Tuesday, October 1, 2013

These are a few of my favorite things, Korean food, travel, and Anthony Bourdain

Roy Choi to publish memoir with themes of Korean cooking and the back allies of the Los Angeles of his childhood.

From Galley Cat;

Choi takes us through the neighborhoods and streets most tourists never see, from the casinos where gamblers slurp fragrant bowls of pho to Downtown’s Jewelry District, where a 10-year-old Choi wolfed down Jewish deli classics between diamond deliveries; from the kitchen of his parents’ Korean restaurant and his mother’s pungent kimchi to the boulevards of East L.A. and the best taquerias in the country, to at last, the curbside view from one of his emblematic Kogi taco trucks, where people from all walks of life line-up for a revolutionary meal.

Anthony Bourdain, a favorite traveling food critic, chef, and writer will be publishing a series of books "composed of chefs, enthusiasts, fighters, musicians and dead essayists. And we’re looking to publish them in a way that’s both accessible and respectful of the power of the written word – and appropriately fetishistic about the tactile joys of the printed page.”
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/anthony-bourdain-gets-his-own-line-at-harpercollins_b37985

So looking forward to a Bourdain special on Choi's LA food cart.

Health Insurance for Self Employed Writers

This great news from Galley Cat;

Despite the federal government shutdown, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Marketplace is now open, a way for people to compare health insurance options under the new policy also known as “Obamacare.”
Self-employed writers will have more choices under this act. Explore options for self-employed writers at the official site:

You can use the Marketplace to find health coverage that fits your budget and meets your needs. You can compare important features of several plans side-by-side, all of them offering a full package of essential health benefits. You can see what your premium, deductibles, andout-of-pocket costs will be before you decide to enroll. You can’t be denied coverage or charged more because you have a pre-existing health condition. If you currently have individual insurance–a plan you bought yourself, not the kind you get through an employer–you may be able to change to a Marketplace plan. Learn more about changing individual insurance plans.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Year Without Pants- thoughts on writing from home

Reposted from GalleyCat;

In his new book, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, author Scott Berkun outlined what he learned while working as a manager at the major blog company.
On today’s Morning Media Menu, Berkun shared insights that can help editors, publishers and writers cope with the rapidly changing digital workplace. Press play below to listen, but here’s an excerpt:

Working remotely at all is considered taboo at some companies, but I think that is foolish. It should all be focused on the results instead of these superficial characteristics. If someone can work well remotely, then where they are in the world shouldn’t really matter that much. It should be focused on their output and their results.

Berkun continued:

Everyone at WordPress.com works remotely or works from home, which means there are no office hours, no set place to go to work. One of the big discoveries in the book is about co-working and finding places where other independent workers are working. There are social benefits that come from being in a room with other people who are working. Even if you are not working on the same thing. Wise managers or employers should be open-minded about allowing their employees to experiment and try co-working spaces.

Weinstein is sick of the negative attitudes about Generation Y

An excerpt from Adam Weinstein's essay in Gawker this month. Over 700,000 views;

I once listened to a professor, who is in his sixties, read us the first published piece he’d been paid for, in the late 1970s. A thousand words or so. The rate, he says, was something like two bucks a word. That’s four times what the Village Voice pays today, even for an award-winning investigative cover story. It’s geometrically greater than what most writers can earn today writing daily brilliance for nationally renowned publications online. And writing daily brilliance, which many of them do, is hard goddamned work. If I had a dollar for every older writer or editor who confided to me that “I don’t know how young writers do it today; I certainly couldn’t,” I could buy every property that publishes them. So no, we shan’t be doing as well as our parents, and no, we shan’t be shutting up about it.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Inspiring Story of an Extraordinay American Citizen

I saw this woman speak in the fabulous Arts and Letters series in Portland, Oregon years ago. Her appreciation for the better things in this country are heartwarming. Her courage, inspiring. This review from Good Reads makes me want to write her. And to write.

The Cooked Seed: A Memoir

by Anchee Min

In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Red Azalea became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a successful, critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path.

It is a hard and lonely road. She teaches herself English by watching Sesame Street, keeps herself afloat working five jobs at once, lives in unheated rooms, suffers rape, collapses from exhaustion, marries poorly and divorces.But she also gives birth to her daughter, Lauryann, who will inspire her and finally root her in her new country. Min's eventual successes-her writing career, a daughter at Stanford, a second husband she loves-are remarkable, but it is her struggle throughout toward genuine selfhood that elevates this dramatic, classic immigrant story to something powerfully universal.(less)

Goodreads Review; Mormon Librarian with Tourettes Syndrome Triumphs

The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

by Josh Hanagarne (Goodreads Author)

An inspiring story of how a Mormon kid with Tourette’s found salvation in books and weight-lifting

Josh Hanagarne couldn’t be invisible if he tried. Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh was six years old and onstage in a school Thanksgiving play when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was twenty, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when—while serving on a mission for the Church of Latter Day Saints—his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels.

Determined to conquer his affliction, Josh underwent everything from quack remedies to lethargy-inducing drug regimes to Botox injections that paralyzed his vocal cords and left him voiceless for three years. Undeterred, Josh persevered to marry and earn a degree in Library Science. At last, an eccentric, autistic strongman—and former Air Force Tech Sergeant and guard at an Iraqi prison—taught Josh how to “throttle” his tics into submission through strength-training.

Today, Josh is a librarian in the main branch of Salt Lake City’s public library and founder of a popular blog about books and weight lifting—and the proud father of four-year-old Max, who has already started to show his own symptoms of Tourette’s.

The World’s Strongest Librarian illuminates the mysteries of this little-understood disorder, as well as the very different worlds of strongman training and modern libraries. With humor and candor, this unlikely hero traces his journey to overcome his disability— and navigate his wavering Mormon faith—to find love and create a life worth living

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

GalleyCat's Best Writing Music of 2013, so far;

Livia Blackburn- Blogger Says Blogging is a Waste of Time

Blackburn explains why novelists should not blog, but memoirists should. Here are her thoughts;

1. Blogging is better for nonfiction writers because they share their expertise for a specific audience; connecting with that audience could potentially help sales.
2. “Time spent on the blog is time spent away from something else: writing another book, contacting book clubs, taking a part-time job and investing that money in advertising or a publicist.”
3. Blogging novelist often focus on the art of writing instead of their own readers, creating “a never-ending writing conference.” While that helps in “forming friendships, professional development, and learning your craft,” it doesn’t necessarily boost book sales.

Figuratively killing me with overuse of the word literally

Grammar PSA: Stop Abusing the Word ‘Literally’

By Jason Boog on September 28, 2011 2:47 PM

We have another Grammar Public Service Announcement today: stop abusing the word “literally” in your writing.
Here’s more about the misuse of literally: “This is such a widely known misused word that examples are less common, as most people know to avoid the term – which should be used to describe something that is actually happening (for example, ‘He literally danced with joy.’) but should not be used for emphasis (‘Steam was literally coming out of his ears.’)”
Earlier this month, we warned writers against using the controversial word, “irregardless.” Our sibling blog eBookNewser shared today’s tip, linking to a list of the Top 10 Misused Words. What’s your favorite word that everybody abuses? (Literal dead end photograph via MorrowLess)

Hauntingly Beautiful Memoir; Her

I saw this Christa interviewed yesterday on Katie Couric. The discussion of "intuition" among twins was interesting. Great science to explain how coincidence is about similarities rather than a psychic connection.

This from GalleyCat;

Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.

A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin," she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.

Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani's account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful.(less)

Friday, March 8, 2013

We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger's Daughter

by Rachael Hanel

Rachael Hanel’s name was inscribed on a gravestone when she was eleven years old. Yet this wasn’t at all unusual in her world: her father was a gravedigger in the small Minnesota town of Waseca, and death was her family’s business. Her parents were forty-two years old and in good health when they erected their gravestone—Rachael’s name was simply a branch on the sprawling family tree etched on the back of the stone. As she puts it: I grew up in cemeteries.
And you don’t grow up in cemeteries—surrounded by headstones and stories, questions, curiosity—without becoming an adept and sensitive observer of death and loss as experienced by the people in this small town. For Rachael Hanel, wandering among tombstones, reading the names, and wondering about the townsfolk and their lives, death was, in many ways, beautiful and mysterious. Death and mourning: these she understood. But when Rachael’s father—Digger O’Dell—passes away suddenly when she is fifteen, she and her family are abruptly and harshly transformed from bystanders to participants. And for the first time, Rachael realizes that death and grief are very different.

At times heartbreaking and at others gently humorous and uplifting, We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down presents the unique, moving perspective of a gravedigger’s daughter and her lifelong relationship with death and grief. But it is also a masterful meditation on the living elements of our cemeteries: our neighbors, friends, and families—the very histories of our towns and cities—and how these things come together in the eyes of a young girl whose childhood is suffused with both death and the wonder of the living.
We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger's Daughter

We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger's Daughter

Memoir from former member of Westboro Baptist Church

Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

by Lauren Drain, Lisa Pulitzer

You've likely heard of the WestboroBaptistChurch. Perhaps you've seen their pickets on the news, the members holding signs with messages that are too offensive to copy here, protesting at events such as the funerals of soldiers, the 9-year old victim of the recent Tucson shooting, and Elizabeth Edwards, all in front of their grieving families. The WBC is fervently anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and anti- practically everything and everyone. And they aren't going anywhere: in March, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the WBC's right to picket funerals.

Since no organized religion will claim affiliation with the WBC, it's perhaps more accurate to think of them as a cult. Lauren Drain was thrust into that cult at the age of 15, and then spat back out again seven years later. BANISHED is the first look inside the organization, as well as a fascinating story of adaptation and perseverance.

Lauren spent her early years enjoying a normal life with her family in Florida. But when her formerly liberal and secular father set out to produce a documentary about the WBC, his detached interest gradually evolved into fascination, and he moved the entire family to Kansas to join the church and live on their compound. Over the next seven years, Lauren fully assimilated their extreme beliefs, and became a member of the church and an active and vocal picketer. But as she matured and began to challenge some of the church's tenets, she was unceremoniously cast out from the church and permanently cut off from her family and from everyone else she knew and loved. BANISHED is the story of Lauren's fight to find herself amidst dramatic changes in a world of extremists and a life in exile.

Hardcover, 304 pages Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church

Her; A Memoir

Her: A Memoir

byChrista Parravani

A blazingly passionate memoir of identity and love: when a charismatic and troubled young woman dies tragically, her identical twin must struggle to survive

Christa Parravani and her identical twin, Cara, were linked by a bond that went beyond siblinghood, beyond sisterhood, beyond friendship. Raised up from poverty by a determined single mother, the gifted and beautiful twins were able to create a private haven of splendor and merriment between themselves and then earn their way to a prestigious college and to careers as artists (a photographer and a writer, respectively) and to young marriages. But, haunted by childhood experiences with father figures and further damaged by being raped as a young adult, Cara veered off the path to robust work and life and in to depression, drugs and a shocking early death.

A few years after Cara was gone, Christa read that when an identical twin dies, regardless of the cause, 50 percent of the time the surviving twin dies within two years; and this shocking statistic rang true to her. "Flip a coin," she thought," those were my chances of survival." First, Christa fought to stop her sister's downward spiral; suddenly, she was struggling to keep herself alive.

Beautifully written, mesmerizingly rich and true, Christa Parravani's account of being left, one half of a whole, and of her desperate, ultimately triumphant struggle for survival is informative, heart-wrenching and unforgettably beautiful.

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published March 5th 2013 by Henry Holt and Co. (first published February 5th 2013)

From March Releases- Goodreads

Monday, February 4, 2013

The Nonfiction Self Pulbished Bestseller

Guy Kawasaki has a best seller in a handbook for writers.

A nonfiction book has finally cracked Amazon's Best Seller list.

Literary Criticsm Alive and Well

From Technorati;
NetGalley is an inexpensive and green way for publishers to share their digital galleys with reviewers, media, bloggers, journalists, librarians, booksellers and educators. PR by the Book, LLC has now become the first PR firm to partner with NetGalley. From Technorati;

From Galley Cat;
Anybody who thinks literary criticism is dead should read this: the digital review copy community at NetGalley now has more than 100,000 members.

Find out about Net Galley;

http://literaryhoarders.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/weve-signed-on-for-the-net-galley-knock-down/

http://technorati.com/technology/article/netgalley-adds-first-literary-pr-firm/

https://www.facebook.com/NetGalley

Self Publish an Audio Book

From GalleyCat;

Self-published authors can create their own audiobooks with the help of a growing community at Audiobook Creation Exchange.

Writers using Audible.com’s Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX), an online audiobook rights marketplace and production platform, created ten times as many audiobooks in 2012 as they did in 2011, the year the platform launched. The tool helps writers, publishers and literary agents to create and publish audio versions of their books. Authors can record their own readings using the platform, or they can work with actors and voice over professionals, who also have profiles in the market place. It is used by a variety of types of writers. Self-published authors and authors who have publishers but manage the audio rights themselves use the site. In addition, agents and publishers can use the tool to produce work.

Drinking with Men, Schaap's New Memeoir

Here’s an excerpt: ”What I love about bars is that they are places where people talk to one another and tell people stories. There is a kind of openness and exchange of stories in bars. Everyone is relaxed. You go to a bar not to get dressed up, not to have a really fancy night out on the town. You go to the bar to be relaxed and to be yourself. I think that really facilitates great storytelling among regulars. That’s really what we do at bars, we tell each other our stories.”

She concluded: “But you can tell (whether you are writing a story or telling your friends in the bar a story), whether the story is working or not. Sometimes the story you tell in a is going to fall flat. I think in a way, bars are a great place to hone your storytelling skills. Is this making my fellow bar-goers interested in hearing the rest of the story? Am I going into too much detail? Am I not giving enough detail? Bars are great laboratories for storytelling.”