Jan Bono publishes the fifth book in her Sylvia Avery Mystery series.
Jan is one of our most popular presenters at WordFest, her readings marked by her characteristic humor, verve and vivacity. Jan has lived on the SW Washington coast, next to Willapa Bay, since 1977. Oyster Spat is the fifth in her mystery series. Also, Chicken Soup for the Soul has published over 40 of her stories, putting her in their top five contributors world-wide. You can visit her at www.JanBonoBooks.com, and you can read Jan's Book Chat interview about her book here.
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Leslie Slape has plays out there in the world
Leslie is putting the rest of us writers to shame. While we moan and whine about the pandemic and not having the motivation to write, she’s been busy writing plays, and two of her shorter works have attracted some outside attention.
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Till the Eagle Squeals, a one-minute "microplay" written for the One Minute Play Festival's Coronavirus Plays Project, received a Zoom reading in April. It’s about an optimist who tries to stay hopeful during the pandemic, and a realist who can't stop worrying. It will be published in the August issue of the online journal Together, which can be read at https://together-journal.com/
Leslie also wrote a ten-minute play specifically designed for Zoom. A First Time for Everything is about a lonely computer in an office vacated during the pandemic, and the custodian who shows up to sanitize the place in preparation for reopening. She submitted it to the Caravan Theatre, a group of British actors who meet once a week on Zoom to read plays, and they read her play on July 20 in London (Yes, THAT London!). Leslie said that the British working-class accents really added to the humor.
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Karen Bonaudi poem published in new anthology
Congratulations to Karen, whose poem, “Exiles,” was included in the Raven Chronicles anthology, Take a Stand, Art Against Hate (February 2020, $19.99.)
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The anthology contains poems, stories and images from 117 writers and 53 artists, divided into five fluid and intersecting sections: Legacies, We Are Here, Why?, Evidence, and Resistance. Videos of poets reading their work are posted on the Raven Chronicles website at
ravenchronicles.org. The book is available from the Raven website, Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.
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Vikki Carter launches "The Author's Librarian" course offering research tools and tips for writers.
Vikki, who produces the monthly podcast, Authors of the Pacific Northwest, is offering an online course on research skills designed specifically for writers. In her first class, "Cyber Note Taking Tools Uncovered," she introduces four digital note taking tools that can help you take control of your writing time. You can learn about her course offerings at Squishpen Productions and by clicking here.
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Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.
As If Death Summoned to be released on December 1st.
Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) of my next novel are now being sent out to book reviewers in preparation for its release by Amble Press, an imprint of Bywater Books.
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It's about the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and '90s, and the publisher and I were both heartened by a note from the copy editor, Elizabeth Andersen, who wrote, "It was a privilege to read this novel. I've read other novels about AIDS, but this one is by far the best because it is original, poignant, and lyrically written...I look forward to the publication of your novel, which is an outstanding first book for Amble Press."
The first review has come in from Foreword Reviews, declaring the book "as heartwarming and hope-giving as it is heartbreaking..." So far so good.
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Send your literary news for September to alan@alan-rose.com by August 30.
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"Still Life with
Pioneer Grandmother"
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Joseph Green lives in Longview, where he taught at Lower Columbia College for twenty-five years. His 2012 poetry collection, That Thread Still Connecting Us, is a family album in poems that captures moments most families have experienced: of joy and sadness, regret and gratitude, anger, wonder and whimsy, memories painful and profound. This poem is one of my favorite of his for its tenderness, willing to enter into a loved one's waning yet still vivid world.
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"Still Life with Pioneer Grandmother"
By Joseph Green
When her long-dead uncle
left the homestead near Meeker
to appear in my leather jacket and jeans,
my red Che Guevara tee-shirt,
shaggy beard and hair, right there
beside her hospital bed, she said,
Why, Uncle Johnny! How you been?
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Light dropped across her sheets from the window,
and someone rattled a dinner cart down the hall,
and I, who had never spent a minute working
on anybody's farm, said Mighty fine.
I said we'd had mild weather, the hay
was finally in, and everybody hoped
she would be joining them soon.
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How poems speak to us:
Joe's poem evoked a memory of me and my brother visiting our mother at her Assisted Care facility. By then, her mind had departed ahead of her. We asked, "How was your day, Mom?" and she reported happily, "Oh, Dad and I drove down to Woodburn and visited Uncle Al and Aunt Lydia." And my brother, wishing to keep her grounded in our reality, said, "No, Mom. Dad died five years ago, and you didn't go to Woodburn today." Perplexed, she looked to me, and I asked, "Did you have a nice visit, Mom?" whereupon her face lit up again as she told us all about her and Dad's trip to Woodburn and their time with Uncle Al and Aunt Lydia.
(Yes, my brother and I had words after we left.)
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Copies of That Thread Still Connecting Us are available for $10 from MoonPath Press, Amazon.com, and at the Broadway Gallery in Longview.
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Interview with Jan Bono about her new mystery, Oyster Spat.
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About the book:
The feud between Shallowwater Bay oystermen Brent Booi and Tom Diamond is decades old. Environmental issues, tideland ownership, and burrowing shrimp control are only a part of their ongoing disputes which escalate as time goes on.
When recent UW Marine Biologist grad Nautika Henry arrives, she enlists Sylvia Avery to help her find out what really happened to her missing father, while also working to save the oyster fishery from extinction.
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Sylvia and Nautika uncover many long-standing secrets in the tiny burg of Willoopah. But must someone die before all the fences can be mended?
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Oyster Spat is the fifth book in the series. What’s the significance of the title?
Like all my titles, it’s a double entendre. A spat is a disagreement between people—in this case, two oystermen—and spat is also the tiny oyster seed that has set on an oyster shell ready to mature into a harvestable bivalve mollusk.
Your Sylvia Avery books are cozy mysteries. How would you describe this genre?
A cozy mystery contains no graphic violence, no obscene language, and no explicit sex scenes. It has an amateur sleuth who works with the police department in a small town, a quirky cast of characters, and plenty of humor. Cozies are light reading, lots of fun, and won’t disturb your sleep. Primarily for women, my mysteries have a surprisingly strong male following as well
You can read Jan's complete Book Chat interview here.
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Vikki J. Carter produces the Podcast Authors of the Pacific Northwest, interviews with writers, editors and publishers, at www.squishpen.com
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Episode 92: Author Sean Crow works by day as a Language Arts & Social Science instructor in an Oregon correctional facility. He also writes gritty fantasy & Sci- Fi books. Vikki talks with Sean about his latest book & his work to help inspire young students in the correctional facility.
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Book Review:
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
by Ibram X. Kendi
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How we got here
Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we think the way we do?—Those who answered, “Because it’s true,” or “That’s the way it’s always been,” flunked the quiz. You may be referred to Remedial Humanity.
No, ideas have their own history. There are reasons why we believe what we believe. This superb National Book Award winner is the history of one idea: that any race is superior or inferior to any other race.
You can read the full review here.
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Books People Are Excited About...
By pure coincidence, as I was finishing up my review of Stamped from the Beginning, Jim MacLeod submitted his own enthusiastic recommendation to The Columbia River Reader for our "What Are You Reading?" feature.
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"#Black Lives Matter demonstrations have continued months after the killing of George Floyd, mystifying those of us who do not appreciate how deeply racism is embedded in our culture. Dr. Ibram Kendi, a University of Florida professor of history, helps us understand the roots of the protests in this eye-opening examination of 400 years of Black history that rarely, if ever, made it into American textbooks."
Read Jim's full recommendation in the August 15 issue of The Columbia River Reader.
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Jim MacLeod writes as JJ MacLeod, the author of seven books in the Harry & Company Mystery series, available as e-books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.com.
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Excited about a book?
Email me at alan@alan-rose.com with the title and why you liked it, and we'll share it in What Are You Reading? in The Columbia River Reader.
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Bit of whimsy
(for grammar aficionados)
A grammarian
walks into
a bar...
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• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They leave.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
Thanks to Portland playwright Gay Monteverde for these found on the Internet.
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Photo-reflection
Amid our prosaic lives come moments of poetry
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One morning last week, as I was admiring the butterfly bushes, this little fellow came hovering and humming before my face, asserting his territoriality over the lush blossoms. I tried to reassure him: No, really, I was just looking.
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Find more news, reviews, interviews, and photo-reflections at www.alan-rose.com. and feel welcome to contact me at alan@alan-rose.com.
Previous newsletters available here: July 2020, June 2020, May 2020, April 2020, March 2020.
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