Kristy’s Magical Discovery

Oh no! Predators and Editors is being sued! They’re a long-time online resource for writers navigating the murky waters of the publishing business.
On a completely separate note, I’m leaving the Writers’ League for new adventures. Wish me luck!

The Craft of Writing

Kathleen Allen-Weber

Ann McCutchan

Choosing the Writing Life: Art and Practice with Kathleen Allen-Weber & Ann McCutchan

Saturday, September 12, 10a.m. – 5p.m.

Whether you are thinking about becoming a writer or living the writer’s life but desperate for a booster shot, this six-hour intensive workshop offers the ideas, tools and inspiration for turning desire into flow, and flow into finished manuscripts. Team-taught by essayist, journalist and three-book author Ann McCutchan, a professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas, and licensed therapist and writer Kathleen Allen-Weber, Ph.D., “Choosing the Writing Life” addresses the three critical components of the writer’s way: awareness, commitment, and practice.

Topics include:

• developing self-knowledge
• building technique
• seizing ripe opportunities

Don’t miss out on this workshop. To register for, click here!

Summer Writing Retreat Submission: Gerald Warfield

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

Summer Writing Retreat Submission: James Bernsen

Overlooking the Sull Ross Campus in Alpine, TX

James Aalan Bernsen attended the “Something Novel” class at the 2009 Summer Writing Retreat in Alpine. He is working on a novel in between his work as a public relations consultant. A veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, James has a blog on his deployment at www.aalan94.blogspot.com

Bottlecap Alley

by James Aalan Bernsen

Andy Mitchell was chronically out of touch with his universe. It was a strange state to be in, but it seemed his lot in life. He missed the universe and it passed by him unseen. It probably happened somewhere after he turned off onto a back road near Navasota, Texas.

Being chronically out of touch with your universe creates some interesting, if not problematic, effects on driving. Road signs, for example, vanish in the blur that is the outside. Towns too, disappear. All the people and all the problems of the world cease to be when you’re out there, alone and free, driving down a winding country road – narrow and pale, the color of faded jeans.

But some forces in the universe transcend all dimensions, explode through all existent reality, and cut like knives into the heart of our being, forcing themselves ungraciously onto our troubled souls. Forces like time, physics and the sleek, black Ford of a Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper, like the one who had just pulled out behind Andy.

But let us go back before all that, to the fleeting moment in the life of Andy Mitchell when he could look deep inside the well that is his soul and still, with

Summer Writing Retreat Submission: John Doherty

Koen's Class at the Summer Writing Retreat

John Doherty has been writing fiction off and on since he was a kid (lately more “off” than “on,” unfortunately). John attended Karleen Koen’s Something Novel workshop at the 2009 Summer Writing Retreat in Alpine. This character sketch is based on a rather curmudgeonly fellow John spotted while having dinner one evening at the Gulf Station Café in Alpine. John lives in Austin with his wife and two young children. He can be reached by email at dohertyjt@me.com or through twitter @jtdoherty.

Character Sketch-Doherty

by John Doherty

In 1953, when Vernon Hicks was 11 years old, he’d been out a bird hunt in southern Kansas with his daddy and younger brother, Will.  All of seven years old, it was Will’s first hunt and his daddy intended to make sure the boy knew how to properly carry and fire a shotgun.

On the second day of the hunt and with dusk quickly approaching, Vernon caught site of a mess of birds lighting in the trees on the far side of the tank. Vernon raised his shotgun and let go with a blast of buckshot toward the top of the tree line.  This did nothing more than send the birds flying across the tank, shotguns flinging into the air to try and get ahead of them.  Unskilled as he was, and in the excitement of potentially getting the first dove of his young life, Will swung his shotgun rapidly to the left and fired.  The shotgun blast never made it more than a few feet, hitting Will’s daddy in the neck and killing him instantly.

Will and Vernon had stayed there near that tank with their daddy, sobbing over his dead body for hours, their clothes turning from shades of olive and beige to blackish crimson.  Vernon couldn’t bring himself to say anything at all to his younger brother, his heart

Who Is That Guest Blogger?

Well, well, well! The Writers’ League’s new administrative assistant, Sara Ortiz, is a guest blogger at the Austin360.com “Out & About” blog!

She makes an excellent point about the demise of print as a medium, sigh, inspired by John Freeman’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

Check it out!

Google Settlement Teleconference

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?”

The Google Settlement: Opt Out or Stay In?

We’re just as puzzled by authors as to what the Google Book Settlement really means for them and whether they should or should not opt out of the settlement. Although the Writers’ League of Texas cannot advise our members one way or another, we can provide some resources to help authors make an informed decision.

O. Henry Museum inaugural Short Story Master Class

Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Love Stories in This Town, will teach the inaugural Short Story Master Class at the O. Henry Museum, in Austin, Saturday, October 3rd and Saturday, October 17th. Students will leave the two-part class with a finished story that will be judged by a Texas Book Festival author for the chance to be acknowledged at the festival and published on the O. Henry Museum website. More information can be found by going here: http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/ohenry/programs.htm.

Goodbye to a Gentleman of Texas Letters

Elmer Kelton, one of Texas’ most prolific and beloved authors, passed away on Saturday. Here’s a link to the story in the San Angelo Standard-Times.

He was the author of more than 40 books, including The Time it Never Rained, The Wolf and the Buffalo, The Day the Cowboys Quit, and The Good Old Boys, which became a TV movie directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones. Kelton was named the number-one Western writer of all time by the Western Writers of America and won seven WWA Spur Awards. The Texas Book Festival honored Mr. Kelton in 2003 with the Bookend Award.

The family requests that donations be made to the giver’s favorite charity or the Tom Green County Library’s Elmer Kelton statue fund through the San Angelo Area Foundation at 2201 Sherwood Way, Suite 205, San Angelo, TX 76901-3081.

Update: Here’s a great tribute on The New Yorker’s “Book Bench” blog.