We got pretty nervous when Hurricane Rita was taking aim at the Texas coast last week. We’d already turned around and driven back to Maine when Hurricane Katrina hit and threatened the gas supply. We finally got up the nerve to venture out again…
More comments on book returns…
Try challenging fifty mostly unpublished members of a writers guild by giving them three months to write, revise, and submit from one to three 1500 to 2500 word stories, and commission an artist to design and produce an original cover in time to meet a goal of publishing a 250-300 page anthology within ten months. Do that and the book world will look at you like someone who has sniffed too much print head cleaner.
A student in my “Write For Dollars” class asked this question, and I was unsure of the answer. I told her I would “check with the expert.” At a recent garage sale she purchased several letters that had been written between husband and wife during World War II. She wants to use portions of these letters in a creative nonfiction story, but does not want to alter the principal characters’ “real” names. Her question: Is this legal? Is it ethical? Does she have an obligation to consult or discuss her plans with family members of the deceased couple prior to publishing? Would family members of the couple have a right to reclaim these letters once their existence was made public? (They were sold by a son who is estranged from the rest of the family.)
“There is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk,” writes M.F.K. Fisher, one of America’s most beloved food writers. My own belief in this communion didn’t so much evolve as simply hatch, breaking open like a crusty baguette, the year I worked in my first restaurant. When a friend loaned me Elizabeth David’s An Omelet and A Glass of Wine, I was inspired to articulate how good food is an essential part of life.
This Week:
In the past two weeks, my laptop’s hard drive had a meltdown, our main drive here at the home office died and our refrigerator broke.
This article may be reprinted/redistributed freely as long as the entire article and bio are included.
After publishing last week’s article, I received a flood of email from authors. One mentioned that she’d heard bookstore returns were instituted during the depression to help bookstores stay in business. Interestingly, however, the practice never died, despite the end of the depression. I researched this interesting tidbit and this is what I found.
People like to read about places they know. I discovered this to be true when I recently published my first mystery novel, Murder on the Prairie: A North Florida Mystery. The book is being received with an unexpected degree of enthusiasm for the setting, Gainesville, Florida – home of the University of Florida – the nearby Paynes Prairie State Park Preserve, and its Visitors Center in Micanopy. Reader comments and book sales have reflected this enthusiasm.
