Emerging Writers Network

Happy Birthday to Squire Babcock

According to Facebook (my birthday calendar of record), it's Squire Babcock's birthday, which immediately brings to mind a great road trip with Aaron Burch and Matt Bell to Murray State University, a fried bologna sandwich, the Wiggles, a great cheeseburger in the middle of Ohio, broken bottles of beer, Matt Bell's great sleeping dilemma, and really enjoying the hell out of Squire's novel, The King of Gaheena, on the ride home.

 

A Pride-Inducing Note Regarding the EWN

The Emerging Writers Network started as a bit of a lark--me seeing just how lousy a book review I could write. It was intended to be newspaper-style and was of Alyson Hagy's Keeneland (that sad little review can still be read over at Amazon--I'll not be providing you a link though). That first year (2000) was fun, I was reading again (something I'd somewhat given up for a five year period--hmm, my first was born in 1995...) and people were actually emailing me and asking to be put on this mailing list I had created that sporadically sent out book reviews.

By 2002 those poor bastards were receiving  an email just about every other day as i reviewed 102 books and interviewed over 30 authors during that calendar year.

2005 was a highlight year though. Sometime in late 2004/early 2005 I got some confirmation that a small publisher I was excited about was going to take on a manuscript of an author that I really liked, and had put in touch--my first bit of agenting (though at the much less than standard, zero percent take). Somewhere around the same time, a person I'd befriended online, another reviewer (though one who also wrote fiction) with similar tastes as my own, David Abrams, found out he was being sent to Iraq via Kuwait. I was one of the fortunate few that was on his email list when he began sending journal entries back home. After some asking and his verifying it wouldn't lead to a court marshal on his end and me disappearring from the world--we received permission for me to share these journal entries with the Emerging Writers Network. At the end of each entry I'd add something about David's military address and how was a voracious reader that liked movies and sand was everywhere and snacks were cool, etc.

And here's where the bit of pride comes in--the members of the EWN, political views non-withstanding, thoughts on the war set aside, flooded David with books and dvd's and chocolates and baby wipes and thank yous and praise. It was fantastic knowing I had a small part in seeing that happen.

February 28, 1995. That would be the day I received an email from super-agent Nat Sobel noting he'd been reading the journal entries and wondered if David had an agent. If I remember hard enough, I think I can hear David yelling ARE YOU KIDDING ME, OF COURSE I KNOW WHO NAT SOBEL IS in reply to my email to him asking if it was okay to pass along his contact information.

Today Fobbit, the novel David wrote that are at least somewhat based on his meticulous journals from his time over there, is officially published. While I received a galley not long ago, I purchased  a final copy Saturday morning. David was overly kind in his acknowledgments section stating:

My thanks to:

Dan Wickett who posted some of my journal entries from Iraq at his Emerging WritersNetwork blog in early 2005.  The result was an outpouring of care packages full of not baby wipes or foot powder, but the finest kind of surprise a soldier like me could have found after he ripped away the packing tape: books.  The EWN members kept me well-supplied with enough reading material for five deployments.  Thank God it never came to that.  Aside from the wartime support, Dan's EWN introduced me to an entire army of writers who have continued to support me over the years as I hunkered down at the keyboard.  I've met some of those writers, but for the others, I remain little more than a mute avatar on Facebook.  They have never stopped buoying me up with encouragement and for that, I am truly grateful.

It was great reading that and reliving the experience of watching something go wildly beyond whatever motion I thought I could nudge forward. It's the sort of thing that makes me realize I need to make better efforts at keeping this site alive daily so people continue to stop by with visits.

 

Source of Lit - Robert Coover

Robert Coover on characters. This comes from An interview by Larry McCaffrey that was originally published in Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists (University of Illinois Press, 1983) and then re-published in Robert Coover: A Study of the Short Fiction by Thomas E. Kennedy (Twayne, 1992). The interview is from 1979.

LM: Critics and reviewers have often remarked on this surprising empathy they feel for Nixon. How did you choose him to be your central narrator in The Public Burning.

RC: I'm not sure whether it was a matter of choice or necessity--he emerged from the texts, as it were. He has a way of doing that, fighting his way to the cener stage; it's hard to stop him. Nevertheless, there were other possibilities. The book began as a little theater idea which grew into a series of rather raucous circus acts. I began to feel the need for a quieter voice to break in from time to time. I wanted someone who lived inside the mythology, accepting it, and close to the center, yet not quite in the center, off to the edge a bit, an observer. A number of characters auditioned for the part, but Nixon, when he appeared, proved ideal.

Deeeeee-Troit Poh-et-reeeee

Detroit Poetry is kicking a little rear end these days!

Today's Poem of the Day at Verse Daily was Terry Blackhawk's "The Burn," from her most recent collection, The Light Between.

The Light Between is also slotted as the 7th Best-Selling contemporary poetry collection for the week of March 4 according to the Poetry Foundation.

The number 1 Best-Selling contemporary poetry collection? 
Allegiance by Francine Harris.

What do these two books have in common up there among the collections published by FSG and Random House, Ecco, W.W.Norton and Random House; written by Billy Collins and Philip Levine, Mary Oliver and Patti Smith?

These two collections are both recently published by Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI) and written by women in Detroit.

Two of Terry Blackhawk's previous collections have recently been contracted to join Dzanc Books rEprint Series as eBooks in the coming months (Body & Field, and Escape Artist).

A Simple Goodbye

It's been pretty quiet around here at the EWN the past week or so and those of you that also bounce to my Facebook page occasionally have seen friends and family posting well wishes and nice sentiments.  They've all been appreciated greatly. 

My mom passed away this past Sunday.  A year and a half ago I wrote about why I wouldn't be trashing the Twilight books anytime soon, as they were a launching point for my daughter that led her to books by Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Shakespeare and beyond (Moby Dick is even on the TBR pile these days).  Beyond truly believing that there is hardly anything out there that can be considered a complete waste of time for beginning readers, I am also a firm believer that parents can mold their children into readers.

If you were to walk into the front door of my parents home, a fairly modestly sized home, you couldn't help but notice the right hand wall is covered with three immense, floor-to-ceiling, ridiculously overcrowded, bookshelves.  My mom was an incredible multi-tasker, and reading a book was almost always on of those multi-tasks.  My dad is similar.  And I can't remember the last time that either my sister or myself was not in the middle of at least one book.  I don't think that is a coincidence at all.

She was a funny reader--a lover of mysteries, she always bailed from the first chapter to read the last 2 or 3 pages of the book, but then went back and read from where she bailed to the end of the book again.  She was an author's dream though--if she read one of your books and liked it, she's immediately haunt bookstores, Amazon, and the local library to find each and every other title you ever published.

I cannot remember a birthday or Christmas that I wasn't given a book by her as my gift.  In the rare cases it wasn't a book, it was money with a note--do not spend this on necessities--buy yourself a book and if you need more, let me know.  If there's a reason I do what I do here at the EWN, some sort of cause and effect, it definitely traces back to my parents, their love of reading, and their taking me to the library every week when I was five years old.  While she did end up with a reading snob who tended to say no thanks more than not when she suggested a book for me the past few years--her tastes ran extremely wide:  romances, mysteries, thrillers, true crime, and beyond--she did end up with two readers for kids and a trio of grandkids that those traits were also passed on to.

 

Sad Day in Publishing - SMU Press

Per her Facebook page, Kathryn Lang spent her last day of employment as Senior Editor at SMU Press yesterday.  The status update doesn't state anything more than that, but if one recalls last March it was announced that the Provost of the University was looking into shutting down this venerable institution.  Then in May it was suggested to send letters (and in the comments of this blog, perhaps small checks of donation) explaining just why the press was needed, to said Provost.

While I've not read anything that specifically states so, the removal of the wonderful Ms. Lang as Senior Editor there leads me to believe we should all be more than ready to hear that the press has taken a new direction sometime soon and is no longer publishing the wonderful literary fiction and non-fiction that we've seen the last decade or so from the trio that ran the press.  Authors like Mitch Wieland, Debra Monroe, Alan Wier, Janet Peery, George Garrett, Tracy Daugherty, Sam Michel, W.P. Kinsella, Liza Wieland, Anthony Bukowski, Edward Falco and so many more.

It's simply sad.  I can only hope that more and more people continue to be willing to start up new publishing ventures and authors like these can continue to find homes for their work.

EWN Thanksgiving Thoughts

As today is somewhat to be set aside for contemplating at least a bit on what you have to give thanks for, it's what I'll post something about here today.

I try to use the EWN as a sounding board on literature only, but occasionally something about my kids will sneak in--they by far top the list as to what I'm thankful for.  They're not perfect, but neither is their assumedly biggest role model so they have that as a fair enough excuse.  Their good far outweighs the few things that keep them from being perfect though.

The ongoings of the EWN and Dzanc from my end would be greatly reduced if not for the amazing amount of help I get from my parents, my sister and one aunt in particular.  Their love, support and constant helping in the zoo that is getting things in my personal life taken care is essential.

Which gets me to Dzanc Books.  I've said it before but by far the best thing that has come about from starting up Dzanc Books is getting to know Steve Gillis better.  This past year hasn't been the smoothest for either of us which has made the friendship that much more important.  If I yelled the highest accolades possible about him as a person, they wouldn't be enough and getting to know the rest of his family more this year, and seeing the impact Steve's lifestyle and actions have had on his kids, only confirms those thoughts.

Continuing to develop Dzanc with great people like Matt Bell, Steven Seighman, Scott Beal, Eugene Cross, Diane Goettel, Gina Frangello, Stacy Bierlein, Dwayne Hayes, Jessica Bomarito, Peter Cole and Ted Pelton, and an incredible cast of interns that helped this year has been fantastic.  Getting to work some with Jeremy Chamberlin has been great too.

Getting to know many of our authors much better this past year, especially Dawn Raffel, Jeff Parker, Terese Svoboda, Hesh Kestin, and Robert Lopez, as well as continuing the relationships with past authors such as Roy Kesey, Yannick Murphy, Peter Markus, Kyle Minor, Michael Czyzniejewski, Suzanne Burns, Peter Selgin, and Laura van den Berg, plus future Dzanc authors such as Henning Koch, Jonathan Baumbach, Jeff Kass, Pamela Ryder, Sean McGrady, David Galef, Josh Russell, Jac Jemc, Eugene Cross, Jennifer Spiegel, Luis Jaramillo, Stephen Graham Jones, Josip Novakovich, J.A. Tyler and Matt Dojny.

The continuation of the growth of the community that is the EWN, and the impetus for almost all of the above relationships is also something I'm very thankful for.  It's been a decade now that I've been doing this stuff and I think I'm getting close to the point of no longer being worried about burnout.  A great part of that lack of worrying is from some of the great friendships this has led me to, especially of some people in the local area like Steve Gillis, Elizabeth Ellen, Aaron Burch, Matt Bell, Mike Alber, Jeff Parker, Barry Graham, Keith Taylor, Anna Clark, Jeff Kass, Scott Beal, Terry Blackhawk, Peter Markus, Norene Cashen, and many, many others that are fighting the same fight--they make it too much fun to ever think of burning out.

I hope anybody that is reading this today has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that those of you that are reading it afterwards are late to the reading because you had such a fantastic Thanksgiving.

Enjoy,

Dan

Out of Print

What title (or titles) that is Out of Print would you recommend to EWN readers (based at least slightly on the tastes you've seen expressed here over the years)?  The type of book you recommend to your friends but let them know in advance they'll need to haunt used stores or online sites like www.abebooks.com to find?

EWN Veteran's Day Post

I know there are more than 2 or 3 veterans in the audience here at the EWN.  One of by far the nicest things that has ever gone on via the EWN was when a very early member, David Abrams, was sent over to Kuwait and then Iraq some 5-6 years ago (maybe even 7).  David pretty religiously kept a journal while over there and shared it with some via email.  He and I exchanged a few more emails and he gave me permission to posts excerpts of his journal emails here at the EWN.  What it led to was an outpouring of support from other EWN members--sending David books, handy wipes, snack foods, and perhaps most important of all the fact that there was a steady stream of reminder that there were people, many of whom certainly were not backing the war/operation going on at the time, back home appreciative of what he was doing as a member of our armed forces.

Of all the emails David sent me during that span, this one was the one I was most excited to share with EWN'ers, back in late December 2005:

 

Dear Dan,

The e-mail you (and I) have been waiting for!

I am now safe at home in the arms of America.  It's been a long, strange, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding year.  Believe me when I say I could not have made it through as well as I did without the undying support of my friends at EWN, Readerville and a couple of other "Soldier support" websites.  No matter what their views on the Iraq Situation may be, your subscribers, in their own special way, helped fight the War on Terrorism through their endlessly surprising care packages and e-mails of encouragement.  If any of them feel so moved, they can continue to support other literature-starved soldiers over there through websites like anysoldier.com or booksforsoldiers.com.

And now, if you'll excuse me, my wife is calling from the other room.  I must heed love's invitation.

Happy Holidays to everyone.

Peace,
David

David now blogs over at The Quivering Pen and is well worth your time and reading.

The Story of Dzanc Books

Many thanks to Jeremiah Chamberlin (see much more of his work at Fiction Writers Review), and Poets & Writers, as JC spent a good 4-6 hours talking to Steven Gillis and myself awhile back and put together a really nice article on the forming of Dzanc Books, how it all works and what our big goals are.  If you have any interest in the early days of either the EWN or Dzanc Books, or what exactly makes the amazing Steven Gillis tick, it's well worth your time to read.