Notes From the Office 27: The New Year

By Sand Pilarski

January, 2011.

I got a book from the local library a couple weeks ago, and I'm barely 1/4 the way through it. I intended to read it, but don't know that I can. Each evening, I get about ten minutes into it and fall asleep. It was popular, it made its author some money, but unless this choker eases up and starts to flow soon, I'm going to take it back and thank the Powers That Be that I didn't spend money on it.

By comparison, January saw the Piker Press contributors conclude The Director, by John Paulits, a novel that I was drawn into, and of which I savored each word, each chapter. And then there has been Not Dead Again, a novella by Ralph Bland, which was just stunning in its revelation of how people sort out and grow into the knowledge of mortality and aging. With both these stories, I read, and laughed, and felt tears, and had uplifted heart at the end. If you, dear readers, have not read them from start to finish, you should. These two are exemplary writing.

As is Barbara Rendall's current story "Old Sugar." We're only four episodes in, but I assure you, this is what writing is all about.

So off we go into 2011.

Jonathan D. Scott (of the "Warren Pieces," "The Man Who Invented Polka Dots," and more) has a new book out on Amazon.com, called Gunther's Revenge, under the pseudonym "Guy Bandervilt." The Amazon page describes it thus: "When a good-hearted high school teacher steps into the quirky world of community theater to pursue a beautiful girl, he becomes entangled in a web of comic larceny, blackmail, and more."

Considering Jonathan's previous work, I think it's fair to say that Gunther's Revenge is going to be entertaining.

Gail Taylor (Caravan, Night Class, and A Good Belief Is Hard To Find) has sent an email announcing her newest book :

"I am writing to say that, partly because of the exposure that your publication gave the pieces, all three have been included in a just-published collection of short stories, called Tornado and Other Seasons. The book is available in both ebook and print form from Punkin House Press."

Laurel Zuckerman's blog Paris Writers' News graces our blogs page now. Laurel has this to say about herself:

"A Franco-American writer who grew up in Arizona, I am the author of Sorbonne Confidential (Fayard 2007), and Les Rêves Barbares du Professeur Collie (Fayard 2009) and the editor of Paris Writers News.
"Before turning to writing, I worked for 18 years in IT and logistics, the forces now changing the publishing world.
"My favorite literary hero is Moses Herzog, who writes letters he never sends, often to dead people. Instead of letters, I write this blog. Topics include education, ecology, books, and mysteries of France, of which there are many. And Paris Writers News."

And this week, having wrapped up Strange Bedfellows, Lydia Manx's new serial begins: The Building.

Oh yes, it has vampires. In keeping with her worldcraft series of novels, Lydia wrote to me,

" ... Best way of looking at this character is Kenyon needs a good challenge down the line of a like minded soul *evil cackle*"

Lydia knows well how much I've grown to hate the character Kenyon over the years of reading her serial fiction -- she's sure to hook me into this new volume with the promise of mayhem in Kenyon's little kingdom of lust, drugs, and blood.

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Cheers!