This week’s demand from one of my publishers that I do final author proofs on a full-length manuscript in less than 48 hours BEFORE any proofreaders touched it made me more than a little cranky. Then I heard talk of another Alaskan potentially becoming an author. Normally that would lift my spirits, but instead it made me crankier. Yes, supposedly Levi Johnston is shopping a book proposal. That’s the Levi Johnston whose claim to fame is fathering a child, unwed, at age eighteen, a child whose grandmother happens to be Alaska’s ambitious governor. Please. If some publisher pays big bucks in this economy to thrust this project on the reading public, you may just have to take me out back and put an end to my misery.
Fortunately, there’s some uplifting news this week. Teresa Sundmark wrote to remind us that yet another Homer author is making a big splash. Miranda Weiss’s memoir Tide, Feather, Snow comes out next week. Ketchikan librarian Charlotte Glover spotted the ARCs a few month ago at ALA. Now we’ll all get to have a look.
Another fun event: tonight’s Wrangell Mountain Center Spring Party and Fundraiser, billed as “The Lone, Un-Annual, Unique and Eminently Worthwhile.” Promised are beer by Moose’s Tooth, catering by Everyday Gourmet, live music by Sticky Wicket, wine, a silent auction, a slide show on Wrangell-St. Elias and the WMC, activities for kids, good folks, good times, and a good cause. The event begins at 6:30 pm, Friday, April 24th at 11101 Magnolia Street, Anchorage, residence of Walt and Maria Shell. Admission is a paltry $10 per adult, and kids are free. For more information, call Jeremy Pataky at 244-7717 or write info@wrangells.org. The Wrangell Mountains Center is a private, non-profit institute dedicated to environmental education, research, and the arts in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Summer programs include accredited college-level field courses, arts programs for children and adults, educator workshops, residencies for visiting artists and writers, natural science short-courses, Elderhostels, writing workshops, support services for research scientists, and the popular Kennicott Summer Arts and Lectures Series.
Then there’s all the good work being done to promote writing and literacy by the folks at Alaska Sisters in Crime (AKSinC). They’re looking for help coordinating and planning a Columbus Day weekend retreat in Seward this fall, a two or three gathering of readers and crime fiction fans, publishers, criminal justice personnel, librarians, and more. Depending on funding, they hope to publish a small drawer-book of short mysteries written at this retreat for hotels to have in guest rooms.
Also in the works at AKSinC is an eMentorship program, with several published authors signed up to mentor students from schools around Alaska, and the anthology A Stranger Comes to Town: Mystery Writers Explore Alaska making its way to print. And through the Alaska Reads program, Anchorage author Halene Peterson Dahlstrom will travel to the Bering Straits School District the week of May 4. Alaska Sisters in Crime has purchased copies of her Rinnie of Alaska mystery series books for the participating school’s students and libraries.
Also from AKSinC comes word that Vicki Delany’s newest novel, Gold Digger: A Klondike Mystery, has just been released by Canada’s mystery publisher, Rendezvous Crime. The book is set in Dawson, Yukon, in 1898, during the Klondike Gold Rush, and is the first in a new series.
Speaking of the gold rush, the Anchorage Museum is producing two world premiere gold-rush era plays, one by Tom Moran and one by Joan Kane, to accompany the summer exhibit Pay Dirt! Alaska’s Golden Landscapes. Both one-act plays are directed by Ron Holmstrom. Performances will be May 30 through July 30. Auditions for five-day-a-week paid acting roles are at 6 p.m. Friday, April 24 (tonight!) and 1 p.m. Saturday, April 25 at the Anchorage Museum, 121 W. Seventh Ave. Be prepared to read from a script.
Then there’s author Arne Bue , who has been busy taking online classes to beef up his website. He’d really like your feedback. His goal, he says, is to make it at least half as good as Dana Stabenow’s.
On the note of authors helping authors, via agent Nathan Bransford’s blog comes word of an article by bestselling author David Hewson exploring the “possibility of an author self-publishing collective loosely based on the old actor-led movie studio United Artists.” Interesting concept.
There you have it. I feel better already.
A last-minute P.S. from Andromeda : We’ve announced this Saturday screenwriting workshop several times, but now we have a more specific location. Here are the details: Sponsored by the Alaska Film Office and Alaska Pacific University, a Screenwriting Workshop for Alaskan writers wishing to learn industry format and standards for original works or adaptations will be held on April 25th, from 2:00 to 5:00 PM on the APU Campus in the Carr-Gottstein Building, Room 102. Veteran screenwriter Dave Hunsaker will be the workshop leader. No fee. For further information, please call 269-8491.
Great news about Homer’s Miranda Weiss, about whom we’ve been hearing whispers all year. Good news: she is going to send us a few guestposts this month, and also, she’s coming to Title Wave in May.
If Levi Johnston’s book comes out before mine is done, I will just die.
Good Alaska writers, take heart ~ those who would read Levi Johnston’s book would never read a well-written story about something that really matters. They are not your audience. That is not your publisher.
Well said, Corinne. With all the silliness, it’s easy to forget the simple truth.
The only solace I would be able to find in Levi’s potential book sale, would be (if he actually wrote it) that his sentences would be closer to “complete” than Palin’s (if she actually writes it — though I have NO doubt she’ll land some ridiculous clear and transparent multi-million dollar deal — at which point I will shred my writings, bury myself in them, and strike a match).
Sadly, the Sarah book deal is likely a given. But wouldn’t it be great revenge to compile a sort of anthology of Sarah-isms, as a ironic tribute to those who care about logic and language? And put the proceeds toward a fund for a writer’s center or retreat?
Deb, what a great idea for a literary fundraiser! A book of funny quotes, or how about a calendar (wall or desk)? I wonder if it’s hard to get public-use photos. This would be so much fun, all the more if it were for a good cause.
…and can we call the project “Blink?”
Sweet idea, Deb! (And great follow-up Andromeda!) Perhaps one of those tear away count-down calenders “Blinks” to 2012…
Blink is a great title, but taken by Malcolm Gladwell’s wildly popular book (which I have yet to read). But Blinks would work. You betcha.
Not sure about the public domain photos…might have to get a photographer on board, one who’d trade a week at our retreat center for some public service shots.