Archives for May 2011

Tea Pie, Love And Reality: A Collection of Memoir Essays

Author: Sally Petersen
Published by Petersen Publications
ISBN:978-0-9791559-1-8

Reviewed by Marlene Howard

This little five by seven inch book is just the right size to hold in one hand while holding a cup of coffee or tea in the other. The attractive cover conjures up that idea with a picture of a man’s hands holding a coffee mug and a woman’s hand stirring a spoon in a tea cup.

The title, Tea Pie, Love and Reality brings up story questions. The author is smart, she knows the reader will have those questions. So, in the Contents pages she bolds three essay titles—”Reality”, “Love in the Afternoon”, and “Tea Pie”. I turned to those pages first to satisfy my curiosity. Each of these short essays catches the reader and makes us want to read more. My favorite piece in the book is the Tea Pie essay.

“Tea Pie or Word Recognition Disorder”

”Mom?” It was Charlie, four, inheritor of long, dark lashes and a way with women.

“Mom, can I have some tea pie?” Earnest, hopeful, blinking the lashes.

“Tea pie, what is that?”

His tone changed from supplication to firmness. A little louder as if she hadn’t heard, emphasis on each word—tea pie.

His mother squatted to his level, looked into his pleading brown eyes, then understood. She’d made coffeecake that morning.

It was fun going through the Contents reading the titles and trying to choose the essays that might focus on writers and writing. I came up with the following titles: “Resume”, “One Good Metaphor”, “Technology”, “Samuel Clemens & Me”, “Art & Craft” and “Dueling Computers”.

Petersen covers broad subjects about family, writing, travel, and nature. Some essays are pithy, some funny, but all are delivered with grace and best of all, finely crafted sentences and paragraphs.

Whether you read this book in one sitting, as a friend of mine did recently, or dip in and dabble with it over a few days, I predict you won’t be able to resist going back to read and re-read pages in this little gem. I keep it by my chair and when I want to be soothed, cheered, or maybe learn something, I open the book randomly and read a short essay.

I first became acquainted with Sally Petersen’s writing and editing talent in 1998 when she edited Seasoned With Words: Stories, Memoirs, and Poems About Food, the Colonyhouse cookbook. I credit Petersen’s sharp editing eye with the success of that book and the many accolades it has received. Sally Petersen is a journalist, but essays are what she loves to read and write. She’s given all of us a gift by sharing her essays with us in this book.

Here is one last short piece from the book.

“People Magazine in the Dentist’s Office”

Reading trash every now and then is good for my system. Like eating fiber, it keeps me from being stopped up with multi-syllabic words, significant ideas and above all, important facts.

There it is, now go out to the author’s website and purchase a copy so you can enjoy the rest of this rich treasure. www.petersenpublications.com.

Marlene Howard is the founder and past president of Oregon Writers Colony.

The Productive Writer: Tips and Tools to Help You Write More, Stress Less & Create Success

By Sage Cohen

from Writers’ Digest Books

Review by Rae Richen

Sage Cohen writes, “I am a poet and a business writer, left-handed and right footed.”

Out of this dichotomy, she is able to speak to all of us about our art and about creating a business in support of our art. Her inspirational self tells us how she maintains communication between creative-poet Cohen and linear-rational-business Cohen, so that creative self can enjoy success. I’m finishing this review before deadline so I can read more and start to use her ideas in my own writing life.

I recommend The Productive Writer as a mutual read for any fellowship of writers. Worked on together, the ideas in this book can bring your group to a higher level of dedication and achievement.

This reviewer, a writer, teacher, musician and the main gopher for a large writers’ organization, must make the disparate parts of my life work smoothly without driving my family and colleagues nutso. Sage Cohen has suggestions I need – ideas that promise to hone the sharp edges of my herky-jerky, compartmentalized life and allow the creative me to relax and have fun.

For many of you who filled out the OWC survey, asking for help with marketing, and with new web-based opportunities, there is a lot in The Productive Writer. Cohen gives us a carefully considered chapter called Publishing and Landing Gigs. By the time you arrive at this chapter, she has discussed what it really means to practice professionalism in your writing. Now she gives you clear, usable ways to set goals, grow in your profession and establish a professional work and marketing regimen. She encourages your successful self to continue to improve.

Cohen also offers pointed ideas about why, as successful writers, we must work to maintain a reasonable relationship with our genius and our muse. For me, her chapter on navigating transitions is very important, and I imagine this is true for many of us. Her suggestions for entering the zone, exiting the zone, and transitioning from work world to writing world are fresh and helpful.

Writers’ Digest has packaged this important book in a format small enough to carry with you. The layout lends and air of visual excitement to the whole. And Sage Cohen has organized the book so you can look at the beginning of any chapter to see what will be covered. This is not a read-straight-through book. It is a book to visit and revisit often.

The Productive Writer is a book which will charm you into writing more, stressing less and creating success. More help for your writing can be found at Sage Cohen’s blogsite, http://pathofpossibility.com.

Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert Home

By Ellen Waterston

Publisher: Oregon State University Press (October, 2010)
Paperback: 144 pages
Price: $18.95
ISBN-13: 978-0870715921

Reviewed by Carol Frischmann

If you are curious about either a Great Basin life, a woman’s life, or both, Ellen Waterston’s Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert Home, (Oregon State University Press) will have you crunching dust-devil grit between your teeth and shivering with the effort of winching calves from heifers in the cold and dark.

Surviving thirty years as a rancher in “Oregon’s Outback,” Ms. Waterston’s essays celebrate her accomplishments, name her as a “part of the actual and metaphorical biota of the high desert,” and allow readers to share her transformation from Eastern girl, to young woman on “The Old Hackleman Place,” to worshiper in “The Church of the High Desert.”

Readers meet people living by “homespun desert wisdom,” and disappearing from our state as fast as the “Oregon Road and Recreation Atlas” is revised.

At first, I was uncomfortable with the chapters’ unevenness—some remote, some personal, some like newspaper clippings, saved to recall some event that seemed important at the time. With the last chapter, Waterston provided a closing that answered the question, “why not smooth the ruts?”

By driving past “self-created roadside shrines gaudily decorated with plastic flowers . . . blind to the new story that I was living into, deaf to the rich landscape of others’ stories that would inform mine . . . [a woman asks], ‘Does anyone want to see where I was found?’”

Where the Crooked River Rises is where Waterston was found; each essay revealing one part of her story, as surely as wear marks on a saddle describe horse and rider.

Graduated from Duke University with a degree in Science Education, Carol Frischmann is the pet columnist for KGW.com, an NBC affiliate television station, and for her own website. In April 2007, TFH Publications releases her book, Conures, a part of the Animal Planet Pet Care series.

Story Engineering—Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing

By Larry Brooks

Published by Writer’s Digest Books (2011)
280 pages, $17.99

Review by Tom Snethen

Larry Brooks’ first published novel, Darkness Bound, sold to a major publisher on the first submission. The book became a USA Today bestseller. Publishers Weekly named another novel, Bait and Switch, as their lead entry on their Best Books of 2004—Mass Market list. Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, Serpents Dance and Pressure Points are additional published works of fiction written by Larry Brooks.

Brooks maintains a masterful website/blog for writers, storyfix.com. A quote from the front page of this site: “This blog is about getting real with your writing dream. If you want to publish your work, if you want a career as a writer, then you’ve come to the right place. No motivational B.S. here. Just the truth about what it takes to get published.”

That’s right, no motivational B.S. This blog is aimed straight for the heart of how to become a professional writer. Be prepared to learn the craft and to sacrifice amateurish habits on the Altar of Incompetence. (Larry wouldn’t say that, but I would.)

Story Engineering—Mastering the Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing spent three weeks as a #1 Bestseller on Amazon’s fiction craft books list. Published reviews by professional writers acclaim this work as containing the instructions they need to improve their careers. The subject matter represents a summation of 20 years of teaching to thousands of students. Larry wrote this book to be an expanded life-long reference for graduates of his classes.

The 6 Core Competencies:

• Concept—all the ‘what if’ questions. A snapshot of a story.
• Character—establish someone for the reader to root for.
• Theme—what are you telling about real life?
• Structure—put events in the right order and make them happen.
• Scene Execution—write a proper scene with connections to those preceding and following.
• Writing Voice—This cannot be coached. Find it through practice and remember ‘less is more.’

Do not for one second believe that I have provided you with the essence of the book in the last few sentences. Brooks goes to great lengths in 280 pages to explain why each of his competencies are absolutely necessary and then details how establish them in a new work or fix a book already under way. Early attention to these 6 areas will lead to better manuscripts and fewer rewrites.

Brooks clarifies definitions such as those for “concept vs. idea vs. premise vs. theme.” These are as central to our ability to construct a story as a chess master knowing the moves of the pieces well enough to take them to war. The book contains 50 chapters in eight parts—all with a purpose, all with a ‘you can do this’ attitude. An example: one section is titled, The Six Most Important Words in Storytelling.” Brooks identifies the words and defines how to employ them as literary exercises in parallel with his 6 core competencies.

A close examination of the table of contents allows the readers to identify where their problems fall into one of the 6 core competencies. The index at the end gives a much more in-depth map to find subjects ranging from story midpoint to subplot to villain.

Many writers are all-organic, seat-of-the-pants story-tellers. They seldom get published. Story Engineering provides a sensible structure into which writers can fit their all-organic brains and build the stories that reflect all those intangibles for which they here-to-for could not find the word.

Reviewer, Tom Snethen, serves on the Board of Directors as the Financial Director for Oregon Writers Colony. He’s looking forward to retiring from his day job in the chemical industry, and turning his attention to his writing full-time.

A Generous Offer to Members From OWC Mentor, Larry Brooks

If you buy Story Engineering: Mastering The Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing, Larry’s new book just published by Writer’s Digest, and you send Larry an email saying you bought it because OWC recommended it, he will send you a free e-book 101 Slightly Unpredictable Tips for Novelists and Screenwriters. Offer is open to members who’ve already bought Story Engineering, too. It’s a win-win for Larry and for you.

“If members already have my 101 Tips e-book, I’ll happily swap it out for the Get Published e-book, they just need to specify that.  I appreciate the support of the OWC. You folks have played a major part in the development of The Six Core Competencies (the model was created for your workshops) and, thus, the book.”

The book was the #1 bestselling fiction craft book on Amazon for a couple of weeks, reaching as high at #516 in the overall book stats. Larry is hoping to jack it back up there, partially with promotions like this one.

He tells us, “That’s the new game out there. The publishers don’t really do anything, and we’re on our own to pimp our work in the market.  I’m less sheepish about doing this with my writing craft book than I was with my novels, which are so much more subjective.  So when I say this is a “win-win” deal, it’s truer than ever.”

His blog will continue with two to three major posts weekly, and Brooks continues to speak at workshops around the country. The review of Story Engineering starts on page 10.

Contact: Larry Brooks at storyfixer@gmail.com.  Website: www.storyfix.com.

Deception Cove

By Deena Lindstedt

Publisher: Wings ePress (2010)
Paperback: 420 pages
ISBN-10: 1597055689
ISBN-13: 978-1597055680

Review by Sue Bronson

From Cape Cod, where Deception Cove opens, to the Oregon Coast where the story and action expand, Denna Lindstedt does more than plot a good mystery, she places her readers into the heart of the scene with vivid descriptions of both coasts. Her sense of place is one of the best things about this first novel.

Add to that, a skillful insurance investigator with the same human flaws and fears that many of us walk this earth with, and the reader can’t help but care about Meredith Davison and cheer her on. The theft of four valuable paintings becomes personal for her as she tries to deal with the death of a husband she didn’t really know.

It’s a mystery with clever twists and turns that keep the reader guessing and reading as the investigator uncovers the story’s secrets. I’m sure we’ll be reading more about insurance investigator, Meredith Davidson. She’s a worthy series character.

Sue Bronson is past president and current treasurer of Oregon Writers Colony.