Archive - October 9, 2009

We have a new novelist on our Peace Corps bookshelf, Emily Arsenault of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Emily and her husband were PCVs in rural South Africa where she wrote the first draft of The Broken Teaglass. Emily writes: “After school, I spent many afternoons and evenings sitting outside reading, watching goats, and handing out biscuits and apple slices to the little kids who liked to come by and giggle at our poor Setswana skills. And scribbling out the first draft.” Her mystery novel, published this September by Delacorte Press involves a mysterious quotation in a dictionary (Emily once worked for Merriam-Webster). In their review PW wrote, “”Arsenault’s quirky, arresting debut … [is] an absorbing, offbeat mystery-meets-coming-of-age novel that’s as sweet as it is suspenseful.” I’m a great believer in ‘novels of information’ and on Emily’s website she writes about the factual information she was able to use in creating her novel, . . .

Lawrence F. Lihosit (Honduras 1975-77) has published his share of PODs  (print-on-demand) books over the  years (and has a garage full of books to prove it!), and he was kind enough to send in this short piece about his path-to-publication. This is good advice for anyone looking to publish their Peace Corps (or other) stories. By the way, Larry has a new book coming out from iUniverse so all family and friends of Lihosit should be on the alert. However, if you don’t get the book in the mail, don’t worry. We’ll be reviewing it on this website. Here’s what Larry writes about self-publishing. Ninety percent of all Peace Corps memoirs are self-published. Most companies report authors’ average sales at one hundred copies or less, usually to friends and family. Heck, my friends and family have been begging me to quit writing for nearly thirty years. I can’t stop. Maybe you can’t . . .