Archive - July 24, 2014

A couple of days ago Brooke Warner at Huffington Post posted an article listing mistakes new writers shouldn’t make. They are: 1. Believing what they want to hear. 2. Not taking advantage of every available digital platform. 3. Deciding that they don’t need a marketing campaign, or starting one too late. 4. Believing that more is better. 5. Going renegade. 6. Not doing enough research on who they’re publishing with. 7. Believing that “traditional” is better, no matter what. 8. Failing to get sample product. 9. Not hiring professionals. 10. Choosing a print run over print-on-demand (POD). NOW, go to “The 10 Biggest Mistakes New Authors Make” to read the whys.

Church of the Adagio: Poems by Philip Dacey (Nigeria 1963-65) Rain Mountain Press $15.00 95 pages June 2014 Reviewed by Mark Brazaitis (Guatemala 1991-93) Reading Philip Dacey’s poems is like having a conversation with a funny, sophisticated, and insightful friend. You’re laughing, you’re nodding in appreciation, you’re saying, “A-ha. I never saw things that way, but-wow-you’re right.” And you don’t want to say goodbye anytime soon. If you pick up Dacey’s new collection of poems, I guarantee you will: 1. Laugh. At, for example, a poem about a llama who shows up in Dacey’s driveway. “I was all stammer and gawk and disbelief,” Dacey writes. When the llama ventures into the middle of the road, however, Dacey must act: . . . I saw the headline, “Llama killed by truck.” Dropping the rake, I raced to rescue him, who now stood frozen, straddling the centerline, looking this way and that-oh, too much . . .

Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s newest novel will be published in October. Entitled Love & Ordinary Creatures. Gwyn’s website says this about the book: Love and Ordinary Creatures is told through the eyes of a cockatoo in love with his very human caretaker. Snatched in a net from his Australian homeland as a young parrot, Caruso has adapted to captivity and has learned the lessons of love from his previous owner, Theodore Pinter, who was obsessively fixated on his childhood sweetheart. Now in his new home with the beautiful and talented Clarissa, Caruso has found both love and happiness—until a handsome stranger arrives in town and sets his sights on Clarissa. Smart, passionate, and wildly inventive, Caruso strives to put his human rival in his place before he steals Clarissa away for good. Set in the early 1990s in the quaint seashore town of Ocracoke, North Carolina, Love and Ordinary Creatures is . . .