The Call

Enter to win a paperback copy of Sitting on Cold Porcelain.

Just comment on the post below and leave the first bit of your email address. You do need to be a NOR Newsletter / Fan Club subscriber to enter. USA Postage Only. Ends - 3/11/2011

***

The Call – But Most of All, I remember Portnoy

I got the call to writing when I was in elementary school, but it really hit home when my children were young. Erma Bombeck was still appearing on television then, and “Aunt Erma’s Cope Book” was more valuable to me than Doctor Spock.

I read “If life is a Bowl of Cherries What am I Doing in the Pits?” at least 6 times. My kids were driving me nuts and it suited my predicament, even though I knew by that time, Erma Bombeck was about $31 million richer and having lunch regularly with Joe Dionne, McGraw-Hill’s Chairman. She was being driven all over BYC in a limo, while I was sneak writing humor pieces with a flashlight in the back seat of my old Chevrolet Biscayne, away from the prying eyes of my mother-in-Law, Surly Kate, who had the sense of humor of a wasp.

“I grew up during the depression,” she said. “No one had the time to write, we all had to get real jobs.”

I have to do this book soon, or my children will grow up and I will run out of great humor material, I thought.

I went out and got a real job.

The urge to write never subsided and I still wrote humor pieces in the bathroom like Portnoy, mostly to my friends.

E-mail came along and I had a field day entertaining my co-workers.

“You should write a book” they all said.

I just married off my last daughter and ran out of material, I thought.

Surly Kate and a few years passed, grandchildren came along, and I was again energized.

My grandson came home from school with an “F” one day, then got into the Doritos and spilled them all over the floor, tipped over his soda, yelled “Avast!” and kicked the dog.

My daughter said “You know, Mom, I have never forgiven you for not allowing me to take oboe lessons when I was 12. What were you thinking with the trumpet lessons?”

“What does that have to do with little Johnny’s behavior?” I asked.

“It’s all your fault,” she said. “You wanted Harry James, and I could really give a rat’s ass about any flight of the bumble bee.”

“Okay, so you want oboe lessons, or the real book on Pirate Parenting?” I asked. I was becoming my mother-in-law.

“It’s too late, I’m 30 years old.”

Then it occurred to me, kids are like squirrels. The whole time you are raising them, they gather evidence against you like nuts, so they can pelt you with them after they grow up and fail “Parenting Skills 101.”

Yes, Sitting on Cold Porcelain is finally that book.

Rose A. Valenta

www.rosevalenta.com

About the Author

Rose A. Valenta is a nationally syndicated humor columnist. Her irreverent columns have been published in Senior Wire, Associated Content, Courier Post Online, NPR, Newsday, USA TODAY, the WSJ Online, and many other local news and radio websites.

She is the author of Rosie’s Renegade Humor Blog. This is the blog for people who would be knowledgeable about current events and politics if only politicians and news anchors didn’t stretch the truth. “What else is there to do, but share an honest laugh?” Rose said.

Rose regularly attends the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton, is a member of the Robert Benchley Society and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC).

Rose lived in Philadelphia for over 40 years, where she honed her humor writing skills by being married to a Philadelphia Policeman and giving birth to three children. “Times have changed. Now that we have 10 grandchildren, I’m not sure how I feel about children being exposed to the evening news. Humorous things happen, like the time my grandson asked us to come outside to see his version of ‘Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman’ right after Snowmageddon.”

Rose worked for a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill, Datapro Information Services, for 12 years as a technical staff writer, and also wrote freelance articles for other computer industry publications.

She claims that her Italian heritage stunted her growth. She is English on her Father’s side and believes that in a past life, during medieval times, she was probably a trusted member of the Counsel of the Jesters.

Her latest book is Sitting on Cold Porcelain which you can find out more about at her website at www.rosevalenta.com.

How Starless Sky Came to Be

Enter to win a copy of Starless Sky by Paige Agnew.

Just comment on the post below and leave the first bit of your email address on the post. You do need to be a member of the NOR newsletter / Fan Club or sign-up to day. Ends 3/4/2011

***

How Starless Sky Came to Be by Paige Agnew

It was Halloween. I remember that day clearly in my head. I remember coming home and immediately going into search for my dog, but finding him gone. Forever. Trying to sort out my feelings and make sense of situation that didn’t, I started writing. Nothing serious. Nothing, really, that I even finished. The first line of it stuck with me, though. He was gone, without my permission, or consent, just gone. Forever. Those words, in a nutshell, seemed to sum up everything I was feeling. Those words are the same words that begin Starless Sky.

I am a proud bookworm. My room’s overflowing with literature of all kinds and I think any avid reader thinks to themselves, at some point or another, about creating their own story, whether they execute it, or not. Well, what I wanted to do was create a story that could tackle a serious subject without being too sad. A good cry is nice every once in awhile, but I’d rather enjoy a book with a smile, than have a box of tissues next to me, while I sob. At the point when I started writing Starless, over a year past the death of my pet, I thought that I could incorporate some of the feelings of loss and grief that I had felt before, but present it in a way that was more hopeful than sad.

One of the main focuses of the book is the metaphor of the earthquake and the aftershock. Starless Sky takes place during the aftershock. It’s the moments after the initial tragedy. Death, the earthquake, is the easy part. It’s the aftershock, the learning process of living without that loved one in your life, that’s the hardest. It’s an everyday struggle. Starless Sky isn’t about death. It’s about moving on from it and realizing that you need help along the way.



My inspiration for writing Starless Sky, beyond desperately wanting to write a book of my own, was to create a story that could shed some light and a topic that’s usually dark. More than anything else, I think Starless Sky is a journey, a coming of age, perhaps. Kahlen grows a lot through the course of the story and I hope audiences will take away something as well.

To read more go to my website, http://paigeagnew.com. Listen to my audio excerpt, if you are intrigued to hear more, you can purchase my book there as well.

Paige Agnew

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Enter to win an eCopy of Final Vector

Just comment on the post below and leave the first bit of your email address. You do need to be a NOR Newsletter / Fan Club subscriber to enter. Ends 2/12/2011

***

You Say You Want a Revolution? by Allan Leverone

It’s not often people can say they lived through a revolution, but that’s exactly what you are witnessing at this very moment, at least if you’re a writer or a reader.

The publishing industry has remained largely unchanged since Johannes Gutenberg stood the world on its head with his invention of the movable-type printing press. That was more than five hundred years ago, setting the stage for a system where publishers determined what was worth reading by virtue of the fact that they owned the expensive equipment and you did not.

Think about that for a second, because it’s pretty hard to fathom. Since 1439, roughly the year of Gutenberg’s invention, transportation has evolved from walking (unless you were wealthy enough to own a horse), to horse and carriage, to automobile, to airplane to spaceship. Book production has evolved not at all.

Until the last few years.

First came self-publishing of books and print magazines, offering an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to tell her story, a big step forward for writers everywhere but sometimes a questionable one in terms of product quality. If two books were placed side by side, it was often painfully obvious which one was produced by Penguin and which one was produced by one of the dozens of self-publishing outfits that sprang up over several years like dandelions in the spring.

Then came e-publishing, and the revolution was on. Your Kindle or Nook or other ereader does not care whether the book you’re reading was produced by Random House or by the author inside his own house. The two products look exactly the same on the screen, provided the author has taken his time to accomplish the proper formatting.

It’s revolutionary, and I can testify personally to how quickly the changes are coming. I signed my contract with Medallion Press back in December, 2009 for publication of my debut thriller, Final Vector, to be released in mass-market paperback in February, 2011. To say I was excited would be an understatement.

Until March, 2010, when I received a call from Medallion’s Director of Sales and Marketing, informing me Medallion was removing themselves entirely from the mass-market paperback format due to rising costs and an inability in a declining economy to make a profit in that format. Instead, I was told, they would release Final Vector as an ebook.

For three weeks I debated demanding Medallion return the rights to my book. I mean, really, every author dreams of holding his book in his very own hands for the first time, right? Does anyone dream of that magical moment when they first download their book onto their Kindle?

Well, maybe they should, because the ebook market is exploding at an incredible rate, taking off like a rocket ship, while the print market by all estimates remains sluggish at best. After three weeks of indecision last March, I reluctantly decided to leave the rights to Final Vector with Medallion, and boy am I glad I did. Recent estimates are that eleven percent of all books sold are now electronic, and the rate of increase is only expected to rise.

Welcome to the revolution.

Allan Leverone
www.allanleverone.com

-------------------
Allan Leverone Bio

Allan Leverone is a three-time Derringer Award Finalist whose short fiction has been featured in Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Shroud Magazine, Twisted Dreams, Mysterical-E and many other venues, both print and online. His debut thriller, titled FINAL VECTOR, is available February 2011 from Medallion Press. For details, please visit www.allanleverone.com or his blog at www.allanleverone.blogspot.com.