of ways that a powerless kid might seek some kind of control, then making that quest even remotely credible… In the end, however, I could not be happier with how it turned out.


BookBitch: I've read that you gave up working as an attorney when it came down to defending a child molester shortly after the birth of your own child. Here it is several years later and The Last Child centers around a missing child and all that implies. Has this been a difficult process for you? And did that experience contribute to this book?

John Hart: The story you mention is, in fact, true. I’d always aspired to write, and that moment seemed like the perfect occasion to make a choice: carry on with a career I’d never loved or take a real stab at a different life. So, I quit. Honestly, I was so ready to take the time to write, that I might have found some other excuse; but that case seemed like a perfect signal for change.

As for any influence that case may have had on The Last Child, I’m sure it was a factor, but only a small one. A more significant influence came from the news we all see every day, the unbelievable proliferation of crimes against children. I tried to keep the reality of those crimes “off the page” in this book; but I took great satisfaction in writing the scene where one of the young victims manages to shoot her abductor in the face. That was poetry.


BookBitch: Your previous books, the multi-award nominated The King of Lies and the Edgar-award winning Down River were both set in Rowan County, North Carolina, which one can find on a map. The Last Child is set in a similar yet fictitious place, Raven County, NC. Why did you feel it necessary to fictionalize the location this time out?

John Hart: There are dangers inherent in setting novels in real places, especially when it’s your hometown. A few people got upset because they thought they were in the books (they weren’t). Others got upset because they weren’t in the books. In the end, I needed geography that was simply lacking in Rowan County. I also found a sense of sweet freedom when I made the change. Perhaps, I was more concerned about how the people of Rowan felt about my portrayal of that place than I ought to have been. Perhaps, I was censoring myself because of that. Whatever the case, those who wish to see elements of Rowan County in the new book will be able to do so. Rowan County, Raven County … the similarity was purposeful.


BookBitch: Your writing has been compared with some of the greats of the genre, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and James Lee Burke, yet I've read that you haven't read any of them. Your undergraduate degree is in French Literature, is that where your reading interests lie? What are some of your favorite books, and some of your most influential?

John Hart: Entertainment Weekly said that my prose “…was like Raymond Chandler’s, angular and hard.” I thought that sounded great, but I had no idea what they meant. So, yes, it’s true that I am woefully under-read in the genre. I have since read one James Lee Burke novel, and find myself flattered by the comparison. As for the French literature in my background, I think my writing has been impacted by the entirety of the French existentialist movement. Most of my protagonists face some crisis of self-definition where they address their place in the world. How they got there and why? Where to next? It’s fun to wrap that kind of self-discovery in the robes of a thriller.

As for my favorites … Man, there are so many. To Kill a Mockingbird, of course. The Great Gatsby. The Prince of Tides. The Cider House Rules. Gates of Fire. Most things by Michael Chabon. In the genre, I’m a fan of Grisham and Turow, also of Michael Connelly, Dennis LeHane, Lee Child, Jeff Deaver, John Sandford, Charlie Huston and many others.

As for the “influential” question, I would have to say John Grisham had the largest impact - not so much on how I write, but he was the one that made me think I wanted this job.


BookBitch: You seem to use great care in your choice of words, and your writing is often lyrical, something not always found in thrillers or mysteries, yet you are still able to propel your stories forward and keep the pages turning. Do you work from an outline? Do you work at home? What is your writing process like?

John Hart: Authors who outline are probably the smart ones. I grope and hope. That being said, I think that my way is the most fun. Every day is an adventure, an exercise in joy and fear. I do treat this as a job, though. I work from an office downtown and try to set daily page goals. The downside of the grope and hope school of novel writing, however, is that steady production schedules don’t really exist. I deal with a fair number of blind alleys and false starts.

I break my writing day into two parts. In the morning, I let myself run unchecked. This is what “drives the bus” for me – the part of my brain that lets the story form. Then, in the afternoon, I tighten whatever page count I manage to write in the morning. This is the analytical part of the process. At the end of the day, I hope to have a thousand decent words, but that’s a loose target. The process is quasi-mystical in that I am never quite sure how ideas form and combine into a novel that works. Where the book ends up is more or less a surprise. That’s the real beauty of grope and hope.

Copyright © 2009 Cahners Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. Reprinted with permission.

Free eBook!

J.A. Konrath, author of the Jack Daniels series (Whiskey Sour, Fuzzy Navel, etc) has written a horror novel, Afraid, under the pseudonym Jack Kilborn. My daughter read it in one sitting and absolutely loved it. If you want a taste of Kilborn, I'm thrilled to be able to offer you a downloadable eBook.

It’s called SERIAL, a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch. SERIAL is a horror novella. Like a deeply twisted version of an “After School Special,” it is the single most persuasive public service announcement on the hazards of free car rides.

[I believe it was Wanda Sykes who recently said that if two cars pull up and one has a stranger in it and the other has Dick Cheney, she would tell her children to go with the stranger. She obviously hasn't read SERIAL...]

The SERIAL eBook also contains a Q&A with Kilborn and Crouch, author bibliographies, and excerpts from their most recent and forthcoming works: Kilborn’s Afraid and Crouch’s Abandon.

Here's the link:

http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/books_9780446535939.htm

SERIAL is located under "Book Extras" in the bottom right-hand corner. Readers can download it either as a PDF file or there's also an ePub version of the book (the Sony eBook Reader format).

Enjoy!

Guest Blogger: TOM FOLSOM

The Mad Ones, Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld (Weinstein Books) tells the story of Crazy Joe Gallo, a charismatic beatnik gangster who was celebrated in the Bob Dylan ballad “Joey.” Dylan hailed Joey as “King of the Streets.” Like Dylan, Joey lived in Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. After becoming immersed in the counterculture, reading cigarette-burned copies of Camus and Sartre in Village cafes, Joey was inspired to revolt against the Mafia. The stories of his revolution inspired the most infamous scenes in The Godfather—“sleeps with the fishes,” “going to the mattresses”—as the Gallo brothers holed up in a tenement on the Red Hook, Brooklyn waterfront with shotguns and grenades in an all-out street war.

The epitome of gangster chic, Joey modeled himself after B-movie gangsters in film noir classics, Jimmy Cagney and his favorite, Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. The Gallo brothers invited Life magazine into headquarters for a photo shoot and were regularly featured on the covers of the New York City tabloids, dressed nattily in cheap black suits, skinny black ties and dark Raybans, a “gangster chic” look that agnès b. dressed Harvey Keitel accordingly for in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.


Crazy Joe Gallo Takes The Fifth (AP Images)


During the heyday of The Godfather, Crazy Joe befriended actor Jerry Orbach, of Law and Order fame, who played Joey in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. With Jerry in tow, Joey made the rounds of high society before being gunned down midbite at Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. Coinciding with this year’s 40th anniversary of the publication of The Godfather, The Mad Ones: tells the true stories that inspired Puzo's masterpiece. Watch the book trailer (make sure your volume is on) at http://www.tomfolsom.com








Tom Folsom author photo credit (Mark Seliger)

David Rosenfelt & The Tara Foundation

In case you were dying to know where and how Andy Carpenter really lives...Edgar-award nominated author David Rosenfelt shares his home and his heart with dogs he and his wife give a second chance to through their Tara Foundation. David's next book is NEW TRICKS.

MEET THE MEN OF MYSTERY

TWO LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FINALISTS IN SOUTH FLORIDA

Sorry, this event has been cancelled!

Sunday May 3, 4:00 PM

Borders Books and Music
2240 E. Sunrise Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33304
(954) 566-6335

Monday May 4, 7:00 PM

Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore
273 Pineapple Grove Way
Delray Beach, FL 33444
(561) 279-7790

Neil Plakcy and Anthony Bidulka, two of the best practioners of the gay mystery genre, both finalists for the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for best gay men’s mystery, join forces to talk about their books, their handsome, sexy heroes, and the future of the gay mystery.

Anthony Bidulka’s five-book series about Saskatchewan private eye Russell Quant has garnered a Lambda Literary Award, renown among Canadian mysteries, and critical acclaim. SUNDOWNER UBUNTU takes Russell on a professional and personal journey from the Canadian prairies to the plains of Africa, as he searches for a man missing for twenty years—and learns the meaning of ubuntu, a traditional African concept loosely translated as “we’re all in this life together.”

Neil Plakcy is a two-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and his third mystery, MAHU FIRE, won the Hawaii Five-O Award for best police procedural, given by mystery fans at the 2009 Left Coast Crime conference. His mystery series follows the life of Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka, who is dragged out of the closet in the first book, MAHU, now back in print from Alyson Books.

Congratulations, Ron Block!

I'm a little late in offering up my congratulations to my old boss, Ron Block. He moved on from being the Circulation Manager at the Southwest County Regional Library in Palm Beach County, to being the Circulation Services Coordinator for the Jacksonville Public Library. He was nominated for Paraprofessional of the Year and received an Honorable Mention. He is fabulous so I wasn't the least bit surprised. (pictured here with Adriana Trigiani, who was guest speaker at Much Ado About Books in Jacksonville and one of my favorite authors!)

Here's what LJ posted:

Other Paraprofessionals of Note
"In addition to Adams, LJ saluted two other notable entrants nominated for the award...LJ also noted Ron Block, circulation services coordinator, Jacksonville Public Library (JPL), FL, who chairs JPL’s Circulation Review Unit of librarians and support staff. JPL’s user-friendly policy helps make it easier for the homeless living in shelters to get library cards. He is one of 16 trainers who teach in the library’s Destination Leadership program.

The Paraprofessional of the Year Award is sponsored by Brodart Library Supplies & Furnishings, McElhattan, PA, which underwrites the $1500 cash prize and a reception to honor the winner at the American Library Association annual conference in July. The award recognizes the essential role of paraprofessionals in providing excellent library service."

Well deserved, Ron!

And the Pulitzer tor Forgotten Fiction Goes to . . .

From NPR's All Things Considered:

"Unscientific List Of Least-Known Fiction Winners" included:

His Family by Ernest Poole (1918)
Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield (1927)
Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin (1929)
Laughing Boy by Oliver Lafarge (1930)
Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes (1931)
The Store by T.S. Stribling (1933)
Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller (1934)
Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (1935)
Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis (1936)
In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow (1942)
Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin (1944)
Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens (1949)
The Way West by A.B. Guthrie (1950)
The Town by Conrad Richter (1951)
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (1959)
The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor (1962)
Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (1978)

Guest Blogger: LAURIE R. KING

Laurie R. King is a recovering academic, who can give up research any time. Her new novel, The Language of Bees, comes out April 28th. It required a great deal of research, some of which you can read about at www.LaurieRKing.com

It takes a determined imagination to see Aladdin’s Cave in most modern libraries. The libraries of my childhood, sure—a few towns still have their old Carnegie building, dark and dim and ruled by exotic divinities with their fingers at their lips to better shush the worshipper, dusty temples stuffed to the rafters with treasures and impossible for the poor staff to move around in, but ripe with potential for the would-be explorer. If you find one of these, they may even use the old Dewey Decimal system, which was positively designed for the explorer mentality, launching out into deepest, darkest 916 (Africa) with nothing but a flashlight (683) and guide book (967.)

A modern library is another matter: brightly lit, smelling faintly of the espressos served in the foyer, the hum of computers at every corner, the Library of Congress organization stiff on the metal shelves.

However, a novelist is nothing if not determined. After the first shock of the new, after a brief dip of the hat to the lost card catalogues (as rich a ground for eccentric cataloguers as ever Africa was for eccentric Englishmen) the writer grumpily drops her book bag next to the computer, and walks away from civilization as she knows it.

However, all is not lost to a researcher truly determined to conquer new lands and explore unseen lands. Big research libraries, caught between the Scylla of limited space and the Charybdis of unquenchable demand, have carved out for themselves new frontiers, and called them Depositories.

Say I am writing a book on 1920s India (a book I am going to call The Game) and want to illustrate the life of the British officers who, despite youth and lack of training, were handed vast tracts of land and near-absolute power. Say I come across passing reference to a means of permitting these young men to work out their frustrations that doesn’t involve local girls: give them the task of exterminating large and well-armed vermin, a job that involves both enormous exertion and considerable danger. Say I fire up my terminal in the library and ask it, not expecting much, about “pig sticking.” And say it tells me that there is a book of precisely that title, published in precisely the period about which I am writing, waiting patiently for someone to require it once every forty or so years.

And that is the NRLF, the University of California’s Northern Regional Library Facility. There is also a SRLF, since California is a long state, and both call to mind huge underground caverns, temperature controlled, brilliantly lit (unnecessarily so, since it’s all done by machine and machines don’t need to see, but this is my fantasy so it glares under buzzing fluorescents) and tended by retrieval machines, which pluck each odd-sized, frayed, elderly and unloved volume from its respective place and sends it joyously off to be useful to some novelist. Who keeps the volume on her shelves for some months, patting and cooing over it, until the time expires and she returns it to its brightly lit cave, to await the next user, forty years hence.

I have a photograph of the books I borrowed last year from my local university’s McHenry library, a stack four feet high, all of which filled some niche or other in The Language of Bees. The novel is set in August, 1924, and involves a Surrealist artist who comes to my protagonists for help when his wife disappears. The books I borrowed, some from the shelves and many from the NRLF, include the following topics: Surrealist art; Aleister Crowley: London’s Café Royal; Augustus John; Scotland; prehistoric sites in the United Kingdom; Bohemian life; historical Shanghai; Kipling and others on Sussex; bees—many books on bees; and the Georgics by Virgil.

This is a partial list, and does not include what I had on the shelves already concerning the 20s, England, Sussex, bees, and art history.

Incidentally, the very first note I scribbled down for the book I’m working on now, a sequel to The Language of Bees, was:

This book should use as little research as possible.

(Which translates: I can give it up any time.)

Of course, that intent lasted about ten minutes, until I found my character’s aeroplane coming down rather briskly into some trees in the Lake District, and I was back into the Aladdin’s cave of research, plunging into the McHenry library and the University of California’s NRLF for information about the Lake District, and 1924 Amsterdam, and medical practices of the period, and the roots of MI5, and…

Guest Blogger: JANE K. CLELAND

I Love Librarians
by Jane K. Cleland

All of my nieces are librarians. Isn’t that odd? Any family can have a librarian in it... heck... I bet some families have two... but all? Okay... we’re a small family... I only have three nieces... but still... all of them are librarians. Lucky me. Librarians are a remarkable breed of people. They’re curious, knowledgeable, smart, and helpful. No wonder I love librarians.

One of my nieces is a communications expert, researching ways and means of framing and disseminating her clients’ messages. Another is a cognitive expert, assisting scientists in researching issues surrounding thinking and assimilating information. My third niece is an elementary education expert, working with youngins to instill a love of reading and learning. I’m in awe of all three.

I come by my attitude of respect and appreciation honestly; my mother loved librarians, too. When I was a mere slip of a girl she taught me that if you wanted to know something you could always consult a librarian because they either know everything or they know where to find out everything.

When I was in sixth grade, I consulted a librarian as to whether Paul Revere’s horse was a mare. (I needed it as a rhyme in a poem, and being an honest girl, I couldn’t just say it was a mare if it was, in fact, a stallion. Note of interest: She found a contemporary reference stating that Paul Revere’s horse was a mare; I thought you’d want to know.) When I was in eighth grade, a librarian held me enraptured as she discussed the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. (Yes, you read that right. Twenty-one people died a gruesome death, asphyxiated by molasses.)

To this day, I love working with librarians as I work to introduce readers to my protagonist, antiques appraiser, Josie Prescott. As an author, I’m in the enviable position of getting to do just that—a lot. As many of you know, I tour extensively [Jane's tour schedule] as I work to introduce readers to Josie.

I also work with Deborah Hirsch, a principal librarian at the New York Public Library to coordinate a series of monthly programs for the Mid-Manhattan Branch in my role as chair of the Library Committee for the Mystery Writers of America/ New York Chapter. [http://www.mwa-ny.org/library.php#events]


In fact, even when I’m traveling overseas, it’s not uncommon for me find myself in a library, like this one I just visited in Grenada. I love the buildings. I love the books. I love the reverence implicit in the hushed conversations. But mostly, I love the librarians.

www.janecleland.net

WRITING CONTEST

The More Than A Few Good Men website is sponsoring a writing contest - for men only.

Writer Tom Matlack has assembled a stellar group of male writers to contribute essays about important events in their lives—everything from becoming a father, losing a father, losing a job, failing in love and much more—to an anthology that has yet to find a home with a publisher.

More Than a Few Good Men is an anthology of essays about what it means to be a man in America today. The authors, a wide cross section, draw upon their experiences with either childhood, coming of age, work, relationships, fatherhood or death and explore the perspectives they have gained from those moments.

Contributors include such accomplished writers as Mad Men creator Matt Wiener, Memoirs of a Geisha novelist Arthur Golden, and Not That You Asked essayist Steve Almond. An NFL Hall of Famer, a former Sing Sing inmate, a one-time Wall Street wunderkind, and a photojournalist imbedded with U.S. troops in Iraq are among the other contributors.

More Than a Few Good Men will be published in spring 2010. All proceeds from the book will benefit the Good Men Foundation, a charitable organization founded to support men and boys at risk.

Until May 1, they are accepting essays from anyone, anywhere, to be considered for one more slot in the book. People can submit their essay here: http://www.goodmenbook.org/writing-contest.html.

There is a $1,000 prize for the chosen essay which will be included in the book. There are two runners up who will each receive $500 and publication on the website. All money made from sales of the book will go to the Good Men Foundation, which has been established to help at-risk men and boys across America.

Personalized books

I love this idea.

"Penguin Group USA is pleased to announce the availability of nine new titles in our Penguin Personalized program. As part of Penguin 2.0, a suite of digital services developed to offer readers new and innovative ways to interact with Penguin content, Penguin Personalized allows readers to insert personal dedications directly into select Penguin Group adult titles.

In addition to the previously available Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings, the following titles are now ready for you to personalize.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau
The Wonderful World of Oz by L. Frank Baum

For all the details, visit the Penguin 2.0 website.