News

Writer’s Digest has posted their 101 Best Sites for 2010–alas, readers, Screwiowa.com did not make the cut.   Maybe next year.  Meanwhile, word of mouth is our friend, so if you find anything about this site useful/helpful/encouraging here, recommend us to Writers Digest and to your writing pals!  Meanwhile, follow the link–there are many good standards still on the list, some new sites of interest and (sadly) several that serve up a rehash of the annual Writer’s Market B.S.

What would you nominate as your favorite writing website, reader?

Helene Hegemann’s new novel was named recently as a finalist for a prestigious literary prize.  Only it turns out that she had blended sizeable chunks of writings by a blogger and fellow novelist.  Hegemann announces appropriating the passages was her plan all along–and concluded, “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.”  Read more. . .

Unforgivable sin–or just a new literary technique?

There are now novels for cell phones. Seriously. Has anyone tried reading–or writing–one of these?  Do tell!

The Jane Austen of the text-u-scripts is a 15-year-old who goes by the handle Bunny. Her three-volume book “Wolf Boy x Natural Girl” got its start on cell screens but ended up in print. She has sold a whopping 110,000 books so far and raked in over $600,000 in sales. Not bad for a first-time author who hasn’t even taken her high-school entrance exams. Read more. . .

Amazon has gone to war with Macmillan over the pricing of ebooks.  What will be the outcome–and what does this mean for authors and readers?  Read more. . .

Gone, at age 91, American fiction’s most famous recluse.  Rumor has it that he has at least two novels in a safe in his house, and shelves lined with notebooks of unpublished material about the Glass family.  Read more. . .

For many people, reading The Catcher in the Rye was a pivotal experience of adolescence–one they never forgot.  I confess I came to the book too early, before I could understand it, and read it on my own, without the help of a teacher and a class.  But the power of the emotion, and the despair, stuck with me, as did the picture of the upper-class NY private school society–an exotic world in my eyes.

What was your experience reading The Catcher in the Rye? Do you think seeing Salinger’s unpublished works be a good thing–or should his privacy be respected?

Those of you who know Howard Zinn know what a powerful influence he was on our understanding of American history and ourselves.  Through his book, A People’s History of the United States, his educational projects, and his film-making, he gave voice to people who otherwise were unheard.  Here are the final paragraphs of his autobiography, You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

“What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

is supposed to bring entertainment to your lap in a BIG way.  The battery is puported to last for 10 hours and stay alive in hibernate mode for up to a month.  Like an iPhone or iTouch, Apple’s iPad brings up games, lets you surf the Internet, contact via email and even–READ A BOOK!  Now that Apple has entered the realm of electronic book readers (like Sony’s Reader, Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s Nook), we can expect the demand for ebooks to continue to rise.  Currently they make up 5% of  all book sales.

Does this news mean the End of the Book is sooner?

I argue no.  The iPad may create more readers, by creating more portability for books and greater accessibility, e-reading isn’t necessarily competing with regular reading–it’s adding reading to the many activities people can do online.  This may tap a market of gamers and Internet browsers looking for something else to do with their screen.  I liken it to putting books in the laps and hands of computer users.

Reader, what’s your take on the iPad?

James Patterson started out writing his own books but nowadays employs a stable of co-authors to write them for him.  He provides an outline and reviews the final drafts.  He’s also the number one best-selling author in the U.S.  Does this make his work literature or a commodity?    Read more. . .

It sounds like we need Sherlock Holmes to untangle the copyright issues regarding Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary estate.  Ever wonder about who gets what when all those old TV shows play?  And what about that new blockbuster movie?  Read more. . .

Our thoughts, prayers, and best wishes go out to the people in Haiti.  Here’s a literary sampler of Haiti voices, assembled by Madison Smartt Bell, whose trilogy of Haiti novels, beginning with All Souls’ Rising, make for gripping reading at any time.