The clock is ticking on these literary events!

Tick, tick, tick. . . Some wonderful literary events are at hand, but like Cinderella’s carriage, they have a limited time span.

image: pixabay

Events like today’s literary deal for readers in my own part of North Texas: four local authors gathered to discuss a subject dear to my heart, “Building Your Writing Community: How to Find Writing Groups & Support Other Writers.”

Panelists include Kathleen Kent, whose latest novel, The Dime, is a nominee for Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar award; Blake Kimzey, prolific short fiction author and founder/director of Writing Workshops Dallas; Melissa Lenhardt, author of both the Jack McBride mysteries and historical fiction; and Arianne “Tex” Thompson, fantasy writer, speaker, and organizer.

The foursome joins the Writers’ League of Texas at Interabang Books, 10720 Preston Road, Suite 1009B (in the shopping center at the corner of Preston and Royal), in Dallas from 7-9 p.m. tonight. Free. See the Interabang site for details.

And segue from that panel to the discussion tomorrow (Wednesday, January 24) on “The State of the Literary Arts” at 7:30 p.m. in another independent Dallas bookstore, The Wild Detectives, 314 W. Eighth Street, Dallas, in the Bishop Arts District. The forum on opportunities and barriers to success as a writer, publisher, bookstore owner and editors, is part of a citywide effort to develop a Dallas cultural plan.

As reported by Dallas Morning News editor (and fiction author) Michael Merschel, information gathered at the meeting will affect decisions about the arts in Dallas for the next decade or more. See the Dallas Cultural Plan site for a complete list of these arts-related events.

Speaking of literary communities, WORDfest, that smorgasbord of writing groups in and around Dallas returns in a 2.0 version March 24 at the NSTU Building on Tarrant County Community College’s Northeast Campus, 838 West Harwood Road, in Hurst, from 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.  Register for free tickets at WORDfest.

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And for those of us who want not only to talk but to write, here are some contests to start getting  those literary muscles flexed: 

Author DL Hammons’ WRiTE CLUB returns for 2018. With a panel of slushpile readers in place, start revving your engines for the popular readers’ choice contest. Will there be prizes? Probably. Will there be excitement? Definitely! As writers compete to wow readers with their best 500 words. Hammons promises the official announcement of wheres, hows, and wherebys February 12 at his site. 

Finally (for now), here’s another contest with a limited time offer, the Bumblebee Flash Fiction Contest sponsored by Duotrope's Digest, that compendium of publication sites for all things literary. Duotrope’s sponsorship means a gift certificate to its site ($50 value) for first place winners, and promotion of the contest for the publication.

The Bumblebee contest is a project of Pulp Literature, which adds its own sweetener of the chance to win $300 and publication in the journal. Entry fee is $15, which also buys a one-year digital subscription. Or add another $20 to receive an editorial critique of your story. 

The prompt: “The bumblebee looks soft and cuddly but hides a venomous sting. Entice with your inviting prose that serves up a pointed ending,” the editors say. And yes, keep it no longer than 750 words! Editors are seeking stories that are both fun and literary, “with emphasis on the fun!” But hurry – the deadline is February 15, and entries are limited to the first 300.

See Pulp Literature’s site for submission details. 

Wordcraft – Independent bookstores in Dallas, a new edition

Clicks on my December 2, 2013, post “Independent bookstores in Dallas,” led me to realize the list needed some serious updating. In a world of big, big, big, sometimes small is best, especially when it’s live and local and within Dallas city limits.

First, the best news: the arrival of The Wild Detectives, brainchild of Spanish civil engineers Javier Garcia del Moral and Paco Vique. In Dallas for a job, they decided to stay and open a space based on their love of books, music, and yes, food and drink. The result was The Wild Detectives, housed in a bright orange bungalow at 314 W. Eighth Avenue in Oak Cliff, Dallas.

Open from 2 p.m. to midnight daily, the store shelves about 1,500 books in English and Spanish, included translated works from authors around the world – and local authors.

And since what is reading without a cup of coffee, a bite to eat, a beer or a glass of wine, The Wild Detectives serves drinks and light snacks for in-house enjoyment. It also hosts readings, panel discussions, music, and children’s storytellings. Check here for upcoming events, including a reading tonight (April 19) by Nick Scott and Noa Gavin, authors of Practical Applications for Multiverse Theory. (Your high school science teacher might not approve.)

Other indie bookstores still open for our reading enjoyment in Dallas include:

Keith’s Comics, 5400 E. Mockingbird Lane, Suite 120, in a shopping mall across from Mockingbird Station, on the courthouse square in Denton, and at select other North Texas location. It offers comic books, books about comic books, and comics-related toys and gadgets.

Lucky Dog Books, with locations in the Oak Cliff (911 W. Jefferson) and Lochwood (10801 Garland Road) neighborhoods of Dallas, as well as its Paperbacks Plus affiliate at 108 E. Davis Street in Mesquite. Although Lucky Dog’s major focus is on used books and music, it hosts a number of community events, including tomorrow’s Wednesday night open mic storytelling at its Oak Cliff branch.

And then there’s Half Price Books. Yes, this is a chain. Yes, it has stores outside Texas. But at least in the store closest to me, at 5803 E. Northwest Highway in Dallas, it hosts a stream of community events as well as signings by new, local and offbeat authors, including an appearance this Saturday, April 23, by actress/author Amber Tamblyn.

Both Half Price Books and The Wild Detectives feature food as well as books, knowing how much reading and eating go together. Lucky Dog Books also offers limited beverage service and is exploring a possible café opening. Sad to say, however, food and books were not enough to save Chapter Two, the chic lifestyle-oriented bookstore in Highland Park Village which I reported in the 2013 post. Despite its affiliation with an adjacent café, it closed within the next year. Its site is now occupied by a grocery store.

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So many literary events this coming weekend, I wish I could clone myself. Along with Earth Day, The Wild Detectives celebrates World Book Day this Saturday, April 23, 8:30 a.m. – 6 p.m. and offers children’s storytelling, “Kids in the Cliff – A Bad Case of Stripes,” from 9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. the same day.

The North Texas Teen Book Festival is also April 23 in the Irving Convention Center, 500 W. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving (near the Irving DART station). Panels start at 8:15 a.m. – 3 p.m. Check the books for sale (from Half Price Books) and budget accordingly!

And don't forget the DFW Writers Conference April 23-24, with additional workshops Friday, April 22. Or the North Texas Book Reviewers Preview, also on April 23.

Wordcraft – What's the state of book culture in Dallas?

It’s the best of times for books in Dallas, agreed panelists at the recent reunion for the Dallas Noir anthology. And the worst of times. But then, it always is.

Dallas Noir is the brain child of local literary agent David Hale Smith, published appropriately shortly before Halloween in 2013 as part of Akashic Books’ series of noir anthologies based on cities around the world. Smith solicited short stories from 16 North Texas authors from a variety of literary backgrounds. Some of them were people whose names have appeared in this blog before: Ben Fountain, Daniel J. Hale, Clay Reynolds, Kathleen Kent, David Haynes, Harry Hunsicker, Suzanne Frank and more.

And then there was Smith’s former English teacher from Episcopal School of Dallas, Fran Hillyer. (I wonder: did Smith dare correct his former teacher’s word usage? Her grammar? Amazingly, they remain friends. Fellow contributor and noir novelist Hunsicker also says he was one of Hillyer’s students, but she disclaims any remembrance – or perhaps that should be, responsibility – for him.)

Smith wrangled nine of his contributors – Fountain, Frank, Hale, Hillyer, Hunsicker and Kent, as well as Catherine Cuellar and Merritt Tierce – back together last Saturday night for a discussion and book signing at what The Wild Detectives bookstore in the Oak Cliff neighborhood billed as Oak Cliff Wild Literary Festival #1. (Cuellar is the executive director of the Dallas Arts District. Tierce’s Dallas Noir contribution was a chapter from what would become her highly-regarded debut novel, Love Me Back.)

So, is there good news or bad news for books, book lovers and writers of books in Dallas?

The good news includes The Wild Detectives, the brain child of Spanish engineers and longtime friends Paco Vique and Javier García del Moral. The pair turned a rundown bungalow on Oak Cliff’s Eighth Street into a bookstore, cum coffee and wine bar, cum event center last year. The Wild Detectives is currently Dallas’ only independent bookstore specializing in current books, and is among those indies nationwide reporting sales for inclusion in The New York Times bestseller lists.

“First I’d like to say thank you to The Wild Detectives,” said Fountain, author of one of those NYT bestsellers, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (whose movie version by Ang Lee is scheduled for release Veterans Day 2016). “Living in Dallas is like living in the belly of the beast. It’s a hard culture for a writer. . . where people will pay $60,000 for a car but God forbid we should pay full retail for a book, but it’s also a very fertile climate for a writer.”

“I want to honor the groups like Wordspace and the Writer’s Garret that have been fighting the good fight for years,” Cuellar said. It’s such organization, she said, that make the “organic connections between naturally-occurring communities” such as the emerging Bishop Arts district in Oak Cliff near The Wild Detectives' location.

But really, what chance do most writers in Dallas have of getting the kind of attention, for instance, that Fountain has. Or that Boudrant has garnered. (Matt Boudrant claims to have caught Hale’s eye for inclusion in Dallas Noir when his novel The Wettest County in the World became the basis for the movie Lawless.

“You’ve got to write the best possible story,” Boudrant said. “The literary world is still operating in New York City, but once you break out, the attention is really out of your hands.”

Hale agreed. “If Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse books that inspired the series True Blood) could do what she did from Magnolia, Arkansas, you can do anything you want in Dallas.”

“You can’t try and follow the market if you’re going to be authentic,” Fountain said. “Do the genuine thing.”