Novel Writing Online Class with Kit Frazier

Kit Frazier

Self study, online course

starts Oct. 26 – Nov. 30, 2009

$149 WLT members / $209 nonmembers

Reservations extended until Wednesday, October 28th!

The Bookish Brunch

Honoring:

Texas Book Festival Authors

Click on their image and read the author’s bio.

Also honoring the 2009 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award Winners

9 to 10:30 am, Sunday, November 1

At the home of Frances Townsend & Ted Gilman in Austin

$40 WLT members/$50 nonmembers

Proceeds benefit the Writers’ League of Texas

For more information, please visit our Bookish Brunch page.

“Build a Book” Series: Meet Your Publisher and Editor and Marketing Reps and Publicist and …

Once your book is signed, you’ll have a whole team of people working with you. Find out more about the publishing team who will bring your book to the market. Arrive early, seats fill up fast!

Panelists: Publicist, Colleen Devine Ellis, market rep, Gillian Redfearn and author/publisher, Deltina Hay.

For more information, please email us at wlt@writersleague.org or visit our website.

Before the program, join us at Doc’s Motorworks Bar & Grill, 1123 S. Congress (two blocks south of the WLT office) for a very special “Mix and Mingle Happy Hour.”

Itwas Adark and Stor Mynight

by Gerald Warfield

Itwas Adark and Stor Mynight lounged at the edge of the purple pool. Stor raised her crystal glass, delicately, in her pincer claw. “Itwas,” she said, “there may be no gods to bless you, but you bless yourself with this act of kindness and compassion.”

Itwas raised her crystal, too, though not as high, and spread her third pair of legs in a sign of deprecation. “My dear, no one is more deserving than you. The accident that destroyed your eggs last season was tragic in the extreme. The least I can do for so unfortunate a friend is to provide a nest pool.”

“But the silver it must have cost …”

“Nonsense. My barnacle was already here. I only had to have the pool itself carved, and the entrance channels.”

Stor raised her eye stalks and looked out onto the blue ocean. Great waves broke upon the rocks only a few spans from the security fence that surrounded the pool. “These are evil times, when snarks have grown so numerous that a hatchling cannot survive in the open sea.”

“Fate pinches me, too,” said Itwas. “Though I am blessed with a nesting lagoon of my own, I still mourn for the offspring of those less fortunate. So many are lost to the voracious appetites of the snarks.

“You are an inspiration to us all,” said Stor.

Itwas lowered her thorax in a gesture of modesty and contemplativeness. “We have come a long way since the millennium when we ate one another’s eggs.”

Stor rattled the scutes of her carapace in disgust. “Ugh. It is difficult even to think on such a barbaric custom.”

“Indeed,” said Itwas. “It is on the tide of unity and mutual support that we will win back the sea.”

They raised their crystals again and inserted the suck tubes into their mouths.

On the other side of the pool, a raised dais lifted a larger than life-size statue high into the morning sunlight. There, glittering in limestone and mother of pearl, Itwas reared to half her length, her fore claws spread wide, her numerous offspring clustered about her.

“And when will your own eggs come to term,” asked Stor, eyeing Itwas’s swollen abdomen.

“Not until the moon, I’m afraid. Husband Seven did not come into sperm all summer.” She lowered her eyestalks. “I think he was delaying.”

“Ah. Husbands can be so cruel,” said Stor.

“But speaking of Seven, would you like some more?” Itwas said, passing the shell trencher to her guest.

“Why, yes, I would. He is surely the most delicious of all your husbands.”

“Ah, but you never get over your first,” said Itwas, her eye stalks raised to the sky. “His white meat defied all description.”

“Really? I would loved to have known you, then.”

“It was a difficult year, though. Almost half my hatchlings were lost to snarks.”

Stor reflected for a moment. “But, none of my hatchlings have ever survived.” Her mandibles fell; her eyestalks receded, and she crumpled into the posture of desolation.

“You poor dear,” cried Itwas, who scuttled from her net lounge to Stor’s side and stroked her carapace ridge. “But look into the nesting pool now. See your hatchlings and be proud.”

Stor leaned over and gazed into the pool, her mandibles beginning to twitch in ecstasy. Dozens of small creatures paddled about with their flipper-like arms. The water was so full of nutrients that it had turned color. Her children had only to swim with their mouths open to find food. Since their hatching, they had already tripled in size.

“Yes, at last my clutch is safe. I can hardly wait until they are big enough to out swim the cursed snarks. I’ll take each one to a different slip on the bay.”

“A wise decision,”

“It is but the strategy you, yourself have used, and your hatchlings have prospered to dominate the entire bay. You’ll soon be ready to colonize the Daggro Sea.”

“I am grateful for my modest successes”, said Itwas. “But those small triumphs were good for us all. And now, this year we will glory in your success, too.”

“You are so kind hearted, Itwas.”

“Not at all, my friend, but wait, I’ll go and take another slab from Seven. Perhaps your hatchlings could eat some if we pinch the meat into itsy bitsy pieces.”

“Oh, that would be lovely.”

Itwas retreated from the pool into her elaborate barnacle house. Pulling the door closed behind her, she silently threw the bolt, locking the iron door securely from the inside. Clattering with all six legs he climbed the spiral ramp from the living room to the small observatory above, carved from solid rock. She looked down through a seeing crack onto the pool and saw Stor on her reclining net, basking in the sun, her eye stalks laid back in repose. Next to her, the pool fairly frothed with the animated swimming of her hatchlings.

Without taking her eyes off Stor, Itwas grasped the lever next to her and pulled. On the side of the pool nearest the ocean, beneath the water line, doors slid back to reveal the clear, bright waters of the open sea. Itwas’ mandibles spread wide in appreciation as the dark shadows of snarks rushed into the pool.

The Writers’ League of Texas Presents

The Google Book Settlement:

What’s an Author to Do?

Teleconference Call with Media Attorney Steven D. Smit

4 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 2

Free to Writers’ League members / $10 for nonmembers
Register here

Steven D. Smith

If you’re an author who has received an opt-out letter regarding the Google Book Settlement, it’s hard to know what opting out or staying in actually means for you. And with the opt-out deadline of Sept. 4 approaching, authors are scrambling to make a decision.

As a service to our members and other authors, the Writers’ League of Texas is hosting a teleconference call with attorney Steven D. Smit, of Graves, Dougherty, Hearon, & Moody in Austin. Steve  has been monitoring the Google settlement and will give an overview of  the settlement and review the pros and cons of opting out.

NOTE: The conference call is limited to the first 90 registrants; you MUST register here. The dial-in number and pass code will be sent to registrants in an e-mail confirmation.

For more on the Google Settlement, see our previous post, “The Google Settlement: Opt Out or Stay In?”

John Pipkin officially launches his debut novel, Woodsburner, tonight at 7 at BookPeople in Austin. Come on out, Leaguers, and support John!

And in case you missed it, John received a glowing review in the New York Times on Sunday.  My favorite line? “Woodsburner” is, in effect, a wily fictional prequel to “Walden.”

The kudos just keep coming!

Well, that made you look, didn’t it? John Pipkin isn’t just our dear departed Writers’ League Executive Director Emeritus. No, he’s lit a fire under book reviewers with his debut novel, Woodsburner, coming next week from Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

The Washington Post just weighed in with a spectacular review. Kirkus ended its starred review with this little gem: “A superb historical fiction as well as a complex and provocative novel of ideas—Pulitzer Prize material.” And Woodsburner is going to be Amazon’s Best of the Month pick for May. More reviews are here.

John’s official book launch party will be at Book People in Austin at 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 7. We invite his Austin-area WLT friends to come out and support him and grab a copy of this hot little property. He’ll also be traveling around the country this summer, so check out his upcoming events.

Want something to read in a hurry? Check out DailyLit. You can read books and stories by the likes of James Patterson and Edgar Allan Poe — all in short installments. And of course, this being a Web site, you can build a profile and follow other readers, not to mention link into Twitter and get RSS feeds, etc. Oh, yeah, and follow the DailyLit Blog!

Who KNEW reading could be so, well, social?!

Natalie Goldberg Book Signing

Congregation Beth Israel

Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 7 p.m.

Best selling author Natalie Goldberg shares her wisdom on writing and
life in her latest book, Old Friend From Faraway: The Practice of
Writing Memoir.

Goldberg’s ground-breaking book, Writing Down The Bones: Freeing The
Writer Within (1986), cracked open the world of creativity and started
a revolution in the way writing is practiced in America. The book has
sold over one million copies and been translated into fourteen
languages. Since then she has written nine other books, including the
novel Banana Rose.

For more information, call Jennifer Smith, 454-6806.

ResumeRX to the Rescue with Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon

2 pm – 5 pm, Saturdays, April 4 and 18

Writers’ League Office, 611 S. Congress Ave., Ste. 130, Austin

“ResumeRX” is back by popular demand! Khotan Shahbazi-Harmon is expanding “ResumeRX” into an interactive two-part session that will assist anyone writing or revising a resume in search of a new job, including writers and publishing professionals seeking to develop their own platform or pitch their books in the new economy.

Registration is still open! $99 members; $159 nonmebers.

]]> http://writersleagueoftexas.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/the-business-of-writing-2/feed/ 0 writersleagueoftexas