Literary light at the end of the pandemic tunnel

No sooner did I see notice that one of the summer’s literary delights in Dallas – the Festival of Books and Ideas – had been cancelled than it popped back up, this time in virtual form. The Dallas Virtual Book Festival excises the best part of the “books” portion of the festival – author readings.

Twenty-two North Texas writers read excerpts from their children’s, middle grade, young adult, and adult books. Readings by children’s and middle grade authors include Netflix sensation Julie Murphy (Dumplin’ and more), to picture book author Jennifer Drez (Goodnight Dallas), Jen Betton, Rosie J. Pova, Kena Sosa, J Tillman, Michael Merschel, Katie Proctor, Melanie Sumrow, and Rebecca Balcárcel.

YA writers include Draegon Grey, Lyn I. Kelly, C. Michael Morrison, and Alex Temblador. Adult books include works of fiction and nonfiction from Carole Fowkes, A’Mera Frieman, Brantley Hargrove, memoirist Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget), and A. Lee Martinez (Constance Verity Saves the World). 

Best of all, there’s no having to mark our festival programs with a limited number of “must-hears” and rush from room to room to catch out favorites when we can listen to all at our convenience.

At this time, I haven’t seen information about how long the virtual book fest will remain online, but it seems safe to say, it will be available until the Dallas library branches are able to reopen safely.

***

image: Mi Minhaz from Pixabay

Although the Dallas Museum of Art is rescheduling the remainder of this season’s Arts & Letters Live programs, it’s also offering some virtual gems. Sorry to be behind on this, but as of today, May 11, tickets are still available for a virtual session with Sue Monk Kidd, discussing The Book of Longings. Tickets are $45 for the public, $42 for DMA members, educators and students. The cost includes the private viewing link, a signed bookplate, and a hardcover copy of the book. See the site for tickets and details.

DMA follows up May 20 with a virtual book club discussion of The Book of Longings, led by bestselling author Kathleen Kent. (Note, Ms. Kidd will not appear at this discussion.) Book club tickets are $10, available at the site.

***

Some Dallas bookstores are planning reopenings in accordance with latest state guidelines. Indie store Interabang Books, doubly hit by last fall’s tornado and the current pandemic, is now open at its new location, 5600 W. Lovers Lane, #142, in Dallas. Although the number of in-store customers is limited to not more than 10 at a time, curbside pickup is still available. See the site for hours and details.

Dallas-based chain HalfPrice Books has also reopened all its North Texas stores. Store capacity will be limited depending on the size of the store. Even in areas where local government orders do not mandate masks, customers are encouraged to do so. Reusable bags are not currently allowed, nor are stores allowed to buy merchandise from customers at this time. Check the site for details.

Used bookstore Lucky Dog Books is experimenting with abbreviated hours for in-store browsing, and still offers home delivery, curbside pickup and books by mail. At this point, it also accepts merchandise from customers through through curbside and home delivery. Check the site for details.

Independent Dallas bookstores Deep Vellum and The Wild Detectives are not currently open, but check their sites for additional information.

Stay safe, everyone, and keep reading!

New Year's countdown of readers’ favs of 2018: day 1

What – 2018 is almost over? No worries – for this final week of the year, I’m rerunning a sample of readers’ (and my) favorite posts, starting with a post first published January 26, 2018.

*** 

There was a full house at Interabang Books this week as Dallas’s newest independent bookstore and the Writer’s League of Texas hosted a panel discussion about community building for writers. And we hadn’t even known there would be cupcakes! (Those arrived courtesy of irrepressible panel member, author and community organizer, Arianne “Tex” Thompson, decorated with the names and logos of local writers’ communities.)

No, we were there because, despite the Hemingwayesque stereotype of writers as antisocial loners – possibly hard drinking ones at that – the local authors on the panel –Thompson, Kathleen Kent, Melissa Lenhardt, and Blake Kimzey – extolled the necessity of connections.

“It is so important for every industry to own its issues,” Thompson said. “For football, it’s brain injury. For ballet dancers, it’s eating disorders. For us it’s –”

“Hemorrhoids,” an audience member shouted.

Well, at least anxiety, Thompson acknowledged, when the laughter had died down. “You writers, there’s something seriously wrong with you!” (More laughter, some slightly self-conscious.) “It’s important that we need a counterbalance to the word hamsters running around in our heads. You need a writing community if you’re going to stay healthy and stay in the game.”

l-r, Lenhardt, Kent, Kimzey

And that, if in more chaste language, was the tone of the discussion moderated by the League’s member services manager, Jordan Smith. 

“Why is it important for writers to be in a community?” Smith asked. “And how do you find a community?”

Kimzey agreed. Now a prolific short story author and founder/director of Writing Workshops Dallas, he confessed to starting his writing career as an alternative to his day job.

“I was nodding off in a cubicle 10 years ago,” the author of “a lot of vignettes,” but no completed stories until he found a creative writing workshop at Brookhaven Community College. 

“It was transforming for me. There I was, getting feedback for the first time.”

He and the other students – mostly college freshmen and sophomores years younger than he was – took a second course together because they formed such strong bonds. (Kimzie would even take the course a third time, and end with nine completed stories.) “Now I have my gang of four, all at different stages. It’s important to have a cohort.”

“I started by going to the DFW Writers Workshop,” Lenhardt said, where she was able to grow her Stillwater mystery series and award-winning historical novels. “They ‘got’ me in a way my family didn’t.”

The stay-at-home mom went to her first workshop meeting and thought, “Oh, my God, nobody asked about my kids.” It wasn’t that workshop members didn’t care about her kids, she said, but that her relationship with them was being built as a comrade, not on the family connections which had previously dominated her life.

Kent, on the other hand, already completed the manuscript that would become her New York Times bestseller, The Heretic’s Daughter, on her own. She has said in other contexts that she kept her writing a secret from almost everyone except her mother, fearing the eyeball rolls if she confessed to it, with another career and well into middle age. “I wish I’d had a group like that.”

Which doesn’t mean it’s ever too late to start, either with writing or finding a community.

“Unlike, for instance, downhill skiing, writing is something you can begin at 50,” she quipped.

Writers find our community – now what to do with it?

Last Friday’s post at this site reprised the discussion about the need for community among writers from a panel of North Texas authors. But panel members didn’t stop at convincing their audience at Interabang Books in Dallas that they needed a community. They offered suggestions on where to find those communities – and what to do after saying “I do” to them.

Internet searches will turn up possibilities such as the DFW Writers Workshop, whose alumni include panelists Melissa Lenhardt and Arianne “Tex” Thompson. And creative writing classes such as those that launched panelist Blake Kimzey’s career in short fiction. 

Lenhardt used community to hone her Stillwater mystery series and award-winning historical fiction series. Panelist Kathleen Kent, author of historical fiction and more recently, the Edgar-nominated crime novel, The Dime, has lent her aura to a number of literary venues. Kimzey even went from taking classes in creative writing to founding his own group of writing classes, Writing Workshops Dallas. 

But leave it to fantasy writer Tex Thompson to bring North Texas’ abundance of literary communities into a single tent. Well, nearly a single tent. At last count, WORD (Writers Organizations ‘Round Dallas) included at least 30 groups, many immortalized on the tray of cupcakes provided for the audience gathered at Interabang.

Lenhardt (l) and Kent

Like Lenhardt, Thompson initially discovered the DFW Writers Workshop, and through it discovered introductions to still more writing groups. 

“People would stand up and make announcements about other groups, and I started to wonder, how many (writing) groups are there?. . . People want that community, it’s scary to drive somewhere in the dark to an unknown organization,” Thompson said.

And to alleviate the “driving in the dark” fear, WORD last spring brought together more than 300 group members to sample what each has to offer. WORDfest – the 2.0 version – repeats this year, Saturday, March 24, on the Tarrant County College Northeast Campus in Hurst, Texas. 

In the meantime, all the discussion of “writing communities” at the Interabang meeting no doubt left some audience members uncertain exactly what those communities have to offer. And what might be expected of them if they join one. 

Will they get to – or have to – read their own writing out loud? (No small concern considering that writing is one of the most introspective of human activities.) Will they be expected to judge other people’s writings? (See above concern again.) And what are the rules, if any, for either of these?

The good news is, as Lenhardt said, the DFW Writers Workshop group she picked, “‘got’ me in a way my family didn’t.” 

Still, how does a newcomer, a writer in a group of writers, “know when to show your work to someone else?” discussion moderator Jordan Smith of the Writer's League of Texas asked.

“I don’t think anyone should show anybody your first draft,” Lenhardt said, “because it’s terrible! Send it as polished as you can. That’s basic courtesy.”

Except, of course, when that writing rule, like many others, needs to be broken. Which she confessed once to doing when hard-pressed by a deadline. Still, it’s an exception she tries to keep as exceptional as possible.

On the other hand, Kimzey noted that he had been forced to show first drafts when he first started attending creative writing classes. With no more than a set of story vignettes in hand, the pressure of completing complete narratives before showing them to readers would have felt overwhelming. “If I hadn’t been sharing my first drafts, I’d never have finished anything.”

Whether first draft or third – or later – panelists still emphasized the value of having more than one set of eyes on their work before attempting publication, or approaching literary agents.

“You’re so close to your work that you don’t even know your own soft spots,” Kimzey said. 

And speaking about feedback, “Do you have any tips for it?” Smith asked.

“When I accept another writer’s manuscript, I owe a responsibility for honesty, offering my advice and being open about it,” said Kent. “(But) more than anything else, I try to be kind. As you become comfortable in your writing, the dime will drop. . .” (pause for laughter) “. . . and something will resonate. I take everything seriously, but you are the final arbiter of your work.”

Thompson also came in on the side of kindness from one writer to another. When talking to another writer one on one, her first rule is to say, “Thank you for much for entrusting me with this.”

A statement soon followed by, “What are you excited about? (Because) if you can’t get excited about their work, you probably shouldn’t be critiquing.”

“How important is genre when showing someone your work?” Smith asked.

“DFWWW is all-genre, so anything goes,” Lenhardt said. “I have found that having a real breadth of experience is a help. Personally, I think the best thing about a feedback partner is that they’re a good writer.”

Once writers have found a community, and received their own help, what can they do to pay that support forward? Smith asked.

“Buy their books,” Kimzey said. “Send them a kind note. Tell them how much a book meant to you. If it’s a peer, read their work and give them honest feedback.”

And don’t underestimate the power of little things, Thompson said. “If you’re (socially) awkward, volunteer to put the chairs up after a meeting. People will love you!” 

What is a writing community and why be part of one?

There was a full house at Interabang Books this week as Dallas’s newest independent bookstore and the Writer’s League of Texas hosted a panel discussion about community building for writers. And we hadn’t even known there would be cupcakes! (Those arrived courtesy of irrepressible panel member, author and community organizer, Arianne “Tex” Thompson, decorated with the names and logos of local writers’ communities.)

No, we were there because, despite the Hemingwayesque stereotype of writers as antisocial loners – possibly hard drinking ones at that – the local authors on the panel –

l-r, Lenhardt, Kent, Kimzey

Thompson, Kathleen Kent, Melissa Lenhardt, and Blake Kimzey – extolled the necessity of connections.

“It is so important for every industry to own its issues,” Thompson said. “For football, it’s brain injury. For ballet dancers, it’s eating disorders. For us it’s –”

“Hemorrhoids,” an audience member shouted.

Well, at least anxiety, Thompson acknowledged, when the laughter had died down. “You writers, there’s something seriously wrong with you!” (More laughter, some slightly self-conscious.) “It’s important that we need a counterbalance to the word hamsters running around in our heads. You need a writing community if you’re going to stay healthy and stay in the game.”

And that, if in more chaste language, was the tone of the discussion, was the tone of the discussion moderated by the League’s member services manager, Jordan Smith. 

“Why is it important for writers to be in a community?” Smith asked. “And how do you find a community?”

Kimzey agreed. Now a prolific short story author and founder/director of Writing Workshops Dallas, he confessed to starting his writing career as an alternative to his day job.

“I was nodding off in a cubicle 10 years ago,” the author of “a lot of vignettes,” but no completed stories until he found a creative writing workshop at Brookhaven Community College. 

“It was transforming for me. There I was, getting feedback for the first time.”

He and the other students – mostly college freshmen and sophomores years younger than he was – took a second course together because they formed such strong bonds. (Kimzie would even take the course a third time, and end with nine completed stories.) “Now I have my gang of four, all at different stages. It’s important to have a cohort.”

“I started by going to the DFW Writers Workshop,” Lenhardt said, where she was able to grow her Stillwater mystery series and award winning historical novels. “They ‘got’ me in a way my family didn’t.”

The stay-at-home mom went to her first workshop meeting and thought, “Oh, my God, nobody asked about my kids.” It wasn’t that workshop members didn’t care about her kids, she said, but that her relationship with them was being built as a comrade, not on the family connections which had previously dominated her life.

Kent, on the other hand, already completed the manuscript that would become her New York Times bestseller, The Heretic’s Daughter, on her own. She has said in other contexts that she kept her writing a secret from almost everyone except her mother, fearing the eyeball rolls if she confessed to it, with another career and well into middle age. “I wish I’d had a group like that.”

Which doesn’t mean it’s ever too late to start, either with writing or finding a community.

“Unlike, for instance, downhill skiing, writing is something you can begin at 50,” she quipped.

(Next time – tune in for suggestions on where to find that community of fellow writers we dream about, and an intriguing offer from the ever-cheerful Tex Thompson.)

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.

***

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. 

A Texan's literary perspective on 2017, part 2

A bestselling Aussie author dropped in on Dallas, while a local writer revived my interest in short stories. Dallas got a new independent bookstore, and an iconic blast from the past. And I learned the literary value of theology, among other lessons from 2017.

6/22/17 Kate Forsyth’s secrets for page-turning suspense

So, the book started off great. And then . . . you as a reader found yourself flipping pages, looking for something to catch your eye until you finally put the book down. Never to pick it up again. And probably never, ever to buy another book by that author.

Kate Forsyth

Now you’re the one writing a book. And from time to time, you glance at that long-neglected volume on your shelf, and a chill runs down your back as you wonder whether readers of your book will grab it happily also, only to put lay it down well before they finish. Never to look at it, or any of your books, again.

What we need here are Australian author Kate Forsyth’s secrets for keeping those pages turning. 

Her tips, offered at a Dallas workshop, included likable (although not perfect!) characters, surprises, multiple forms of suspense and minimizing the gore. “If you’ve seen 17 characters skinned alive, what’s one more? Meh.”

7/11/17 Tall tales told briefly

I confess: after publishing nearly two dozen short stories, I’d given up. Writing workshops were starting to tell me my tales didn’t fit into the few-thousand-word format of a short story. Flash fiction, micro fiction? Forget about it!

Then at a recent meeting of the Dallas Mystery Writers, I heard short story writer Ann Fields speak on the few (but basic) principles, and thought, maybe I’ll find the courage to try the short form again. I’ll think of it as a summer wardrobe for my writing. Fewer pieces, no layering, just the basics. 

“I loved the long form, but I had a day job and found it hard to keep my focus. So, I took a detour through short form and fell in love with that form of writing,” she told her mystery-writing audience.

Her suggestion is, rather than fixating on word-counts, simply to write the story in your heart in the way that seems natural to you – and it. 

8/15/17 VooDoo and Oil: Will Clarke’s homecoming

The night at Interabang Books in Dallas looked like a home coming for author Will Clarke as he read and signed copies of his third novel, The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon to a standing room only crowd. There were a lot of hugs, a lot of well-wishing, more than a little wine flowing.

Will Clarke

Madame Melançon (and Clarke, her creator) had just received a glowing tribute from Dallas Morning News writer Robert Wilonsky. Clarke himself looked no older than he had when his first book, Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles, appeared more than a decade ago. He was all smiles at Interabang, the city’s newest (and chicest) independent book store. 

Clarke’s books are the written equivalent of a dizzying roller coaster. Which way is up, which way is down? How fast are we going? Will we survive? Who knows? All we can do is hang on. 

10/13/17 A whole lot of pages, but is it a book? 

There was standing room only this week at Interabang Books in Dallas, as writers and would be writers packed into hear a panel sponsored by the Writers League of Texas. Four North Texas authors, moderated by the League’s executive director, Becka Oliver, shared their methods for turning the mass of pages they sometimes end up into actual publishable – and published books.

“When you talk to four writers with four different kinds of backgrounds, you know we’re really going to dig in,” Oliver said, as she introduced writers Jeramey Kraatz, author of the Cloak Society and Space Runners novel series; Sanderia Faye (Mourner’s Bench); Mike Merschel (Revenge of the Star Survivors); and memoirist Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget).

In case you don’t already know from reading these posts, where there are four writers in a room, there are will be four different methods of writing and revising that writing. I, and probably the rest of the audience, listened, hoping to find a little of this and a little of that we could put together to find our own recipe for success.

10/17/17 Flesh and blood characters for standout stories

You know how, when you’re thinking about something, everything around you seems to be that same something? For me recently, in writing, that “something” has been character. Everywhere I turn, strange, even bizarre characters have appeared. First, there’s the news, replete with characters to study. Then the writing course offered by NaNoWriMo through the online site Coursera includes a segment on character. Even when I turned to what seemed to be a delightful book about a woman and her pet bulldog, darned if the “character” aspect didn’t appear again. (For both woman and her canine friend!) Finally, half of this fall’s writing workshop sponsored by the Writers Guild of Texas hinged on the aspect of character. 

Creating fictional characters, we as human beings can relate to is such an essential element that the basic formula for story is: character + action = plot. But how to create those characters? 

During the Coursera lessons, novelist/instructor Amy Bloom noted, “Most of us have enough trouble being ourselves, without having to then take on the task of (inventing) other people. But when you’re a writer, that’s the job. You have to enter into their body, into their soul, and see the world as they see it.”

So no wonder that after bestselling romantic suspense author Cindy Dees, who taught the WGT workshop, confessed that character development isn’t her strongest point, she developed an entire course on the subject to help her compensate,

It’s a whole lot of pages – but is it a book?

There was standing room only this week at Interabang Books in Dallas, as writers and would be writers packed into hear a panel sponsored by the Writers League of Texas. Four North Texas authors, moderated by the League’s executive director, Becka Oliver, shared their methods for turning the mass of pages they sometimes end up into actual publishable – and published books.

“When you talk to four writers with four different kinds of backgrounds, you know we’re really going to dig in,” Oliver said, as she introduced writers Jeramey Kraatz, author of the Cloak Society and Space Runners novel series; Sanderia Faye (Mourner’s Bench); Mike Merschel (Revenge of the Star Survivors); and memoirist Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget).

Kraatz & fans

In case you don’t already know from reading these posts, where there are four writers in a room, there are will be four different methods of writing and revising that writing. I, and probably the rest of the audience, listened, hoping to find a little of this and a little of that we could put together to find our own recipe for success.

“I want you to talk about your pre-writing process,” Oliver said, turning to Kraatz. “Do you make an outline? What if you get stuck? How do you go about the plan?”

“I don’t believe in astrology,” Kraatz said, putting on his deadpan face, “but I’m a total Virgo, in that I plan everything.”

When he first started writing novels, he “wrote a huge outline, went off track and couldn’t get back to the plan,” he said. Lucky for him, he already had experience with comic book writing that came to his rescue. 

Since then, he’s had four books published, three in his Cloak Society series of middle grade novels and the first book in his new Space Runners series. That schedule, “where I’m turning out a new book every nine months,” doesn’t permit extensive outlining.

“Now,” he said, “I do very short, conflict-driven outlines,” without trying initially to figure out his books chapter by chapter. 

“I’m an accountant,” Faye said, mentioning her work before she became an award-winning author. “I’m not going on a trip unless I know where I’m going. I outlined on Excel spread sheets. And I didn’t do it just one time, but over and over. . . I need to know the beginning and the end."

Despite that, she knows her method isn’t going to work for all writers. “Get to know yourself, because all your process is going to be based on your personality.”

Hepola (front), Merschel & Faye

“One of the biggest things for me, was giving myself permission to write – and to write poorly,” was Merkel’s take. As a longtime editor at The Dallas Morning News, “I had a lot of experience with editing, a lot of experience in turning bad writing into something not so bad,” which he found he could make use of in editing his own writing – after the words were on the page.

“Now, Sarah,” Oliver said, “no pressure, but you’re speaking as a spokesperson for all nonfiction writers.”

“I’m such a perfectionist,” Hepola said, who believed her once-heavy drinking had been a crutch that helped smooth her frustration with an imperfect world. “As a sober person, I’ve had to develop a tolerance for imperfection.” 

Despite her extensive experience in writing and editing nonfiction, “It took me three years to write Blackout, and two years of that were spent trying to figure out how to do it.”

“So you didn’t outline?” Oliver asked.

“No,” Hepola said. Well, not exactly, that is. “I keep a notebook and write lists of things, (but) I never look at them. I’m trying to capture some ongoing thing in my brain.” 

Once those, ahem, highly imperfect drafts are on paper, how, Oliver asked, do the panelists go about shaping them into publishable books?

“I write a lot of series books,” Kraatz said, “so I avoid a lot of revision in the first book. (Later) I start the writing day by revising what I wrote the day before,” avoid the horror of facing a blank page the first thing in the morning.

“People have an idea that when they’ve got a draft, (the book) is done,” Hepola said. "The revision process is what really makes art.”

Despite – or maybe because of – her own professional experience as an editor, “I actually love being edited when I can get myself out of it. It’s important to realize that everybody’s trying to get you to the best version of yourself. You want the caring feedback of caring readers.”

Merkel agreed. “The most valuable thing I get from newspaper (work) is that writing is a collaborative effort.”

Want more about the writing process? Check out the Writers League of Texas site for more, including online classes and podcasts. “Turning a Mess of Pages into a Book” makes its final appearance next Thursday (October 19) at Book People in Austin, after appearances in Houston and San Antonio as well as this week’s in Dallas. 

Fall literary events in Texas – a hurricane can’t stop ‘em!

The last post about the storm of fall literary events in North Texas only had room for August-September events. But fall’s barely started, and festivals, author tours, and workshops are sprouting like mushrooms after a deluge, starting with:

image: pixabay

September 7: If you loved Finn Murphy’s truck driving memoir, The Long Haul, as much as I did (or if you haven’t been introduced to Murphy’s book), truck over to Dallas’ newest independent bookstore, Interabang Books, 10720 Preston Road (Preston at Royal), at 7 p.m. this Thursday, September 7, to meet him and even buy a signed copy of his book.

September 9-11: It’s almost here – the grand opening of Interabang culminating in a party September 11, from 6-9 p.m. with guest of honor Ann Patchett. Patchett is expected to speak at approximately 7 p.m. September 11. Although she will not be able to personalize books, signed copies of her works will be available for sale.

September 24: I said it before, and I’ll say it again – bestselling author Ken Follett’s appearance to open this season’s Arts & Letters Live of the Dallas Museum of Art is a must-hear. He will speak at 7:30 p.m. in First United Methodist Church of Dallas, 1928 Ross Avenue (across from the DMA). Tickets start at $60 for the public, and include a copy of Follett’s latest book. 

October 4: Art Garfunkel appears at the Authors LIVE!  presentation of Friends of SMU Libraries and Friends of the Highland Park Library, to discuss and sign his book, What is All But Luminous. In Wesley Hall of Highland Park United Methodist Church, 3300 Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, 7 p.m. Unlike most Authors LIVE! events, this one is ticketed, $28, which includes a copy of the book. See the site for details, and preview more of its coming authors.

October 7: The Writers Guild of Texas hosts New York Times bestselling author Cindy Dees as instructor for its fall writing workshop, 9 a.m. – noon in the Richardson, Texas, Civic Center, 411 West Arapaho Road, Richardson. Visit the site for details. Online tickets: $25 for WGT members, $35 for nonmembers. Tickets at the door: $35 for members, $40 for nonmembers at the door, as space is available.

October 7: The Texas Teen Book Festival, 8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m., at St. Edward’s University, 3001 S. Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas. It’s free and so is parking (even for buses). Keynote address by New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu. Costume contest, book signings, dozens of authors! See the site for details and complete author list.

October 10: The Writers League of Texas visits Interabang Books, 10720 Preston Road, Dallas, for a panel discussion: Turn a Mess of Pages into a Book. Something to think about, considering:

November 1-30: November’s month-long run of NaNoWriMo events. (More to come on this topic!)

Vincent Villafranca (file photo)

November 2-5: World Fantasy Convention, Wyndham Riverwalk, 111 East Pecan Street, San Antonio. Yes, THE annual fantasy convention will be in Texas! (Aren't you glad it's not in Houston?) Winner of the design for the WFC Award is Texas sculptor Vincent Villafranca, who some readers may remember from last year's ArmadilloCon in Austin. I mentioned the WFC in an earlier post, then forgot until I saw a post at a literary agency website saying responses may take longer if they happen to be at the WFC. Oops! See the site for details and memberships.

November 4-5: The Texas Book Festival – the BIG ONE! In and around the grounds of the state capitol in Austin. Authors include Dan Rather, Jeffrey Eugenides, Angie Thomas, Claire Messud, and many, many more. See the site for details.

November 10-12: Readers & ‘ritas, Hilton Garden Inn, 705 Central Expressway South, Allen, Texas. is a weekend-long binge of parties with favorite romance authors, panels, and food. Guests of honor are Sherrilyn Kenyon, Cathy Maxwell and Marie Bostwick. See the site for details and pricing, including a weekend pass option which includes a writers workshop November 10, 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.

November 13: Anne Lamott provides the keynote address for the fall convocation of Perkins School of Theology: The Power of the Story, on the SMU campus. Lamott will read and discuss her latest book, Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy, from 7:30 p.m. – 9 p.m. at McFarlin Auditorium on the SMU campus. Books will be available for signing from 9-9:30 p.m. Her appearance is free. See the site for information on the full schedule of convocation events and pricing.

December 1: Texas Book Festival goes to Houston for Reading Rock Stars. Currently, the festival is scheduled to bring six authors to four elementary schools in Houston. See the site for updates as the situation in Houston progresses.

Voodoo and oil: Will Clarke’s Dallas homecoming

Saturday night at Interabang Books in Dallas looked like a home coming for author Will Clarke as he read and signed copies of his third novel, The Neon Palm of Madame Melançon to a standing room only crowd. There were a lot of hugs, a lot of well-wishing, more than a little wine flowing.

Will Clarke

Madame Melançon (and Clarke, her creator) had just received a glowing tribute from Dallas Morning News writer Robert Wilonsky. Clarke himself looked no older than he had when his first book, Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles, appeared more than a decade ago. He was all smiles at Interabang, the city’s newest (and chicest) independent book store. Even the low-hanging thunderclouds outside couldn’t dim the luster of the occasion.

Clarke’s books are the written equivalent of a dizzying roller coaster. Which way is up, which way is down? How fast are we going? Will we survive? Who knows? All we can do is hang on for the ride.

His talk was the verbal equivalent of that roller coaster, as he treated the audience to reading, to slide projections, to a discussion of a book that includes the darkly comic philosophy of Kurt Vonnegut.  (A character in The Neon Palm channels Vonnegut, and is even a former clarinet player like Vonnegut.) Then there’s a British Petroleum-like oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and of course, the city of New Orleans. And a character who’s just looking for his mom, the Madame Melançon of the title, “a crime boss of sorts,” who’s gone missing.

Inspired by Vonnegut’s late-life essays about the future, Clarke launched into that topic.

“How this book got started was as a TV show,” he told his audience. “I used to go out to LA and sell all these really bad treatments. In 2010, there was the BP spill. When you watch what happened in the Gulf, you see the future.”

Not that he sees it as impenetrably dark. “I’m an eternal optimist,” he said.

But why oil spills? audience members asked. Why New Orleans? To answer the first, he noted that his interest in oil stems from his father’s work as a petroleum geologist, his interest in New Orleans because he’s from Louisiana and after all, why not New Orleans, with its legacy of corruption and death, beauty, music and magic.

As to why put all this in a story instead of, say, journalism?

“Our operating system is actually stories,” he said. “Think about the narratives you’re telling and the narratives you’re exposing yourself to. (They) can create a road to follow.”

I first heard Clarke speak at the Dallas Writer’s Garret, when it was housed in an upstairs room at the old Paperbacks Plus store in East Dallas. He was the hot young Dallas writer who first two self-published novels, Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles and The Worthy, had been picked up by a major publishing company. Clarke read from his second novel, The Worthy. That must have been about 2007, after the novels had just been published on his own Middle Finger Press. Clarke appeared to be making notes to himself as he read. And although we would-be writers in the room hoped the press might be available to publish our books as well, it turned out at the time to be dedicated solely to Clarke’s work, and would no longer be needed, as his books had just been picked up by publisher Simon & Schuster. (Clarke has since revived Middle Finger to publish The Neon Palm.)

The local press loved him, Rolling Stone gave him favorable reviews, there were Hollywood movie options. There seemed no way to go except up. Then came 2008, with its meltdown of all things that needed financial backing.

I heard nothing more about Clarke until about three years ago, when I met a woman at a book review discussion in Klyde Warren Park. Her last name didn’t register with me until the Dallas Morning News editor we had gathered to hear mentioned that she was Will Clarke’s wife.

The Will Clarke? Yes, she said. They were back in Dallas, and Will was writing. And he has.

Want more Will Clarke? He’ll be appearing at another independent bookstore, The Wild Detectives, 314 W. Eighth Avenue, Dallas, at 7:30 p.m. this Thursday, August 17, as well.

And for something different tonight, check out the 48 Hour Film project, starting at 7 p.m. tonight (August 15), at the Angelika Film Center, 5321 E. Mockingbird Lane.  It’s a series of short (really short – 4-6 minutes!) films from 10 indie film companies, all written and filmed over a single weekend (which explains the 48 hours part). Disclaimer: Frank St. Claire, a friend from the Dallas chapter of Mystery Writers of America, has a hound in this hunt, and gave me the info when we met again at Clarke’s reading.