Friday, April 8, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Don't Miss the Naples Authors and Books Festival This Weekend
http://authorsandbooksfestival.org/2010/12/book-as-event/
Here's a book festival with something for everyone, and it's coming up this weekend. Aside from a two day slate of workshops, there's a wonderful Saturday luncheon at one of Naples' premier restaurants with the lively Nancy Cohen as keynote speaker, two days of workshops, pitch sessions with editors and literary agents and an evening street fair for attending authors. There's a mystery authors panel on Sunday morning, where we're talking about the nuts and bolts of the most popular genre in the nation, and I'd love to see you there.
Even if you can't make the conference, take the virtual tour through the website which offers tips, quips and suggestions to help you make the most of your writing career.
Here's a book festival with something for everyone, and it's coming up this weekend. Aside from a two day slate of workshops, there's a wonderful Saturday luncheon at one of Naples' premier restaurants with the lively Nancy Cohen as keynote speaker, two days of workshops, pitch sessions with editors and literary agents and an evening street fair for attending authors. There's a mystery authors panel on Sunday morning, where we're talking about the nuts and bolts of the most popular genre in the nation, and I'd love to see you there.
Even if you can't make the conference, take the virtual tour through the website which offers tips, quips and suggestions to help you make the most of your writing career.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Southwest Florida Book Festival-- See You There!
Southwest Florida Reading Festival Festival Authors
Got books? Posters? Name Badge? Reivew? Bookmarks? Tape? Oh, yes, do not forget, never forget a pen to sign copies with.
And so it goes, I'm getting ready once again for that grand book fair, the Southwest Florida Reading Festival, tomorrow, Saturday, March 18, Harborside Hall, downtown Fort Myers. I've taken a perch in the Marketplace. Do stop by and say hello where I'll be signing my suspense novels One Big Itch and The Don Juan Con--if I haven't sneaked off to hear one of my favorite authors giving a talk, that is.
Nelson DeMille and Linda Fairstein are headliners, this year a thriller writer and a mystery author, and as it happens the Gulf Coasting Magazine of the News-Press in Fort Myers thought to inquire of the lovely librarians who organize this event just how it is that they select the authors who are invited to speak. The lineup this year also includes J.A. Jance, Ridley Pearson Heather Graham, Mary Jane Clark, and our own Prudy Taylor Board.
Guess what? The Librarians look at their own checkout numbers and pick the most popular novelists available. So why is mystery at the top of the list? Because they are the most sought after books in the library, that's why.
One of the very great pleasures of a newly published author such as myself is to meet and chat with the most famous names in the business. I met Linda Fairstein a few years ago at SleuthFest in Fort Lauderdale, one of the greatest mystery writers' conferences in the nation. Fairstein is a mystery writer after my own heart. She laces her books with historical touches. One of my favorites is Entombed, about Edgar Allen Poe and the house he occupied along the Hudson River in upstate New York. "All these things intrigue me," Fairstein told Tropicalia: "I'm not interested in car chases and shootouts. I want to come away smarter. I like to learn something in the year it takes me to write a book."
Right on, Linda. Besides that, I have to confide what she whispered to me, when I first met her. "I'll buy your book she said. "I remember those days when I started out just how hard it was to sell my books."
Got books? Posters? Name Badge? Reivew? Bookmarks? Tape? Oh, yes, do not forget, never forget a pen to sign copies with.
And so it goes, I'm getting ready once again for that grand book fair, the Southwest Florida Reading Festival, tomorrow, Saturday, March 18, Harborside Hall, downtown Fort Myers. I've taken a perch in the Marketplace. Do stop by and say hello where I'll be signing my suspense novels One Big Itch and The Don Juan Con--if I haven't sneaked off to hear one of my favorite authors giving a talk, that is.
Nelson DeMille and Linda Fairstein are headliners, this year a thriller writer and a mystery author, and as it happens the Gulf Coasting Magazine of the News-Press in Fort Myers thought to inquire of the lovely librarians who organize this event just how it is that they select the authors who are invited to speak. The lineup this year also includes J.A. Jance, Ridley Pearson Heather Graham, Mary Jane Clark, and our own Prudy Taylor Board.
Guess what? The Librarians look at their own checkout numbers and pick the most popular novelists available. So why is mystery at the top of the list? Because they are the most sought after books in the library, that's why.
One of the very great pleasures of a newly published author such as myself is to meet and chat with the most famous names in the business. I met Linda Fairstein a few years ago at SleuthFest in Fort Lauderdale, one of the greatest mystery writers' conferences in the nation. Fairstein is a mystery writer after my own heart. She laces her books with historical touches. One of my favorites is Entombed, about Edgar Allen Poe and the house he occupied along the Hudson River in upstate New York. "All these things intrigue me," Fairstein told Tropicalia: "I'm not interested in car chases and shootouts. I want to come away smarter. I like to learn something in the year it takes me to write a book."
Right on, Linda. Besides that, I have to confide what she whispered to me, when I first met her. "I'll buy your book she said. "I remember those days when I started out just how hard it was to sell my books."
Thursday, March 10, 2011
The Caped Superintendent Myth Plagues Schools
How are we going to solve the education crisis? Just throw money at the next superintendent and this talented creature will create magic in the classroom. Since I happen to be a bi-coastal bird with one webbed foot in a southwest Florida metropolis and the other on a dinky village in the San Juan Islands of Washington, I see the same story over and over in school districts I happen to know about.
Whether a large district of a small one, our communities care about education, but too often school boards fall prey to the siren song of head-hunters who cheer them on, with expensive and disasterous results. A wealthy community in Collier County, Florida home to the extravagant community of Naples is a case in point, which I felt it was worthy of attention.
I'll venture to say that you, dear reader, have seen this very thing going on on in a community you know and love and so I offer this column, which appeared in the Fort Myers News-Press this morning as a cautionary tale.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20110310/OPINION/103100362/1015/Collier-schools-pay-big-superintendent-mistake
Whether a large district of a small one, our communities care about education, but too often school boards fall prey to the siren song of head-hunters who cheer them on, with expensive and disasterous results. A wealthy community in Collier County, Florida home to the extravagant community of Naples is a case in point, which I felt it was worthy of attention.
I'll venture to say that you, dear reader, have seen this very thing going on on in a community you know and love and so I offer this column, which appeared in the Fort Myers News-Press this morning as a cautionary tale.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20110310/OPINION/103100362/1015/Collier-schools-pay-big-superintendent-mistake
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Goodwill - the new Saks?
Recession-era reverse snobbery it may be, but these days it’s just fine, thank you, to brag about the new/old tank top you snagged at the consignment shop for $4.95. Even if you are heading out for a winter cruise, you may as well skip the trip to Macy’s or Saks, for resort wear, since the hot look from designers such as Tory Burch has been filched right out of the consignment-store aisles, or so it seems to me.
Take a look for yourself at:
http://www.toryburch.com/lookbook_resort2010_runway.aspx
Take a look for yourself at:
http://www.toryburch.com/lookbook_resort2010_runway.aspx
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Wonder is our need today, not information
So said Elia Kazan, actor director, playwright, and novelist. Kazan was famous for his visual daring, and so I would imagine he’d be blown away by the stellar performance of the moon, our most versatile celestial actor, pulling off a disciplined performance, a full, stately and slow lunar eclipse, the likes of which our world has not seen in some 350 years, and it happened in the wee hours Tuesday morning December 21, ushering in the winter solstice.
The best seating for the grand spectacle in our backyard was in the darkest corner, beneath the Australian pine tree, hidden away from glaring street lamps and the white reflections of Christmas decorations floating in the lake. We crept there with our chairs and passed the binoculars round and round and put out cell calls to interested parties and shot frame after frame of the action, much to the disgust of an anhinga whose single loud squawk surely meant, “down in front.”
As the silver moon turned the deep shade of an overripe tangerine, clearly visible to the naked eye, a deep orange blush, an expression of love from the world’s shyest guy.
The supporting cast was wonderful. The big dipper, usually so full of himself, lay prostrate, bowl overturned in a posture of complete and worshipful submission. Just offstage, Orion, the archer, served as a heavenly impresario saluting the moon’s greatest performance with a silent nod and a still wave of his arm.
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