Hey, if you want to pay someone to publish your book, for just $3,499, you can get the “Hollywood Connection Publishing and Marketing” package from AuthorHouse, which includes such exciting items as a “personalized back cover.”

The website says:
“The Hollywood Connection publishing package features premium AuthorHouse publishing and marketing services and includes:
- Hollywood Coverage service – a concise synopsis of the book that is the industry-standard tool for identifying viable new material.
- Placement in AuthorHouse’s Hollywood Database, which is accessible to movie and television writers, agents, directors, actors and producers.”

Yeah, I bet that “accessible” database is used a TON by all those producers and directors.

But wait, there’s more. For just, $6,199, there’s “Hollywood Rainmaker Publishing and Marketing.”
And this has all of the above, plus:
“- A professional Hollywood treatment of the book written by a professional screenwriter.
- All rights to ownership of the treatment.”

I can picture the “professional screenwriter” right now. He or she is muttering under his breath that he never thought he would end up doing this.

The press release says: ““Several AuthorHouse books have made it to the big screen, including ‘Legally Blonde’ and ‘September Dawn,’ and we’re pleased to provide authors with these exclusive opportunities to be discovered,” said Keith Ogorek, senior vice president of marketing for Author Solutions, Inc.—AuthorHouse’s parent company.”

But I think this is disingenuous. The movie Legally Blonde, was filmed October-December 2000, and released June, 2001. The AuthorHouse edition of Legally Blonde was published in 2001, after the movie was already in the can. And September Dawn? It was filmed in early 2006, and the book came out in 2007. The author herself says, “A prolific producer of many major motion pictures once told me that the story of how my first screenplay, September Dawn became a movie was a miracle. It began when I brought the first draft of September Dawn to my very dear friend, Christopher Cain of Young Guns fame.”

So I think AuthorHouse is twisting the truth. But hey, if you can make some money....

Remember folks - money should flow to the writer. Not away.

An NPR blog looks at Why The Next Big Pop-Culture Wave After Cupcakes Might Be Libraries.

Have you ever yearned to talk to someone, but can’t, because you’ve lost touch or they’ve died?

A Portland woman has taken that unfinished longing and given it an outlet, in the form of http://WouldHaveSaid.com . On this website, people post poignant letters to lost teachers, dead parents, old boyfriends, miscarried babies, and more. One Jewish man wrote the Christian neighbors who helped him on Kristallnacht. It offers people a way to express grief, anger, or thankfulness that would otherwise have gone unspoken.

Read more about the website here.

I used to write ad copy. I imagine this copywriter. The assignment: "Tout the benefits of this cat litter that won't stink up your house and is meant to be used by multiple cats."

But was this really the eureka moment? "I know! I'll talk about how you can make chocolate chip cookies and enjoy their aroma! Yes, tan cookies studded with black dropping-shaped chips."

Portland has something called The Pangaea Project. The Oregonian reports, “The organizers seek out kids who often feel they've been discounted and pushed aside by their peers, their traditional schools and sometimes their families. Those youths, the organization's staff say, are fertile ground to become leaders that can help battle some of society's most intractable problems. For many students in the program, school was little more than a hassle, yet they willingly spent three months trying to understand some of the world's toughest issues -- poverty, water shortages, child labor -- while battling to overcome their personal challenges -- depression, drug relapses, fragmented families, foster care court hearings.”

A group of students from the project is in Ecuador, exploring environmental justice, and doing community service.

Read more here.

My mechanic says the headgaskets on my 2000 Outback are leaking.

The Subaru dealer (which replaced head gaskets 32,000 miles ago) says they are only "seeping." And that he would let his own mother drive my car without worry.

What do you say?

Do you write or read books for middle schoolers or young adults? There’s an organization in the San Antonio area, Haven for Hope, that helps the homeless. Josie Martinez, who volunteers as a librarian there, says, “We rely on donations to add to our library collection.  We receive lots of kids books but we rarely get books appropriate for middle school or high school students. We set up story time for the younger readers and book discussions with the older kids while their parents are attending workshops on Saturday morning.”

This is the Haven for Hope website:  http://www.havenforhope.org/.
 


Books can be lifelines for kids, showing them a world outside their own. I’m packing up some copies of Shock Point
and Torched to send to her.

Won’t you help? You can send new or used books in good condition to:
Josie Martinez c/o Yolanda Edwards
Haven for Hope Children/Teens Library Program
1 Haven for Hope Way
San Antonio, Texas 78207
(210) 220-2100

NPR has been looking at the revolution going on in publishing. Lynn Neary says, “As somebody said to me, What you need the publishing houses for is to put books on shelves. If you don't need books on shelves, you don't need the publishing houses. So everybody's trying to figure out how many books do we need on the shelves? How many are going to be e-books? And if it's going to be mostly e-books at some point in the future, what's the future of the publishing companies?”

This is kind of a simplifying things. I need an editor and a copyeditor, and my need for them (and every writers need for them) is never going to go away. But I also need a publisher to get me into bookstores. But if bookstores go away or are greatly reduced in number, then what?

Read the transcript of the story here.

The internet has changed pretty much everything, for better or worse. The news cycle is now like the news treadmill. And now if you’re fascinated by a criminal case, you can feel like you’re part of it, thanks to true-crime forums.

Portland - and a lot of the nation - is riveted by the case of the missing 7-year-old, Kyron Horman. The stepmother is under scrutiny, and now it’s come out that her best friend, Dede Spicher, disappeared for 90 minutes on the day Kyron went missing. The Oregonian reports: “Online sleuths unearthed Spicher's health and gardening page on blogspot.com (she's a fitness junkie!) and then her Twitter account was revealed. Next came a year-old photo on Flickr from a fundraising race, and, finally, Spicher's post on Terri Horman's Facebook page 36 hours after Kyron Horman was last reported being seen outside his Skyline Elementary classroom: "Thinking of you and Kaine and praying for Kyron's safe return." By dawn, the vetting was in full swing. Members of ScaredMonkeys.net and Insessiontrials.com crime forums outed Spicher's father as a member of the Klamath County Sheriff's Office search and rescue, one of scores of agencies that helped search for Kyron. And threads by commenters on other sites were exploring Spicher's tax, real estate and ancient online records.”

Read more about how online sleuths are muddying - and occasionally clearing - the waters. .

Take a gander - this is my co-author, Lis Wiehl, talking about Hand of Fate (Triple Threat Series #2).

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/38448753#38448753

Today called it the "must read of the summer"!