I know I’ve been quiet on the blog lately but know that I have you on my mind.  A couple of things have come up that I want to share or be shared with…Lit Happens! … this is the coolest slogan that I did not think of and wish I had in a long time (I also learned today from The Blog Readibility Test that my blog is written on a Junior High Level and now u c y.) The one before Lit Happens! was Carl Lennert’s Judge a Book by its Lover!  Julie Schoerke had mugs made for SIBA this year with Lit Happens! on them.

Things often cross my path that connect somehow and these did today.  First, I got Jake Reiss’s cool enewsletter – where the folks at Alabama Booksmith have outlined a gift a day over the first half of December.  And then I got an email from Peter Shankman about a new site – One Goodie - that features one foodie gift and one mom gift a day and thought how cool it would be to add to Bookstore Websites – Lit Happens One Good Book at a Time or One Bookie or One Good Book (or whatever cool name you come up with) and feature a bargain book available for one day or until supplies run out. 

 

Bookstores Can Be Saved is the title of a book that Bookazine’s Ron Rice purchased at Bienville Books and gifted to me at the SIBA Trade Show.  Published in 1952 and subtitled:  14 Proposals Answering the Question:  “What Is Wrong With The Bookstores” and written by Adolph Kroch, Honorary Life Member of American Booksellers Association and author of A Great Bookstore in Action, this book is a reminder that what goes around comes around. 

The fourteen proposals are fascinating and I will share them with you.  As to how far we have come in achieving the proposals or not, I will leave up to you but here goes:

1.  Formulate and define the terms Bookseller, Publisher, Jobber, and their respective functions.
2.  Establish a National Board, consisting of experienced booksellers and publishers, with powers to act.
3.  Raise the minimum discount allowed booksellers to 50% plus 2% for cash and F.O.B. destination.
4.  Raise retail prices to permit increased discounts.
5.  Abolish return privileges to compensate for increased discounts, with certain exceptions to the rule.
6.  Clarify discounts to libraries and institutions.
7.  Define relations of book clubs to bookstores.  Support price maintenance regulations.
8.  Regulate the time element of reprints, cheap editions and reminders.
9.  Sponsor bookselling schools.
10.  Encourage higher wages to attract a better quality of assistants.
11.  Establish uniform accounting and billing systems.
12.  Establish wholesale Book Centers for filling special orders and small orders.
13.  Verify localities in need of bookstores and assist qualified booksellers in establishing new outlets there.
14.  Booksellers and publishers to set aside 1/2 of 1% of their volume of business to promote campaigns to encourage book buying, to publicize bookstores and to finance the operations of the National Board.

It was early.  4:15 am and some two hours before daylight on September 26, and I was up and moving, cab on the way, packed and ready.  One of my sons had been very sad the night before about the fact that I was going, and he woke up so he could hug me and see me off.  He’s eleven.  My heart was breaking. 

But I was going to Mobile, Alabama for the very first time, ready to talk about my novel Sweetsmoke at SIBA, and I was excited.  I was not disappointed. 

Forgive me for glowing, but I’m used to people in the movie industry.  In Hollywood, everyone hates the writer.  Despite providing the entire basis upon which a motion picture is made, writers are considered interchangeable, writers are mad because they’re treated like dirt.  So this was an unusual situation for me.  It seems that booksellers actually like writers.  Is this heaven?  No, it’s Alabama. 

 

I met so many warm, decent, friendly, welcoming booksellers at the Hyperion cocktail party on Friday evening, and on Saturday, I ventured out into the field and signed books at Page and Palette Bookstore in Fairhope.  Now, I just have to say that we have some terrific independent bookstores in Los Angeles, Book Soup, Vroman’s, Skylight (we all miss Dutton’s), but maybe we can sneak Page and Palette in, too.  How great would that be?  A knowledgeable and friendly staff, great selection, and it’s connected to a sweet coffee shop, what more could you want?  It is a welcoming, graceful home to books and writers.  I sat outside for a time, talking to locals, then moved inside until it was time to head back to the airport to travel home. 

SIBA was such an enjoyable experience.  I made excellent new friends and connected with some old friends.  My heart is full. 

I knew it!

My fellow writers and I walked into a ballroom where we were about to spend 10 minutes at each of 6 tables, selling booksellers on selling our books. We were met with applause, which was very touching, though I felt we were the ones who should be clapping: Yay, booksellers!! Thank you for affirming our existence day after day! I popped a Ricola and sat down at my first assigned table. Comparisons to speed-dating had been much-bantered, but I briefly imagined myself as a Hollywood pitch-man, a slightly less desperate version of an Altman character in The Player. My nervousness ebbed, though, as I met my table-mates, who were uniformly open to being seduced by my story. I had thought I would be repeating myself five times, but quickly learned that the personalities at the table determined the tenor of the conversation—this was a dialogue, not a monologue. Some groups preferred that I lead; others jumped in with questions. Some asked about the novel and its origins in my family history; others how to sell it: “What other novels could I compare this to, for my customers?” Some booksellers had heard of The Toss of a Lemon already: they told me the Harcourt rep had selected it as one of his “picks” to talk up at a meeting that morning. It was great to hear one woman say, as I sat down, “Oh, I was hoping you would be at our table!” as well as to hear those I had missed say similar things (with disappointment) when I met them at the book-signing. The dating metaphor is apt, though, in that this was clearly also a chance for them to get to know me: I chatted with some people about my husband, a poet and literary translator, and even, at one point, traded breastfeeding stories! It reminded me again how I enjoy meeting these readers dedicated to serving other readers, with all their attendant curiosity about those who write—a curiosity I, as a reader, know well. I hope I made it clear how open I am to doing this for their book clubs or book stores, in person or by phone. Thank you, SIBA!

Light Bread , the debut novel from Cordell Adams, is based on tales of his own grandmother. Veola Cook feels summoned to improve the life of her community. Her motto is “you see it, you live it, you teach it.” Especially, if she thinks the Lord has commanded it. Veola also happens to be the nosiest woman in Parkerville, Texas.

Set during the late 1960s, the life of the black community is shown not just through Veola’s eyes, but also through a cast of characters, from family members, friends and neighbors. Veola has three children and seven grandchildren to keep up with. Then there is Veola’s next-door neighbor, Loretta Mayfield, who hates Veola’s putting her nose in everyone’s business. There is Fayetta Dewberry, daughter of Veola’s dear deceased friend Melda. Fayetta has returned to town to settle some unfinished business with Leonard Johnson, the father of her children. But, there is another man in Fayetta’s life, Tyrone Walker. He’s a hustler and a skirt-chaser.

Veola is also the housekeeper for three white families. She and her families have a chemistry with each other. They all respect and adore her and listen to her advice, which she gives out freely. She is convinced that she can solve the problems of not only these families, but of all her relations.

When Veola starts investigating who dumped trash on her front porch and trampled through her bushes and who is seeing whom in the middle of the night, she interacts with all of these characters. Veola follows the clues as she makes the rounds to her children, her families, her neighbors and her church.

Adams tells the story of Veola Cook with love and laughter. The novel includes a Readers Discussion Guide for bookclubs.  Adams is an ophthalmologist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. He will be at SIBA in Mobile, AL, at Sweet Tater Pie Publishing, Booth H4. To obtain review copies, stop by and meet him or email him at cordella@flash.net.

Galley Call  by Reeden Wright

Todd Johnson’s debut novel, The Sweet By and By, will be published by William Morrow in March 2009. It is the story of four women who might not ever have met had it not been for aging and illness.

The two older women, Margaret Clayton and Bernice Stokes, meet in an elder care home in North Carolina. These two ladies are decidedly different in many ways, but become good friends. One of their nurses, Lorraine, looks after them in special ways. She understands that Bernice has left the real world and lives only in her mind. She knows that Margaret is still sharp as a tack, but is becoming physically frail.

Rhonda is the hairdresser who comes on Sundays, her only day off from her full-time salon job. She doesn’t work on the ladies in the home because of the money. She does it because she understands that having a regular hair appointment makes them feel good. It gives them a reason to get up on Sundays and it gives them something to look forward to the next Sunday.

By and by, we find out about each of these women and their pasts. And, we learn how in the face of hardships, how each one has coped. Stories of friendship have been told by many writers, in many ways, but Johnson has given his ladies very distinctive voices to tell their stories their way.

To request a galley copy of this novel, contact Tavia Kowalchuk at Tavia.Kowalchuk@HARPERCOLLINS.com.

Galley Call by Reeden Wright

 

In her memoir, it’s not necessarily not the truth (William Morrow, 2009), Jaime Pressly says she started telling her unborn son Dezi James stories about her family. She had written parts of the stories years before and had put them in a box in her attic. She had left them unfinished, but knew they would find their own path. Those stories are what inspired her to write this book, stories that she wanted passed down to her son.

Her memoir isn’t so much about her success as a model and an actress as it is about what she had to do to become those things. How she had to leave Kinston, NC, where she had been born and raised, and move to California to follow her dreams. How she had to convince her mother to move her to California as it was the only way she could follow those dreams. How she had to give up her extended family in Kinston, give up her best friends, give up what was comfortable to pursue the untested and unknown. How she had to become legally emancipated from her parents to follow that dream to Japan to model. How she had to go through the tug-of-war between her mother and father when they divorced.

She shares what her grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents and her older brother instilled in her to keep after her dreams. When her mother remarries and has another daughter, Pressly understands that now there is someone who she must be responsible to.

Pressly tells her story with humor, of course. She is quite articulate and intelligent, things that many people may not know about her. But, of course, to be a comedienne requires an understanding of not only what is funny, but how to get that funny across to an audience. She has succeeded in this very well as she won an Emmy in 2007 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for My Name is Earl. Pressly also designs a line of clothing.

To request a galley copy of Pressley’s book, contact Tavia Kowalchuk at Tavia.Kowalchuk@HARPERCOLLINS.com.

Galley Call by Reeden Wright