BookExpo America: May 29 through June 1

BookExpo America, formerly known as the American Booksellers Association Convention and Trade Exhibit, is happening this weekend in Los Angeles. It is North America's largest gathering of book trade professionals, and the second largest book fair in the world (second only to The Frankfurt Book Fair). BookExpo America typically attracts between 25,000 and 35,000 people.

Their Mission Statement: BookExpo America combines the largest selection of English language titles on the planet with special industry and author events and unparalleled educational content to create a dynamic environment for networking, sourcing and relationship building.

Please visit the website: http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/

Postcard Writing

One of my writing tips is to carry postcards (you can find them free around town, advertising galleries and such), or index cards, if you're in a pinch. They're informal, they offer limited space (almost unheard of in our age of the infinite blank page of word processing systems), they encourage you to write to a specific audience (though you don't have to mail the card), sometimes the picture serves as a writing prompt, and they're light and, as I said before, often free or inexpensive.

And now there's a cool-looking book and contest related to this idea! (Sadly, I had nothing to do with either.)

Trend Spotlight: Following Hollywood

While perusing USA Today’s list of summer books, I noticed a number of books that are of the genre I will term Sex and the City fiction. These books tell the stories of single, professional women living glamorous lives in New York. The books detail the women’s professional and romantic lives—or at least this is how they are marketed. The books coming out this summer are released at the same time as the Sex and the City movie—which opens this week in theaters. Sex and the City fans have been waiting four years for the return of Samantha, Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda. This audience will be all the more ready to receive a print form of a similar story line via books.

On a grander scale this showcases the parallels between different forms of media. By releasing these similar books this summer, both authors and publishers will benefit from the marketing and hype of the Sex and the City movie. I don’t think it coincidence that on the day of the movie’s premier, Chasing Harry Winston by Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada, will be released. Chasing Harry Winston is summarized by USA Today as a “novel about a trio of best friends in Manhattan.”

Authors can apply this same tactic to their own manuscripts and book release periods by watching for big movies about a year before they are released. If your manuscript matches the theme of upcoming movies, send it to every agent and publisher who specializes in that genre just as the movie buzz is starting to pick up.


Chasing Harry Winston
By Lauren Weisberger
Simon & Schuster
$25.95
May 27, 2008







How to Be Single
By Liz Tuccillo
Atria
$24.95
June 10, 2008







Industry Trend Spotlight by Adriel Gorsuch, Indigo Editing, LLC

Portland Literary Events

Monday, May 26
Adam Leith Gollner will read from The Fruit Hunters
Where: Powell’s City of Books on Burnside, 1005 SW Burnside
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Tuesday, May 27
Armistead Maupin will read from Michael Tolliver Lives
Where: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Tuesday, May 27
DeLaune Michel will read from The Safety of Secrets
Where: Borders-Beaverton, 2605 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://wweek.com/

Wednesday, May 28
Leonard Mlodinow will read from The Drunkard’s Walk
Where: Powell’s City of Books on Burnside, 1005 SW Burnside
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Wednesday, May 28
Phillip Margolin and Steve Martini will read from Executive Privilege
Where: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Thursday, May 29
Ursula Le Guin will read from Lavinia
Where: 23rd Avenue Books, 1015 NW 23rd Avenue
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.23rdavebooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp

Thursday, May 29
Michael Philips will read from The Undercover Philosopher
Where: Powell’s City of Books on Burnside, 1005 SW Burnside
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Don't Sabotage Your Submission

Chris Roerden is a full-time editor with Market Savvy Book Editing, based out of North Carolina. Her new book, Don't Sabotage Your Submission, covers:

* how manuscripts are evaluated

* why 95% are rejected almost immediately

* ways you can beat the odds and make it through the approval process toward becoming published

Visit her Web site for upcoming tour dates with free live workshops!

New Release Spotlight: The Drop Edge of Yonder

The Drop Edge of Yonder
by Rudolph Wurlitzer

The Drop Edge of Yonder is a western in that it is set on the American frontier during the California gold rush. It is not a western in just about every other aspect.

Of course, there’s plenty of senseless violence, thievery, sex, gambling, and drinking to satisfy anyone pining after America’s glorious past, but from the very beginning the novel sets out to do something different—to give us a sense of the underlying worldviews that come with living in a barren, untamed landscape. The epigraph, taken from the Lankavatara Sutra, one of the ancient Buddhist texts, seems just as much a warning as a guide for readers: “Things are not as they appear. Nor are they otherwise.” This is true not only for the events that take place in the novel, but also for the characters as they drift, murder, and philosophize.

The main character, Zebulon, drifts throughout most of the novel with almost no direction. At first this is fine, as the dream-like language and the surrealistic encounters with healers and oracles and second-seers is enough to carry the novel. However, after a significant middle-section, devoted to Zebulon’s travel with a Russian count and his slave/wife, the story seems to meander, as if Wurlitzer had an abundance of scenes floating around in his head and no place to put them.

Apparently The Drop Edge of Yonder is based on Wurlitzer’s unproduced screenplay Zebulon, which makes sense, considering that most chapters are short and composed mostly of either dialogue or action. The descriptive passages in the book are beautiful, providing a sense of place, and of the characters’ perceptions of place and consciousness; the book could benefit from more description, a slower pace, more room to breathe.

That said, The Drop Edge of Yonder is absolutely worth a read. Wurlitzer has gained cult status because he writes as no one else does—philosophically, surrealistically, and violently. It’s like Cormac McCarthy on hallucinogens. In one scene, as Zebulon begins to drift drunkenly into a dream-state during a game of cards, in which all things look familiar and unified, Wurlitzer states, “He was dimly aware that he might be in trouble because winning and losing no longer seemed to matter, as if the results had already been decided.” Wurlitzer presents the frontier as a land of individualistic competition, and yet simultaneously as a place where life is uncontrollable, untamable, and surrendered to fate. The characters are in a constant struggle for control over their own lives; and it always seems just out of reach.

Review by Caleb Murray, Indigo Editing, LLC

ISBN: 9780976389552
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
Pub Date: April 2008
Paperback: $15.00

Portland Literary Events

Monday, May 19
Susan Hubbard will read from The Year of Disappearances
Where: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Tuesday, May 20
Greg Mandel will read from High Hat
Where: Murder by the Book, 3210 SE Hawthorne
When: 6:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Tuesday, May 20
Jeff Gillman will read from The Truth About Organic Gardening
Where: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Wednesday, May 21
James Frey will read from Bright Shiny Morning
& Josh Kilmer-Purcell will read from Candy Everybody Wants
Where: Bagdad Theater, 3702 SE Hawthorne
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: $27.00
For more info: http://www.powells.com/, www.mcmenamins.com/index.php?loc=9&id=176

Wednesday, May 21
Betty Roberts will read from With Grit and By Grace
Where: Annie Blooms Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Wednesday, May 21
Don Malarkey will read from Easy Company Soldier
Where: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Thursday, May 22
Linda Sue Park will read from Keeping Score
Where: Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Thursday, May 22
Jennie Shortridge will read from Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe
Where: Annie Blooms Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.annieblooms.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp

New Release Spotlight: Making it Count

Making it Count: Putting Meaning Back in Business and Relationships
by Bryan Hurlbut

The American dream is to work hard and to have it pay off, to make it count. Author Bryan Hurlbut does his best in Making it Count to help readers achieve this dream, just as he has. Among the many existing books that offer advice on business growth and relationship building, though, this book has little to offer.

A short bio on the back cover reveals that Hurlbut has been a successful business leader in IT consulting for twenty years and has worked with a variety of clients. Unfortunately, though, no introduction or in-depth author biography establishes Hurlbut as an expert on business relationships. While twenty years of business success is certainly an accomplishment, a nonfiction author must be an expert on the topic of the book—through publishing articles, leading seminars, and consulting specifically on the topic. Rather than establishing that base of experience to build trust in readers, though, Hurlbut dives into his first bit of advice: everyone loves to teach. One wonders whether Hurlbut is teaching in this book because he is qualified to or because he loves to.

Many of Hurlbut’s bits of advice are helpful, though. “People do what you inspect, not necessarily what you expect,” he writes in his chapter about management. “When in doubt, listen nine times more than you speak.” While measuring listening against speaking is difficult to quantify, the point is clear: you don’t know everything; shut up and listen.

Partway through the book, Hurlbut establishes a rhythm of introducing the point of the chapter through a personal anecdote, applying it to the reader, and then offering a numbered list of recommended actions or perspectives. Too bad he doesn’t establish that rhythm from the beginning.

Hurlbut and his occasional pearls of wisdom fail to make readers’ time count when compared with competing titles. Self-help authors like Stephen Covey offer timeless tips balanced with anecdotes and a proven history of expertise. If you’re looking for something to count, skip Making it Count and go straight to The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, even if it is a classic.


Review by Ali McCart, Indigo Editing, LLC

ISBN: 978-1-934454-13-8
Publisher: Synergy Books
Pub Date: May 2008
Paperback: $13.95

Portland Literary Events

Monday, May 12
Cathy Lamb will be reading from The Last Time I Was Me.
Where: Powell's Books on Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Monday, May 12
Mark Sarvas will be reading from Harry, Revised
Where: Powell's City of Books on Burnside, 1005 W Burnside
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Tuesday, May 13
Jim Krusoe will read from his new novel, Girl Factory
Where: Mississippi Pizza Pub, 3552 N. Mississippi Ave.
When: 6:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.mississippipizza.com/

Tuesday, May 13
John Gierach will be reading from Fool's Paradise
Where: Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Wednesday, May 14
Matthew Sharpe will be reading from his novel Jamestown
Where: Reading Frenzy, 921 SW Oak St.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.readingfrenzy.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=6f36a0dea5839e152124eb6e74e1e375

Thursday, May 15
Ginger Carlson will be reading from Child of Wonder: Nurturing Creative and Naturally Curious Children
Where: 23rd Avenue Books, 1015 NW 23rd Avenue
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.23rdavenuebooks.com/

Thursday, May 15
John Straley will be reading from The Big Both Ways
Where: Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Friday, May 16
Garth Stein will be reading from The Art of Racing in the Rain
Where: Powells Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd.
When: 7:00 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.powells.com/

Tuesday, May 20
Phillip Margolin will be reading from Executive Privilege
Where: Annie Bloom's Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway
When: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: Free
For more info: http://www.annieblooms.com/

Invitation to attend PodCamp Boston, July 19-20, 2008

How many times have you heard this old saw:

"The best part of a conference is the conversations in the hallway."

What if the conference WAS the hallway?

That's the power of PodCamp Boston, the power of community, the power of conversation. The power of putting smart people from every walk of life together for two days to learn, share, and grow their new media skills. 480 people gathering to share their ideas, lessons learned and earned, cutting edge developments, and stories. From blogging to podcasting to Twitter to virtual worlds and more, whether you're a veteran of new media or just getting started, PodCamp Boston has something for YOU. Set aside July 19-20, 2008 at the Joseph Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

Could one good idea change your world? What about a weekend full of them?

PodCamp Boston promises to help you learn, share, and grow your new media skills. If you've been wondering how to get more involved in new media and social media, if you've thought about starting a blog, podcast, or Twitter presence, PodCamp Boston is for you. If you're a veteran adventurer of new media, come to share and learn from your peers, and make partnerships & friendships! PodCamp Boston offers something for everyone, no matter where you are on your new media journey.

Hear what others have to say about PodCamp Boston:

"I regularly present at 30+ conferences a year, almost all with paid staff and organizers. This conference was in the top 5 best organized out of all of those... Even now, in the weeks after Podcamp, we're all still talking about how great it was." - Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering

"PodCamp Boston was a great experience, something I would recommend to others to join and support and something I look forward to being a part of in the future." - Jeff Pulver, VON

"I had a great time today at Podcamp Boston 2, a new media expo at the Boston Convention Center full of podcasters, bloggers, and other new media folks. There was so much energy in the room - with everyone taking pictures, blogging, podcasting, and twittering - it was reminiscent of SXSW." - Stephanie Rogers, PARTNERS+simons

Space is extremely limited. Register today!

Register today for PodCamp Boston 3! We've reserved the Joseph Martin Conference Center, which has a strict limit of 480 people. To ensure that everyone who wants to attend can, we're asking you to make a $50 commitment to the event, so we know who will be there for sure.

Register now at:http://podcampboston3.eventbrite.com/

I look forward to seeing you in Boston this July 19-20!

Best regards,
Christopher S. PennPodCamp Co-FounderPodCamp Boston Lead Organizerhttp://www.podcampboston.org/http://www.christopherspenn.com/
PodCamp Boston 3 is generously sponsored in part by:YOUhttp://www.mdialog.com/http://www.blueskyfactory.com/

Call for Submissions

May is an open submissions month for the Ink-Filled Page. If you're a writer or an artist, take note:

The Ink-Filled Page is a quarterly literary journal produced by Indigo Editing, LLC. The journal is published online quarterly, and we print an anthology annually. We operate primarily off of donations of time and money. To sponsor an anthology or to get involved, e-mail info@indigoediting.com.

Selected authors and artists earn publication and will receive a complimentary copy of the annual anthology. Authors will also receive professional editing services on the selected story.

E-mail all submissions to inkfilledpage@indigoediting.com with a 100-word bio and "Fiction Submission," "Nonfiction Submission," or "Artwork Submission" in the subject bar. The submissions deadline for the summer 2008 issue is Saturday, May 31.

All work must be original and unpublished. Simultaneous submissions are accepted on the condition that you notify us immediately upon acceptance by another publication. By submitting your work to the Ink-Filled Page, you are offering first online and North American print publication rights. Authors and artists retain all other rights.

For best results, read our publication by downloading the most recent issue and buying the 2007 anthology before you submit.

Literary Submissions

Fiction submissions can be short stories or novel excerpts, and the nonfiction section is open to personal narratives and essays. While all genres are welcome, special interests include travel, multicultural themes, feminism, and magical realism.

Limit submissions to 5,000 words, one submission per candidate. Authors who submit more than one piece will not be considered. All submissions must be formatted in Times New Roman, 12-point font, and double-spaced. Name, contact information, title, and word count should be at the top of the first page.

Artwork Submissions

Artwork submissions are open to all mediums, but pieces must be submitted electronically. Winning pieces are selected based on composition and originality. We are looking for pieces that highlight the human experience—show us the good or the bad, be surreal or real, but make sure that whatever you submit connects us, human to human.

Limit three submissions per candidate. Artists who submit more than three pieces will not be considered. Submit digital artwork at 300 dpi or higher.

Welcome, Caleb!

Indigo Editing welcomes Caleb Murray as our editorial assistant this quarter. Caleb will be reviewing submissions for the Ink-Filled Page, offering editorial insight, and adding to our book reviews.

Caleb was raised in Bozeman, Montana, and attended Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, where he studied creative writing and philosophy. He spent the spring semester of 2007 at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He lives and writes in Portland.

What Caleb doesn't say about himself in the above bio, though, is that he is working on a novel that started as his senior thesis project at Linfield and that he has experience working with the Camas annual literary journal.

Welcome!

Zine Camp Internship Opportunity

Two internship positions available for 2008 zine camp!

The zine camp dates are: July 15th through August 15th from 12-4 on Tusdays and Fridays. The interns will also need to be available for the zine camp reading on August 21st and for the zine symposium August 23rd and 24th.

About the position:
Be an iprc camp counselor! Help with planning and promotion of camp, work with kids, gain experience with independent publishing and participate in a zine reading and zine symposium.

If you are interested, please email A.M. O'Malley at annmarieomalley@gmail.com. Include a resume and three references.

New Release Spotlight: Sharp Teeth

Sharp Teeth by Tony Barlow

Sharp Teeth is a dog story. Those who love the animals will appreciate the tender care with which Toby Barlow describes them:

The sublime form of a dog as she lies
curled up like a comma
…
Or the absolute satisfaction
performed with quiet muscular grace
of a dog roughly going at a good meal.
Or the joyful dance in a dog’s eyes
as she sits alert watching,
waiting for you
to do
that something
she wants you to do.

But this is not a dog story for the purely sentimental. This is also a dark, violent drama, more akin to The Godfather than to James Herriot. Set in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and between, Sharp Teeth follows three packs of werewolves. As humans, they are everything from lawyers to mathematical geniuses, from homeless to addicted to drugs, from abused to simply adrift. Once they change (full moons not required, just an unexplained willingness), they count cards in Vegas, viciously destroy mom-and-pop meth labs, try to thwart rival packs, and plot a bigger power play. Even more innocent encounters, a pack (of dogs or of werewolves?) running across a trail is tinged with foreboding: “[joggers] have just been reminded/that they are merely/warm and scented flesh.”

Above all this, Sharp Teeth is a love story—between Anthony the dogcatcher and a never-named female werewolf, between pack leaders and power, between pack followers and each pack’s sole female, between humanity (even when it comes in dog form) and life. Even the format is writing’s most recognizable constraint for expressing love: the poem.

Suddenly-uninterested readers shouldn’t be—the book reads like a fast-paced novel, as opposed to a poem, though Barlow saves it from being gimmicky by proving time and time again that a poem really is the best way to tell this story. While some lines seem like they could have just as well been combined into one line, as in prose, many others show an added layer of power in poem form. Consider the first quote in this review: the line breaks truly mean something. The book’s epigraph is a line by Robert Frost: “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”

This is a fantastic—both in quality and story—first novel, one that would have been a good read even without the unique format, even without the werewolves. On waiting for what is starting to appear to be bad news, Barlow writes, “Each second now undoes itself, unraveling like a fraying thread” (44). On not being able to share a huge secret with a loved one: “As much as your bones muscles tendons/ache to open up, the truth still lies/curled and buried beneath your tongue” (55). On what the face looks like when death is near: “What was pale before/is now the flesh of a drowned man” (73). Observations like those move a piece of writing beyond even itself, so that the next time readers hear a dog bark, they’ll think not first of werewolves but of one of the bigger subjects Barlow wrote about, such as vulnerability: “We are all china barely mended,/clumsily glued together and waiting/for the hot water and lemon/to seep through our seams.”

Review by Kristin Thiel, Indigo Editing, LLC

ISBN: 978-0-06-143022-0
Publisher: Harper
Pub Date: February 2008
Hardcover: $22.95

Narrative Workshops: Center for the Untold Story

A good writer always works at the impossible. —John Steinbeck

It may seem that way when you’re trying to find just the right way to tell a story. The good news is that making your writing better is possible. Let us help you.

The deadline for registering for the inaugural Dixon Narrative Workshop at the Turnbull Center is THIS Thursday, May 8 at 12:00 p.m.

We hope you’ll join in. Register today by clicking here:

http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/narrative

Where: George S. Turnbull Portland Center, Third Floor, 70 Northwest Couch Street, Portland

When: Saturday, May 8, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Cost: $125, includes lunch and a surprise (the good kind)