Is it hot in here?
Tampa-area writers: Creative Loafing has relaunched its fiction contest. This year’s theme: heat.
Details are available from Creative Loafing here, as are lots of clichés: Get it while it’s hot, turn up the heat, hot under the collar, etc., etc. Submission deadline is Dec. 22.
2012 Bombeck Workshop registration opens Dec. 6 at noon
The 2012 Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton will kick off with a keynote talk from Alan Zweibel, an original Saturday Night Live writer and author of the 2006 Thurber Prize-winning novel The Other Shulman.
Online registration for the workshop, slated April 19-21, opens at noon on Tuesday, Dec. 6. The registration fee is $375, with 35 free scholarships available for University of Dayton students, beginning in mid-January. More information about faculty and sessions is available through the “2012 Workshop” tab above and here. We will post a link when registration opens.
If past workshops are any indication, the popular event will fill up quickly. Every workshop has sold out — some in a matter of days, others in weeks.
The 2012 workshop is expected to bring more than 350 beginning and professional writers to Dayton. Why the enormous appeal? The workshop has attracted such household names over the years as Dave Barry, Phil Donahue, Art Buchwald, Nancy Cartwright, Don Novello, Gail Collins and Garrison Keillor, but the personal involvement of Erma Bombeck’s family makes the event at her alma mater memorable and sets it apart from the myriad other writers’ workshops offered across the country. Alumnus Bill Bombeck and his children, Betsy, Andy and Matt, regularly attend the workshops.
The Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop is co-sponsored by the University of Dayton’s National Alumni Association, the University of Dayton’s College of Arts and Sciences, National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Greyden Press, Dayton Marriott Hotel and the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop Endowment. Workshop sessions will take place on campus, with dinners held at the Dayton Marriott Hotel, 1414 S. Patterson Blvd.
Are you fluent in Chick?
No? Maybe The CHICKtionary: From A-Line to Z-Snap, the Words Every Woman Should Know by Anna Lefler can help you out. Anna will be with us at the 2012 Bombeck Workshop talking about how a publisher came to her to write the book.
Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope
An email showed up in my inbox from one of our 2012 keynote speakers, Jeff Zaslow, about his newest project, being unrolled this week. He invited me to share it:
*****
I’m happy to let you know that GABBY: A Story of Courage and Hope, the memoir of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and astronaut Mark Kelly, will be released this Tuesday. I was honored to collaborate with them on the book.
This Monday night at 10 p.m. ET, there will be an hour-long ABC special tied to the book. Here is a 30-second promo.
And here’s a link to a three-minute piece from ABC News which offers the first footage from the special. If you have a few minutes, it’s pretty compelling.
The book also is excerpted this coming week in PEOPLE magazine.
Many thanks for taking a look!
All good wishes,
Jeff Zaslow
*****
Can’t wait to see him at the workshop in April, where we can ask him about finding the story no one else can tell, on this books, plus other great ones like The Girls from Ames and The Last Lecture.
Aww — thanks, Rose
Last spring, the wonderful Rose Valenta published a blog post that made me exceptionally proud and, truth be told, blush a little. Here’s a bit of what she wrote.
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Last year at this time, I was out in Dayton, Ohio, attending EBWW 2010 with about 350 other writer humorists at the University of Dayton. We left there with a mascot (E.B. Heron, named after E.B. White); many new friends; and Facebook/Twitter accounts to look up, join, or send friend requests. We also left there with a feeling of kick-ass enthusiasm, we were among the “We can do this!” success group. My tape recorder, business card slots, and notebook were all full. I was armed and dangerous with perceived leverage and a little chutzpah. I miss my friends there now, and can’t wait for EBWW 2012.
…
We are competitive, keeping everyone in the loop for things like interviews, new book releases, awards, contests, and book launches. You could also say it is a training ground for learning great communication skills. We also post failed attempts, but we downplay those. I believe we’ve finally made it into the A Zone.
Many of us have come a long way in just the last 12 months.
*****
I’m looking forward to seeing her and the entire E.B. Heron crew again at the 2012 Bombeck Workshop.
Horsing around
An 80-year-old is missing and possibly kidnapped. Or he’s just playing a big joke on everyone. That’s the premise of Horse Races and Paint Stores: The Anti-biography of Duffy O’Day by Patrick Kennedy, just out on Kindle this week.
Talk to your TV?
The wonderful USA Today columnist Craig Wilson, returning as a 2012 faculty member, has a few thoughts on conversations with the idiot box.
Almost a decade later, author resurrects a print book for Kindle
When Saralee Perel first published Raw Nerves in 2004, it was a traditional paperback. And why not? Amazon.com, nine years old at the time, had only just finally started turning its first profits, and the concept of digital books was largely just that, a concept.
But despite being a “recommended mystery” by Independent Booksellers, “the book just didn’t get any distribution or traction,” said Perel.
Welcome to 2011. Perel, a nationally syndicated columnist, has re-released the book on Kindle, hoping it will find an audience the second time around. A “comedic thriller,” it tells the story of a Cape Cod psychologist with a patient who wants her dead. Balancing the terror and humor requires deft use of transitional scenes, Perel said, for example, following a scene with a scary patient session with a transitional drive home before something funny happens when her character opens the door.
“That transitional scene can be a drive, a phone call, anything that makes the changeover to humor flow smoothly,” Perel said. “That also works for any emotional change — from terror to humor to sadness.”
She’s hopeful the rerelease through Kindle will help Raw Nerves make the transition to sales success. “The good thing about Amazon’s program is that it gives the book a second chance,” she said. “And me, too.”
is the very model of a modern, middle-aged man — except that he’s now won four awards for humorous writing from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He laughs at the absurdities of life in his humor column for his hometown paper, The Stamford Advocate. His column is syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune and has run in newspapers across the country and around the world. A collection of his columns appears in his book, Leave It to Boomer: A Look at Life, Love and Parenthood by the Very Model of the Modern Middle-Age Man.
Lisa Smith Molinari, an 18-year Navy spouse, mother of three and humor columnist, published an article, “I Want a Wife, Too” in the May issue of Military Spouse magazine. Check out her 
a “unique category with maybe two or three billion people.”
has released a book, A Real Mother: stumbling through motherhood. A columnist for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, she quips her bio reads like a bad joke: “After working as a lifeguard, a Peace Corps volunteer, a middle school teacher, a switchboard operator and finally, an attorney (but don’t hold that against her), she is uniquely qualified to do absolutely nothing. That is why she writes.”
Lisa Tognola’s parody ad for a “Hunk of the Month” club (made of “medical grade plastic … as close as you’ll get to the real thing”) is included in the new Valentine’s Day anthology 