I just happened to have a 70,000 word manuscript haunting my every free moment. So I entered a novel competition thing, kind of an American Idol for authors at Gather.com as mentioned in Write Now: American Idol for Authors. (I blush.) When you need to revise, you can either clean the toilet or splash your literary innards online. The toilet already sparkles. So. Go see my first chapter. You can read other manuscripts. Vote for me. Or not.
Warning: they messed up my formatting. I have little vignettes within the chapter with titles, but the titles are not in bold (as they should be); and my numbered list appears sans numbers. Oh well. The whole manuscript is still very in-the-rough. Now the world can see it.
You can read the submission by clicking on the above link. If you want to rate my submission, you have to join Gather.com (free and easy).
UPDATE: The link to my chapter is dead. The contest posts each entry for two weeks of voting and my two weeks have passed!
Monday, February 05, 2007
Read Some of My Stuff at Gather.com
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Dave Eggers in South Bend for Notre Dame Literary Festival
Dave Eggers, author of the best selling memoir "Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," will be in town for Notre Dame's literary festival. He is scheduled to speak on Thursday, February 8th, 8 pm in Room 101, DeBartolo Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
While his memoir was overhyped for me, his other literary and social ventures have earned him my respect and admiration. (He founded McSweeney's. Check out the link in my sidebar.) His newest book, "What is the What," is fiction that tells the all-too-true story of one of Sudan's Lost Boys. (See review below.)
This is well worth risking your extremities on a cold February night!
Poet Lolita Hernandez, 10:30 am Monday in room 210, McKenna Hall and 8 pm Monday in LaFortune Student Center ballroom
Palestinian poet and playwright Nathalie Handal, 7pm Monday in LaFortune ballroom
Poet Hal Sirowitz, 8 pm Tuesday in the Oak Room, South Dining Hall
Essayist and humorist David Rakoff, 8 pm Wednesday in LaFortune ballroom
Freelance writer Anne Elizabeth Moore, 6:30 pm Thursday in room 129, DeBartolo Hall
by Bob Thompson
WASHINGTON POST
Here are a few things we can say for sure about Dave Eggers' latest book:
It's not a satire of political correctness in the English department of an elite liberal arts college. No publisher is betting that it will be "the next 'Da Vinci Code.' " Judith Regan had nothing to do with it.
Oh, and it's a safe bet that Eggers didn't consult any marketing types about the title.
He called it "What Is the What."
Which means ...
Well, maybe we should save that for later. Because right now the writer best known for his arrestingly titled memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is sitting in a newspaper conference room with Valentino Achak Deng, the Sudanese "Lost Boy" whose life story he's undertaken to tell. And he's talking about one thing readers of "What Is the What" can't say for sure: How much is fact and how much is fiction.
Why the line-blurring? The explanation goes like this: Introduced to Deng in early 2003 and deeply engaged by his story, Eggers set out to write a conventional biography. But he kept getting stuck.
"I didn't know how to do it," he says. "I didn't want my own voice in there."
Despairing, he was ready to give the whole thing up. Then it occurred to him that "all the books that we remember about war and about the biggest events of the 20th century are novels." Think of "The Naked and the Dead," "Catch-22" and "all Hemingway's stuff."
More important, think of the ways fictionalizing Deng's story could solve narrative problems. By labeling the book a novel, Eggers says, he freed himself to re-create conversations, streamline complex relationships, add relevant detail and manipulate time and space in helpful ways -- all while maintaining the essential truthfulness of the storytelling.
There was only one hitch.
"I was so afraid to ask Valentino," Eggers says.
Author and subject grin at the memory. Eggers, in a white shirt and a sport coat that's seen better days, is the shorter and more intense-looking of the two. Deng, in a black shirt and jeans, is tall -- as the Dinka people tend to be -- with a warm, gap-toothed smile.
They call each other "Dave" and "Val," but Eggers, who's 36, has had the luxury of keeping the same name all his life. Deng, who's a decade or so younger, has been known as "Achak" (the name his parents gave him), "Valentino" (a baptismal name), "Dominic" (from a teacher in a refugee camp), "Gone Far" (a nickname alluding to his long trek out of war-wracked Sudan) and, most poetically, "Sleeper" -- bestowed by a girl who found him lying in the road one day, half-blind and longing for death.
Here's how Eggers, in Deng's voice, describes the moment:
"I conjured my mother as best I could. I pictured her in yellow, yellow like an evening sun, walking down the path. ... When she came up to me I told her I was too tired to continue, that I would suffer again, and would watch others suffer. ... Then I washed her from my mind. It seemed to me that to die I needed to clear my mind of all thoughts, all visions, and concentrate on passing on."
You look like my dead brother, the girl said. She lifted him up and got him walking again.
Lost Boys is a name attached to thousands of young refugees from the civil war in southern Sudan, which broke out in the mid-1980s and continued until peace was finally negotiated in 2005. "It is not a nickname appreciated by many in our ranks," as Deng the book character puts it, "but it is apt enough."
These days, Deng and the roughly 4,000 other Lost Boys who were resettled in the United States often find themselves confused with victims of more recent savagery in Darfur. But while the atrocities committed by government-backed militiamen have been similar -- "the difference is just the name they're using to describe the militia," he says -- Darfur is in western Sudan. Marial Bai, the hometown from which Deng was driven in fear of his life, is farther south.
His journey began in the mid-'80s, when, as a 6-year-old, he was still young enough "to be weak and melt into his mother's arms." Trouble had been brewing between the African peoples of southern Sudan and the Arab-dominated government in the north. But the boy knew nothing of the complex history behind the conflict.
"I couldn't understand," he says. "There was me in my town, my father was doing well -- why do we want to go to war? No reason."
Reason or no, war came.
Arab militiamen on horseback overran Marial Bai. Deng saw his hometown burned, his friends and neighbors killed or abducted. Not knowing his parents' fate, he fell in with a group of similarly displaced boys. An adult leader set them walking toward Ethiopia, where they were told they would find a haven, despite having no idea what "an Ethiopia" was.
The horrors of that walk cannot be easily summarized.
In "What Is the What," there are scenes of famished boys ripping the flesh off a dead elephant; of a boy dragging a stick as he walked, "making a line in the dirt so he would know his way home"; of land mines, ravening lions and exhausted, starving "sleepers" who gave up and died along the way.
Once across the border, a refugee camp became a recruiting ground. Rebel leaders told the boys, many destined to become child soldiers, that they were "the seeds of a new Sudan." Driven out, eventually, by the Ethiopians, the boys escaped across the Gilo River in a hail of gunfire -- except for those who got shot or were intercepted by crocodiles.
Reaching safety in Kenya, they found themselves trapped in a bleak refugee camp called Kakuma for -- in Deng's case -- 10 years.
How he finally got to the United States is an epic in itself. Being scheduled to fly on Sept. 11, 2001, did not help. Plunked down in Atlanta, he got to know the founder of a nonprofit called the Lost Boys Foundation. Her name was Mary Williams, and she came to view him as an especially articulate spokesman for his Lost Boy peers.
One day, he says, Williams asked about his long-term goals. "I would like to be able to document my story," he told her, "in a written form that generations will have access to."
OK, she said, she'd find somebody to help.
Mary Williams didn't know Dave Eggers, but she'd happened to pick up his memoir once when she needed airplane reading.
"The title was just hilarious," she says.
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is the saga of how, when Eggers was in college, his parents contrived to die of cancer within five weeks of each other, leaving Dave and his sister to raise their 7-year-old brother. The memoir's out-of-nowhere success left Eggers with enough cash to fund a variety of literary and philanthropic projects, among them the tiny independent publishing house McSweeney's and a literary magazine, the Believer, as well as a writing workshop and tutoring center in San Francisco.
Williams read up on Eggers and was impressed. He's "kind of like a Lost Boy himself," she says. So she wrote and asked if he'd like to get involved.
The idea was a long shot. How many name-brand authors would drop everything to tell a Lost Boy's story? But Eggers, as it happened, was already intrigued by the long march of the Sudanese refugees.
So he flew to Atlanta to check things out.
He bonded with Deng right away and began taping interviews. Later, they wangled their way onto a plane delivering aid to Sudan -- "we sat in the cargo hold with the grain and the bicycles and stuff," Eggers says -- to do a little firsthand research. In all, they spent thousands of hours together. It took him that long, he says, "to be able to see through Valentino's eyes."
As for the fiction decision: When Eggers raised the idea, he feared that Deng would angrily reject any reimagining of his real story. But "right away he was like 'What? Do whatever! Do anything you want!' "
"Dave is an artist," Deng says. "I'm not only about myself in the book." The idea was to tell the most accessible story possible about the devastation so many had endured.
Back and forth they go, deferring to each other, holding forth on their shared narrative.
They talk about how the original idea was to tell just the African part of Deng's life, until Eggers realized that his subject's struggle to adapt to the United States -- and the numerous disasters he has experienced here -- had to be part of the story.
They talk about their plan to use profits from the book to fund Deng's education, aid other Sudanese refugees, help rebuild Marial Bai and promote peace and justice in Darfur.
What does the future hold for Deng? Will he stay in his adopted homeland, where he is attending Allegheny College?
"I would like to bring up my kids here," he says. "But then I also, at the same time, want to make differences in Sudan."
"What Is the What" was published by McSweeney's, which allowed Eggers the total freedom he likes but means there's no marketing machine behind the book. Nonetheless, it's picked up some terrific reviews and made it to No. 25 on the New York Times' extended best-seller list this week.
As for that mysterious title: It's taken from a creation story Deng remembers hearing as a child.
God, it seems, made the first Dinka man tall and strong and the first Dinka woman beautiful. When he was done, he offered his creations a gift. "You can either have these cattle," he told them, "or you can have the What."
"What is the What?" they asked. But God refused to answer. The choice was a test. The Dinka could go for the cattle, which they knew would allow them to live well, or they could take a chance on the unknown. They chose the cattle, which, as the story's moral had it, proved the wise thing to do.
Except ...
The stable, solid universe in which that decision made sense is gone. And in the Lost Boy world of strife and stress and endless change that has replaced it, embracing the unknown -- as Valentino Achak Deng can tell us better than anyone -- looks like the only choice there is.
While his memoir was overhyped for me, his other literary and social ventures have earned him my respect and admiration. (He founded McSweeney's. Check out the link in my sidebar.) His newest book, "What is the What," is fiction that tells the all-too-true story of one of Sudan's Lost Boys. (See review below.)
This is well worth risking your extremities on a cold February night!
Other authors at Notre Dame this week:
Poet Lolita Hernandez, 10:30 am Monday in room 210, McKenna Hall and 8 pm Monday in LaFortune Student Center ballroom
Palestinian poet and playwright Nathalie Handal, 7pm Monday in LaFortune ballroom
Poet Hal Sirowitz, 8 pm Tuesday in the Oak Room, South Dining Hall
Essayist and humorist David Rakoff, 8 pm Wednesday in LaFortune ballroom
Freelance writer Anne Elizabeth Moore, 6:30 pm Thursday in room 129, DeBartolo Hall
Mining the power of fiction Eggers' novel
tells story of a 'Lost Boy' of Sudan
tells story of a 'Lost Boy' of Sudan
by Bob Thompson
WASHINGTON POST
Here are a few things we can say for sure about Dave Eggers' latest book:
It's not a satire of political correctness in the English department of an elite liberal arts college. No publisher is betting that it will be "the next 'Da Vinci Code.' " Judith Regan had nothing to do with it.
Oh, and it's a safe bet that Eggers didn't consult any marketing types about the title.
He called it "What Is the What."
Which means ...
Well, maybe we should save that for later. Because right now the writer best known for his arrestingly titled memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is sitting in a newspaper conference room with Valentino Achak Deng, the Sudanese "Lost Boy" whose life story he's undertaken to tell. And he's talking about one thing readers of "What Is the What" can't say for sure: How much is fact and how much is fiction.
Why the line-blurring? The explanation goes like this: Introduced to Deng in early 2003 and deeply engaged by his story, Eggers set out to write a conventional biography. But he kept getting stuck.
"I didn't know how to do it," he says. "I didn't want my own voice in there."
Despairing, he was ready to give the whole thing up. Then it occurred to him that "all the books that we remember about war and about the biggest events of the 20th century are novels." Think of "The Naked and the Dead," "Catch-22" and "all Hemingway's stuff."
More important, think of the ways fictionalizing Deng's story could solve narrative problems. By labeling the book a novel, Eggers says, he freed himself to re-create conversations, streamline complex relationships, add relevant detail and manipulate time and space in helpful ways -- all while maintaining the essential truthfulness of the storytelling.
There was only one hitch.
"I was so afraid to ask Valentino," Eggers says.
Author and subject grin at the memory. Eggers, in a white shirt and a sport coat that's seen better days, is the shorter and more intense-looking of the two. Deng, in a black shirt and jeans, is tall -- as the Dinka people tend to be -- with a warm, gap-toothed smile.
They call each other "Dave" and "Val," but Eggers, who's 36, has had the luxury of keeping the same name all his life. Deng, who's a decade or so younger, has been known as "Achak" (the name his parents gave him), "Valentino" (a baptismal name), "Dominic" (from a teacher in a refugee camp), "Gone Far" (a nickname alluding to his long trek out of war-wracked Sudan) and, most poetically, "Sleeper" -- bestowed by a girl who found him lying in the road one day, half-blind and longing for death.
Here's how Eggers, in Deng's voice, describes the moment:
"I conjured my mother as best I could. I pictured her in yellow, yellow like an evening sun, walking down the path. ... When she came up to me I told her I was too tired to continue, that I would suffer again, and would watch others suffer. ... Then I washed her from my mind. It seemed to me that to die I needed to clear my mind of all thoughts, all visions, and concentrate on passing on."
You look like my dead brother, the girl said. She lifted him up and got him walking again.
Lost Boys is a name attached to thousands of young refugees from the civil war in southern Sudan, which broke out in the mid-1980s and continued until peace was finally negotiated in 2005. "It is not a nickname appreciated by many in our ranks," as Deng the book character puts it, "but it is apt enough."
These days, Deng and the roughly 4,000 other Lost Boys who were resettled in the United States often find themselves confused with victims of more recent savagery in Darfur. But while the atrocities committed by government-backed militiamen have been similar -- "the difference is just the name they're using to describe the militia," he says -- Darfur is in western Sudan. Marial Bai, the hometown from which Deng was driven in fear of his life, is farther south.
His journey began in the mid-'80s, when, as a 6-year-old, he was still young enough "to be weak and melt into his mother's arms." Trouble had been brewing between the African peoples of southern Sudan and the Arab-dominated government in the north. But the boy knew nothing of the complex history behind the conflict.
"I couldn't understand," he says. "There was me in my town, my father was doing well -- why do we want to go to war? No reason."
Reason or no, war came.
Arab militiamen on horseback overran Marial Bai. Deng saw his hometown burned, his friends and neighbors killed or abducted. Not knowing his parents' fate, he fell in with a group of similarly displaced boys. An adult leader set them walking toward Ethiopia, where they were told they would find a haven, despite having no idea what "an Ethiopia" was.
The horrors of that walk cannot be easily summarized.
In "What Is the What," there are scenes of famished boys ripping the flesh off a dead elephant; of a boy dragging a stick as he walked, "making a line in the dirt so he would know his way home"; of land mines, ravening lions and exhausted, starving "sleepers" who gave up and died along the way.
Once across the border, a refugee camp became a recruiting ground. Rebel leaders told the boys, many destined to become child soldiers, that they were "the seeds of a new Sudan." Driven out, eventually, by the Ethiopians, the boys escaped across the Gilo River in a hail of gunfire -- except for those who got shot or were intercepted by crocodiles.
Reaching safety in Kenya, they found themselves trapped in a bleak refugee camp called Kakuma for -- in Deng's case -- 10 years.
How he finally got to the United States is an epic in itself. Being scheduled to fly on Sept. 11, 2001, did not help. Plunked down in Atlanta, he got to know the founder of a nonprofit called the Lost Boys Foundation. Her name was Mary Williams, and she came to view him as an especially articulate spokesman for his Lost Boy peers.
One day, he says, Williams asked about his long-term goals. "I would like to be able to document my story," he told her, "in a written form that generations will have access to."
OK, she said, she'd find somebody to help.
Mary Williams didn't know Dave Eggers, but she'd happened to pick up his memoir once when she needed airplane reading.
"The title was just hilarious," she says.
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is the saga of how, when Eggers was in college, his parents contrived to die of cancer within five weeks of each other, leaving Dave and his sister to raise their 7-year-old brother. The memoir's out-of-nowhere success left Eggers with enough cash to fund a variety of literary and philanthropic projects, among them the tiny independent publishing house McSweeney's and a literary magazine, the Believer, as well as a writing workshop and tutoring center in San Francisco.
Williams read up on Eggers and was impressed. He's "kind of like a Lost Boy himself," she says. So she wrote and asked if he'd like to get involved.
The idea was a long shot. How many name-brand authors would drop everything to tell a Lost Boy's story? But Eggers, as it happened, was already intrigued by the long march of the Sudanese refugees.
So he flew to Atlanta to check things out.
He bonded with Deng right away and began taping interviews. Later, they wangled their way onto a plane delivering aid to Sudan -- "we sat in the cargo hold with the grain and the bicycles and stuff," Eggers says -- to do a little firsthand research. In all, they spent thousands of hours together. It took him that long, he says, "to be able to see through Valentino's eyes."
As for the fiction decision: When Eggers raised the idea, he feared that Deng would angrily reject any reimagining of his real story. But "right away he was like 'What? Do whatever! Do anything you want!' "
"Dave is an artist," Deng says. "I'm not only about myself in the book." The idea was to tell the most accessible story possible about the devastation so many had endured.
Back and forth they go, deferring to each other, holding forth on their shared narrative.
They talk about how the original idea was to tell just the African part of Deng's life, until Eggers realized that his subject's struggle to adapt to the United States -- and the numerous disasters he has experienced here -- had to be part of the story.
They talk about their plan to use profits from the book to fund Deng's education, aid other Sudanese refugees, help rebuild Marial Bai and promote peace and justice in Darfur.
What does the future hold for Deng? Will he stay in his adopted homeland, where he is attending Allegheny College?
"I would like to bring up my kids here," he says. "But then I also, at the same time, want to make differences in Sudan."
"What Is the What" was published by McSweeney's, which allowed Eggers the total freedom he likes but means there's no marketing machine behind the book. Nonetheless, it's picked up some terrific reviews and made it to No. 25 on the New York Times' extended best-seller list this week.
As for that mysterious title: It's taken from a creation story Deng remembers hearing as a child.
God, it seems, made the first Dinka man tall and strong and the first Dinka woman beautiful. When he was done, he offered his creations a gift. "You can either have these cattle," he told them, "or you can have the What."
"What is the What?" they asked. But God refused to answer. The choice was a test. The Dinka could go for the cattle, which they knew would allow them to live well, or they could take a chance on the unknown. They chose the cattle, which, as the story's moral had it, proved the wise thing to do.
Except ...
The stable, solid universe in which that decision made sense is gone. And in the Lost Boy world of strife and stress and endless change that has replaced it, embracing the unknown -- as Valentino Achak Deng can tell us better than anyone -- looks like the only choice there is.
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
South Bend Favorites
Farmers Market: We are officially regulars at the Farmers Market. A few weeks ago Bonnie gave us a dollar off on the price of a whole pecan pie we had preordered from the diner “because we are regulars.” This makes me feel, human.
We go to the Market every Saturday. Although it opens at the crack of dawn, we usually make our way there by 1:00 for a late lunch and shopping. We always eat in the diner first. We sit at the second horseshoe-shaped counter, where
Favorite Burger
Best Ice Cream: Hands down: Chicory Café in downtown
Favorite Café for Writing: This is a tough call. I have to go with The Victorian Pantry--locally owned business, real mugs, help yourself coffee canisters, free wireless, delectable food, wooden tables. But. It is bit too far to drive and technically not in South Bend (it must be Granger, I think.) Slightly closer, but still in Mishawaka, I have to go with Panera which has the coffee buffet, real mugs, tasty treats, wireless, etc., but it is a chain restaurant. In South Bend, you can pick between the Chocolate Cafe and Chicory Cafe, neither of which offer the endless help yourself mugs, although they have wireless. And the coffee at Chicory might just be the best in South Bend (plus they have that remarkable gelato).
Favorite Café: Lula’s Café. It is the real thing. The house salad, the hummus, the sandwiches all satisfy. No wireless, but this is a good thing. I go there when I need to seclude myself from internet distractions. Coffee served in ceramic mugs, a stellar plus. (Plus I met the man I eventually married there. I was sitting next to the middle window and he was at the table next to me. Ah caffeine-induced romance.)
Best Brunch (and Beer): Fiddler's Hearth. We are regulars here for Sunday brunch. I love their beer, but we don’t get there very often during beer-drinking time. Menu favorites: Shepherd’s Pie and Fish-n-Chips. We go for the Sunday brunch: live music preformed by talented artists, delicious breakfast and lunch foods, and the Sunday papers read on wide wooden tables. Sunday, lovely Sundays.
What are your South Bend favorites?
Any hidden jewels or regular haunts?
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Ode to Book Club
At least, a prosaic one.
The ladies are headed to my house this evening for our monthly book club. In our book club, we meet once a month. We rotate houses. We meet at 6:30 pm on a weeknight. We pay dues, which are tucked away into a cookie jar. When we have enough cash, we splurge. (Two years ago we went to the beach for a winter weekend of fine dining, hot tubbing, and book talk.) In our book club we have seven members, ages ranging from the thirties to the several decades wiser than thirties. We highly value this mixture of spunk and spit (or spit and spunk, really). In our book club, the hostess prepares a homemade meal (often lavish, but not required) from scratch and uses her good plates. Often the hostess will prepare food that fits the setting of the novel. In our book club, we have "check in", meaning we move around the dinner table telling what has happened in our lives since last book club. (Years of personal narrative add up to a rich tapestry. Ugh, that was so cheesy, but true.) We save our book discussion for after dinner. The leader, who selected the book, gets us started, often providing an author's biography or other salient details. Sometimes she uses prepared reading guide questions. Often, she just says (the equivalent of) "Go!"
The ladies are headed to my house this evening for our monthly book club. In our book club, we meet once a month. We rotate houses. We meet at 6:30 pm on a weeknight. We pay dues, which are tucked away into a cookie jar. When we have enough cash, we splurge. (Two years ago we went to the beach for a winter weekend of fine dining, hot tubbing, and book talk.) In our book club we have seven members, ages ranging from the thirties to the several decades wiser than thirties. We highly value this mixture of spunk and spit (or spit and spunk, really). In our book club, the hostess prepares a homemade meal (often lavish, but not required) from scratch and uses her good plates. Often the hostess will prepare food that fits the setting of the novel. In our book club, we have "check in", meaning we move around the dinner table telling what has happened in our lives since last book club. (Years of personal narrative add up to a rich tapestry. Ugh, that was so cheesy, but true.) We save our book discussion for after dinner. The leader, who selected the book, gets us started, often providing an author's biography or other salient details. Sometimes she uses prepared reading guide questions. Often, she just says (the equivalent of) "Go!"
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
American Idol for Authors
This is it: Gather.com is sponsoring an author's showdown. Post your novel on the their site and it might just be voted the next American Masterpiece. Or even nail you down to a publishing contract. Doubt your deft handling of plot and characterization? Harbor illusions of literary genius? Don't spend another moment in a dither. Take it to the readers.
The way it works: Forget about that dented manuscript scattered in chapters around your house, in your car, and at the bottom of your to-do list. You won't even need to print off a fresh hot-ink perfumed version. E-mail your full-length commmerical fiction manuscript to Gather.com. You must be 17 (or older) to submit yourself to your reading audience.
They will publish your novel online one chapter at at time. And the reading public will vote to keep you alive (or vote to eliminate you, I mean your novel). If you survive three rounds of voting and are chosen the next American Author-to-be-published, you will receive assorted cash prizes AND a publishing contract. Beware: by entering the contest you agree "that if you are selected as the Grand Prize Winner, you will sign Simon & Schuster’s standard publishing agreement within five days of receipt of the agreement."
The way it works: Forget about that dented manuscript scattered in chapters around your house, in your car, and at the bottom of your to-do list. You won't even need to print off a fresh hot-ink perfumed version. E-mail your full-length commmerical fiction manuscript to Gather.com. You must be 17 (or older) to submit yourself to your reading audience.
They will publish your novel online one chapter at at time. And the reading public will vote to keep you alive (or vote to eliminate you, I mean your novel). If you survive three rounds of voting and are chosen the next American Author-to-be-published, you will receive assorted cash prizes AND a publishing contract. Beware: by entering the contest you agree "that if you are selected as the Grand Prize Winner, you will sign Simon & Schuster’s standard publishing agreement within five days of receipt of the agreement."
Read all about it in The New York Times
Gather.com First Chapters Writing Competition
Gather.com First Chapters Writing Competition
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Monday, January 01, 2007
New Year's Day Menu
French Meat Pie
by Sister M. Concepta Mermis
(with my commentary in blue!)
31/2 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground beef
2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. celery salt
1 c. dry bread crumbs (or more)
1 onion
Cook meat and 1 onion in water to cover meat, simmer about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Break up the meat with a wooden spoon as it cooks. Remove onion and discard--even though it must be very, very tasty. Set aside to cool. Let cool (possibly over night) until the fat congeals on top.
Skim off grease (use to make pastry). Making the pastry shell with the grease from the meat is possible and delicious, but has reduced me to tears. I use store-bought pastry shells. Add bread crumbs and seasonings. You may need to add more bread crumbs. Put meat mixture into pastry shell, top with crust. Slit the top of the crust to allow steam to escape. Bake on cookie sheet or foil in case the pie bubbles over. Bake about 35 minutes or until brown in 400 degree oven. Let stand about thirty minutes before serving.
Makes enough meat filling for 3 - 4 pies. At least that is what I have written in my family recipe book according to mom's directions. Except that I HALVED the recipe and still got two pies. So really there is generous meat for 4 (8- inch) pies.
This year I bowed to pressure and added "Hungarian" spices to one of the pies. I used a hefty dose of paprika and two garlic cloves added in large wedges (meant to be fished out for the faint of heart), leaving out the cinnamon and cloves, of course. It was decent, especially with a dollop of sour cream. But it is not French meat pie. It is not New Year's Day.
Serve with creamed peas (and/or corn) and mashed potatoes. Pour the creamed peas over the slice of meat pie for the proper presentation.
Although I grew up eating (or choking down) black-eyed peas for good luck, I left them off the menu today. Living on the edge. Tempting the legume fates.
by Sister M. Concepta Mermis
(with my commentary in blue!)
31/2 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground beef
2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. celery salt
1 c. dry bread crumbs (or more)
1 onion
Cook meat and 1 onion in water to cover meat, simmer about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Break up the meat with a wooden spoon as it cooks. Remove onion and discard--even though it must be very, very tasty. Set aside to cool. Let cool (possibly over night) until the fat congeals on top.
Skim off grease (use to make pastry). Making the pastry shell with the grease from the meat is possible and delicious, but has reduced me to tears. I use store-bought pastry shells. Add bread crumbs and seasonings. You may need to add more bread crumbs. Put meat mixture into pastry shell, top with crust. Slit the top of the crust to allow steam to escape. Bake on cookie sheet or foil in case the pie bubbles over. Bake about 35 minutes or until brown in 400 degree oven. Let stand about thirty minutes before serving.
Makes enough meat filling for 3 - 4 pies. At least that is what I have written in my family recipe book according to mom's directions. Except that I HALVED the recipe and still got two pies. So really there is generous meat for 4 (8- inch) pies.
This year I bowed to pressure and added "Hungarian" spices to one of the pies. I used a hefty dose of paprika and two garlic cloves added in large wedges (meant to be fished out for the faint of heart), leaving out the cinnamon and cloves, of course. It was decent, especially with a dollop of sour cream. But it is not French meat pie. It is not New Year's Day.
Serve with creamed peas (and/or corn) and mashed potatoes. Pour the creamed peas over the slice of meat pie for the proper presentation.
Although I grew up eating (or choking down) black-eyed peas for good luck, I left them off the menu today. Living on the edge. Tempting the legume fates.
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Christmas Traditions
In the Hungarian tradition Saint Nick arrives to fill your shoes in early December. The angels bring your tree and gifts on Christmas Eve.
Since our little angel spends Christmas in
The problem: we need a tree after Christmas. You can't even buy fresh cranberries anymore. I tried. I got the canned instead.
The solution: Our neighbors take down their tree the day after Christmas and leave it for us on their front lawn.
We trudge down the block, me in my tree-collecting monstrosity of a Wild Tibetan hat, the others with thick gloves to protect against pine needles (which are decidedly dried out by this time in the tree's decorative life). It is a short block back to the house with our needle-shedding prize.
Thus, the recycled tree is reincarnated in our living room. We decorate it with szalon cukor candies (yummy zseles are our favorite) and knotted strings of orbular lights. Later, when we leave the house for a walk around the block, the angels visit us and leave our gifts. Now that is a holiday tradition.
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Post Argentina From Kansas
This post is penned from my home state, Kansas. I returned to Indiana on Tuesday from Buenos Aires, went to work on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and then flew out from Chicago home to Kansas on Friday evening. I know O'Hare too well these days.
Buenos Aires deserves several extensive posts. Right there on the back of the travel guide it says it all: "Paris of the South, cafe on every corner, thick steaks, and fashionable boutiques." And yet until you walk its vibrant streets and dine on great slabs of grilled meat that bring back your faith in the virtues of beef, you can hardly believe the jewel that it is.
We stayed in a wonderful little hotel called 1555 Malabia (which is also its address) in an area of town called Palermo SoHo. The streets are crowded with cafes, restaurants, and designer boutiques. In another part of town they have the high-end international brands (Armani, etc.). Our neighborhood had local Argentine designers and the style and price ratio are literally overwhelming. Avoid the gorgeous malls, head straight for Palermo.
Of all the wonders we engorged ourselves on during our brief few days there, one of the highlights was definitely our night of tango at La Viruta, which is located minutes from our hotel in the basement of a cultural house. This is where the Argentines go to dance, and where the ex-pats go to learn. We managed to reserve a table and ordered a bottle of champagne (a break to heighten our enjoyments of the Argentine Malbec, a hearty red wine). Soon six couples emerged and strutted across the dance floor to the boisterous introductions of the "leader." We don't speak Spanish. They danced a few numbers and then the whole room assembled into three learning levels for our lessons. We were absolute beginners. It was tense at times--trying to smile our way into a clearer example via body language. But we managed to get the steps with a bit of grace to spare.
After the lesson the regular dancing began. Happily the tango numbers were interspersed with American fifties-era style songs which we managed to fake our way through. It was a wonderful night that had only begun as we left the tango place at nearly 1 am.
The rain was a wall of water.
We slipped into a restaurant next door that promised a dry table and middle-eastern food.
We ordered a Malbec and a plate of cheese, soon to be followed by the best halva I have ever eaten (and we eat a lot of it!).
The best part of this new place: A private party of about 20 Greek-Argentines celebrating the end of the school year and the start of summer. We got there as the dancing commenced. This is a restaurant--not the kind of place a group of diners would take over in Indiana, let's say. And these Greeks could really, really dance. We stayed until almost 3 am sipping our wine, watching the Greek goddesses (and one god) circle, weave, dip and "oopah" the night away right before our eyes.
The Greeks could dance, no doubt. Still they didn't come close to the smoldering tango. If only I were Argentine.
Buenos Aires deserves several extensive posts. Right there on the back of the travel guide it says it all: "Paris of the South, cafe on every corner, thick steaks, and fashionable boutiques." And yet until you walk its vibrant streets and dine on great slabs of grilled meat that bring back your faith in the virtues of beef, you can hardly believe the jewel that it is.
We stayed in a wonderful little hotel called 1555 Malabia (which is also its address) in an area of town called Palermo SoHo. The streets are crowded with cafes, restaurants, and designer boutiques. In another part of town they have the high-end international brands (Armani, etc.). Our neighborhood had local Argentine designers and the style and price ratio are literally overwhelming. Avoid the gorgeous malls, head straight for Palermo.
Of all the wonders we engorged ourselves on during our brief few days there, one of the highlights was definitely our night of tango at La Viruta, which is located minutes from our hotel in the basement of a cultural house. This is where the Argentines go to dance, and where the ex-pats go to learn. We managed to reserve a table and ordered a bottle of champagne (a break to heighten our enjoyments of the Argentine Malbec, a hearty red wine). Soon six couples emerged and strutted across the dance floor to the boisterous introductions of the "leader." We don't speak Spanish. They danced a few numbers and then the whole room assembled into three learning levels for our lessons. We were absolute beginners. It was tense at times--trying to smile our way into a clearer example via body language. But we managed to get the steps with a bit of grace to spare.
After the lesson the regular dancing began. Happily the tango numbers were interspersed with American fifties-era style songs which we managed to fake our way through. It was a wonderful night that had only begun as we left the tango place at nearly 1 am.
The rain was a wall of water.
We slipped into a restaurant next door that promised a dry table and middle-eastern food.
We ordered a Malbec and a plate of cheese, soon to be followed by the best halva I have ever eaten (and we eat a lot of it!).
The best part of this new place: A private party of about 20 Greek-Argentines celebrating the end of the school year and the start of summer. We got there as the dancing commenced. This is a restaurant--not the kind of place a group of diners would take over in Indiana, let's say. And these Greeks could really, really dance. We stayed until almost 3 am sipping our wine, watching the Greek goddesses (and one god) circle, weave, dip and "oopah" the night away right before our eyes.
The Greeks could dance, no doubt. Still they didn't come close to the smoldering tango. If only I were Argentine.
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Friday, December 15, 2006
24 Hours in Argentina
This will be short. I don´t want to waste my sunshine time clacking away inside the hotel.
This is our second day in Mar del Plata, a beach town about 4 hours drive south of Buenos Aires. Yesterday a young man was making small talk with me (in English). After the first few usual topics, he asked me if I was vegetarian. Odd question unless you know that this is the land of meat. So, we ate meats--blood sausage, chorizo sausage, and a massive steak sliced and grilled before our eyes. Served slighty pink even though they didn't ask how we like it done. They just know. Divine.
We saw tango. Ate manjar (as they call it in Chile, we learned a few years ago). Walked a mile in the wrong direction (not to mention the wrong shoes). Used our umbrella on the beach (because of rain!). I took a nap. Talked to a local, who mentioned that new government restrictions have discouraged cattle production. Took a walk along the port and saw (and smelled) the local population of sea lions (very, very). Toured an aristocrat´s home, now a museum with a fantastic display of jewelry. Saw lots of stone and/or brick houses. Ate more manjar (dulce de leche).
Did I mention the cows ranging across the endless verdant plains? More grass, taller trees than in Kansas. Same oceanic skies as far as the eye can see in all directions.
24 hours in Argentina. More to come.
This is our second day in Mar del Plata, a beach town about 4 hours drive south of Buenos Aires. Yesterday a young man was making small talk with me (in English). After the first few usual topics, he asked me if I was vegetarian. Odd question unless you know that this is the land of meat. So, we ate meats--blood sausage, chorizo sausage, and a massive steak sliced and grilled before our eyes. Served slighty pink even though they didn't ask how we like it done. They just know. Divine.
We saw tango. Ate manjar (as they call it in Chile, we learned a few years ago). Walked a mile in the wrong direction (not to mention the wrong shoes). Used our umbrella on the beach (because of rain!). I took a nap. Talked to a local, who mentioned that new government restrictions have discouraged cattle production. Took a walk along the port and saw (and smelled) the local population of sea lions (very, very). Toured an aristocrat´s home, now a museum with a fantastic display of jewelry. Saw lots of stone and/or brick houses. Ate more manjar (dulce de leche).
Did I mention the cows ranging across the endless verdant plains? More grass, taller trees than in Kansas. Same oceanic skies as far as the eye can see in all directions.
24 hours in Argentina. More to come.
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Post Bourguignonne
Dear Reader (Hi mom!),
The dinner party was a joy and the boeuf bourguignonne fork-tender and deceptively straightforward. Our guest of honor, G.S., recognized the dish by name, giving me a start because it is generally best to present an unknown dish and capitalize on the surprise factor. Nevermind the non-beef eating guest and the last minute vegetarian.
My next dutch oven adventure: coq au vin.
A nice surprise: I was chatting with my mom about the dinner party and my lack of dinnerware. She was puzzled because she had given me an entire set last April. I had no idea. I thought it was a tea set. I dug into the miles of tissue paper and sure enough there was a beautiful set of china, complete with salt and pepper shakers. It was a perfect setting for our quasi-french meal. It makes me wonder what other treasures I have waiting for me in packed boxes in the attic.
This week: Book Club (our annual Christmas fete), work, and then off to a southerly clime for a few days of honeymoonish type adventures. Sun, red wine, grass-fed beef, tango. . .
My read for the trip: Amy Hempel's collection of short stories and my first goaround with Orwell's 1984. Although Borges may be a better choice. . .
Welcome! I am an American writer and high school teacher. Please comment and share, as you wish. Taint: A Novel available at your local bookstore and on Amazon.
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