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Bill Clinton and James Patterson to write a thriller novel

James Patterson and Bill Clinton

Author James Patterson, former President Clinton (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times; Diedre Laird / Charlotte Observer)

Have you heard…former President Bill Clinton and iconic author James Patterson have teamed up to write a novel, The President is Missing, that will be published June 2018.

Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Company will jointly publish the novel, which represents a rare foray into fiction for a former president, according to the report published in The New York Times.

You can read the rest of the story in the Times here.

Clinton-Patterson novel

 

    Mark Coker, Smashwords, Outer Banks Publishing Group, OBX Publishing

    Need your help to end the US book embargo

    I recently received a very interesting email from Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, who brought to light the US book embargo against Cuba. Cubans earn the equivalent of only about $20 USD per month, whether they’re a doctor or a janitor. They don’t have a lot of money to invest in publishing.Smashwords Logo

    Imagine if we could make our free ebook publishing and distribution services available to their writers? Imagine if Cuban readers could gain greater access to the nearly 400,000 low cost ebooks at Smashwords and other ebook retailers including over 60,000 free ebooks at Smashwords?

    The petition will help abolish the embargo and free up our rich literary history to the Cuban people. Outer Banks Publishing Group supports Mark and  this worthy cause and I am hoping you will, too. Please help and sign the petition.

    Here is Mark’s email, published in its entirety:

    “I’m writing to ask for your help.
    Please go to https://petitions.whitehouse. gov//petition/end-book-embargo-against-cuba and consider signing my petition to end the US book embargo against Cuba.

    Background on this Petition

    Last month, I joined a publishing industry delegation to Cuba to meet with Cuban writers, publishers and government representatives from their ministry of culture and book institute.
    The goal of the meetings was to build bridges of understanding and explore opportunities for greater cultural and economic collaboration between the Cuban publishing community and the American publishing community.

    I was struck by what I learned.

    First, the good news.

    Cuban writers and publishers are excited about the warming political relations between Cuba and the United States.
    Cuba has an adult literacy rate of nearly 100%, about 20 points higher than the US.
    Cuba boasts a rich literary culture.
    I visited the Havana Book Fair, which was attended by hundreds of thousands of Cubans. I’d estimate 90% of attendees were millennials. These young readers are smart, educated and optimistic. They want greater access to books. They’re the future of Cuba.

    Here’s the bad news

    The US embargo against Cuba has been enormously harmful to the Cuban people, and it’s been especially harmful to their book market. Cuban publishers have difficulty acquiring even the basic raw materials of bookmaking like paper and ink.
    Because so much of the infrastructure of global book publishing passes through the United States, the embargo makes it difficult for Cuban authors and publishers to reach a broader audience.

    Cuban readers don’t have easy access to books published by American authors and publishers.

    Cubans earn the equivalent of only about $20 USD per month, whether they’re a doctor or a janitor. They don’t have a lot of money to invest in publishing.

    Imagine if we could make our free ebook publishing and distribution services available to their writers? Imagine if Cuban readers could gain greater access to the nearly 400,000 low cost ebooks at Smashwords, including over 60,000 free ebooks? I want to help them today but I can’t because of the embargo.

     

    I founded Smashwords to break down barriers like this. To give every writer the freedom to publish, and every reader the freedom to read what they choose.
    According to a Pew poll in 2015, fully 72% of the American public wants the embargo lifted.
    The US stands virtually alone in this embargo which has now persisted over 50 years.
    I realize the politics around this are heated. I realize many Americans — especially Cuban-Americans who emigrated in the ’60s — have strong feelings about the current political regime in Cuba. I respect these feelings. I want to take the politics out of this and focus on the Cuban people.
    Would it be so bad to let the books flow freely in both directions? Might books help heal the wounds on both sides?
    President Obama has taken steps over the last year to normalize relations with Cuba and set the stage for the end of the embargo.
    But change can’t come soon enough. Given the current political dysfunction in the US, it’s unlikely the US congress will vote to end the embargo even though 59% of Republicans want it ended, according to that same Pew poll above.
    The embargo is composed of a spaghetti mess of presidential edicts, Treasury department statutes and Congressional actions.
    Despite the political gridlock, President Obama has some latitude to make modifications around the edges. He’s already relaxed travel restrictions and allowed American telecommunications companies to invest in Cuba so they can make Internet access more ubiquitous in Cuba.
    President Obama says he wants to do more to expose Cubans to American culture and more global information. Books are the solution!
    As we say in the petition, books promote greater cross-cultural understanding, economic development and free expression.
    On the eve of President Obama’s March 21-22 trip to Cuba, I’d like to ask your support. Let’s encourage President Obama to lift the embargo against books and educational materials. It would be a good first step.

    THREE THINGS YOU CAN DO TODAY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

    1. Please sign the petition at https://petitions.whitehouse. gov//petition/end-book- embargo-against-cuba
    2. Compose friendly Tweets directed at the White House (@WhiteHouse) and President Obama(@BarackObama), urging the Obama administration to end the book embargo. In your Tweets, include the link to the petition. For example, earlier I tweeted this:

      End the Cuba book embargo https://petitions.whitehouse. gov//petition/end-book- embargo-against-cuba @WhiteHouse @BarackObama

      Books help cross-cultural understanding and economic development. You can retweet it at https://twitter.com/markcoker or feel free to copy and paste it into your own tweet, or compose an original tweet.

    3. Visit the many news stories and blog posts that have been written about our campaign and use their social media buttons to share on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere. Or join the discussions in their comment threads.

    Here are some of the links:
    Wall Street Journal

    NPR

    Huffington Post (I wrote this)

    Publishers Weekly

    Smashwords Blog

    The timing today is critical. Next Thursday, March 17, 2016,  the Obama administration will announce modifications to the embargo that will likely loosen some restrictions on the embargo. Let’s encourage him to add books to his list!
    Thank you for your consideration and support. At the bottom of this email I’ve pasted in the full text of the petition.

    Best wishes,
    Mark
    Mark Coker
    Founder
    Smashwords
    https://www.smashwords.com
    https://twitter.com/markcoker
    http://blog.smashwords.com

     

    THE PETITION

    Sign it now at https://petitions.whitehouse. gov//petition/end-book- embargo-against-cuba

    END THE BOOK EMBARGO AGAINST CUBA

    On the eve of his historic visit to Cuba March 21-22, we call on President Obama to utilize executive powers to immediately lift the economic embargo against Cuba as it pertains to books and educational materials.
    As a basic human right, readers everywhere deserve greater access to books and literature.
    Books promote cross-cultural understanding, economic development, free expression and positive social change.
    The book embargo runs counter to American ideals of free expression.
    Cuba’s adult literacy rate – at nearly 100% – is among the highest in the world.
    Cuba boasts a rich literary heritage.
    End the embargo to make the works of American and Cuban writers more accessible to readers in each country.
    72% of Americans support an end to the trade embargo against Cuba (Pew, 2015).”
    _________________________

    Mark also orchestrated another petition which will appear next week on the cover of Publishers Weekly. Unlike the petition above which is for the general public, the other petition was signed by nearly 50 CEOs of publishing companies and writers associations (RWA, Authors Guild and more). You can read about both petitions in the news stories above.

    Be Happy

    Enjoy this Holiday Season

    with one of our favorite songs by Pentatonix

    May your holiday be blessed with joy and happiness from our family to yours.
    Anthony & Family

    From Buzzfeed

    24 Things No One Tells You About Book Publishing

    Ten years ago, my first novel Prep came out. Three novels later, here’s what I’ve learned about the publishing industry and writing since then.

    Curtis Sittenfeld
    BuzzFeed Contributor

    A-real-bookstore

     

    1. When it comes to fellow writers, don’t buy into the narcissism of small differences. In all their neurotic c, competitive, smart, funny glory, other writers are your friends.
    2. Unless you’re Stephen King, or you’re standing inside your own publishing house, assume that nobody you meet has ever heard of you or your books. If they have, you can be pleasantly surprised.
    3. At a reading, 25 audience members and 20 chairs is better than 200 audience members and 600 chairs.
    4. There are very different ways people can ask a published writer for the same favor. Polite, succinct, and preemptively letting you off the hook is most effective.
    5. Blurbs achieve almost nothing, everyone in publishing knows it, and everyone in publishing hates them.
    6. But a really good blurb from the right person can, occasionally, make a book take off.
    7. When your book is on best-seller lists, people find you more amusing and respond to your emails faster.
    8. When your book isn’t on best-seller lists, your life is calmer and you have more time to write.
    9. The older you are when your first book is published, the less gratuitous resentment will be directed at you.
    10. The goal is not to be a media darling; the goal is to have a career.

    Read the rest of the reasons>

    Wishing you and your family much happiness & success

    Capture

     

     

     

     

     

    Writing Retreats

    Inspire your writing in romantic France, Italy or the Outer Banks

    Writeaways founder John Yewell tells about the writer’s retreats he and business partner Mimi Herman provide in France, Italy and the Outer Banks and how they inspire writers to find their muse.

    By John Yewell

    Mimi & John in Paris

    Mimi & John in Paris

    Go to our Writeaways web site, with its pictures of a centuries-old French chateau and an Italian villa, and your initial reaction is likely to be: What a great vacation! And it is, of a sort. But it is so much more than that.

    We created our writing getaways in exotic places to get you as far from your daily life as possible, to set you free from care while giving you the guidance you need to unlock, or unblock, the writer within. We welcome writers of all levels and genres, and now have programs in the Loire Valley, Tuscany, and North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

    “I didn’t know until I got busy how essential to the process being removed from my regular life would be. John and Mimi took care of all the necessities, creating a space for us to write and indulging us along the way. The food was amazing!” – Charity, North Carolina

     

    We take care of everything. Each morning in France, you are greeted with a complete breakfast, including fresh croissants purchased before sunrise at the local boulangerie. In Italy, our hosts Patrizia and Paolo serve you continental style.

    Afterwards, we engage in our specially designed workshop and private consultations for two hours. Whatever your level of experience, you’ll find the constructive help you need to produce your best work in a cooperative, but rigorous, atmosphere.

    “I first met Mimi and John at their writing retreat at Chateau du Pin. While I had a very interesting story I’d thought about writing for years, I did not think of myself as a writer. Thanks to their thoughtful guidance, I finally began writing that story–and I’m still at it. John and Mimi made me believe I could do it, and gave me the tools I needed. I can’t thank them enough.” – Regina, North Carolina

     

    After lunch – buffet-style in France, Tuscan-style in Italy – you are free to write or explore. In France, the chateau is surrounded by 300 acres of topiary, rose gardens, meadows and vineyards. In Italy, you can wander in the olive orchards, sit by the pool, or explore Tuscany as widely as you like. In both locales, we offer tours of the surrounding region, including tastings at local wineries. All of this is included in the program.

    In the evening we reconvene for cocktails and wine, then sit down to a spectacular dinner prepared by professional chefs. Afterwards, relax with a digestif or cocktail of your choice in relaxed reflection, surrounded by five-hundred year old walls.

    Writers enjoying a great meal during a writeaway.

    Writers enjoying a great meal during a writeaway.

    Our program in Southern Shores, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, is a weekend intensive class designed to jumpstart a dormant writing project or launch a new one.

    After people began coming to us and asking if they could put together their own groups of friends and families, we began organizing self-organized getaways. We expect to make the first such trips a reality in France and Italy in the spring of 2015.

    We are also developing a Master Class intensive program, which would be limited to two students for a week in Beaufort, NC.

    Writeaways is based in Durham, North Carolina, although our students have come from all over: Texas, Wyoming, Virginia, Canada. Our long-term plan is to create writing getaways in the kinds of places people dream about going, so that we can pair that dream with their own desire to become better writers.

    Mimi and I are both writing professionals with complementary backgrounds. Mimi Herman has taught over 20,000 students to fall in love with writing, especially their own. A Warren Wilson MFA graduate, her teaching style captures students’ imagination and creates a supportive learning environment. As one student said of her time with Mimi, “It is an experience that I will hold with me throughout my whole life.”

    I am a writer and editor with an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State University and twenty years of experience in journalism. I teach a memoir class in Durham and consult as a private editor and writing coach.

    For more information, please go to www.writeaways.com, or write to us at writeawaysinfo@gmail.com.

    JCC Clip from Mary Tabor on Vimeo.

    New cloud radio interviews Mary L. Tabor

    Listen to Mixcloud’s interview with Outer Banks Publishing Group author Mary L. Tabor. She discusses her newest novel, Who by Fire, where one of the main characters who died, lives throughout the story.

    The interview starts at 50:26 into the broadcast.

    Mary L Tabor 03-14-13 by Total Education Network on Mixcloud

    Mixcloud connects radio content to listeners more effectively. Mixcloud is re-thinking radio by joining the dots between radio shows, Podcasts and DJ mixes. We refer to them as Cloudcasts – audio shows that are stored in the “cloud” and available to be streamed on-demand.

    Can geckos write books?

     

    Well, yes, because the lovable, popular Geico Gecko has written and illustrated a book called You’re Only Human: A Guide To Life, released today by Workman Publishing for $11.95.

    Gecko's book

    Courtesy of Workman Publishing

    Bloomberg Businessweek online quoted Workman saying the Gecko “has spent the last few years traveling across America, like a modern-day de Tocqueville.” What’s more, it adds:

    “He’s a philosopher, an aphorist, a humorist, an artist, a warm companion, a natural storyteller—and, in a grand tradition, a keenly observant and wise outsider who in the course of living and traveling among us has discovered quite a lot about the things that make us human.

    “He makes curious and interesting observations on everything from dreams to job interviews to adversity, Twitter to the Golden Rule (it’s not what you think it is) to talking animals: I’m really not sure what all the fuss is about. Lots of animals talk, including humans. The bigger question is, what do you have to say worth listening to?

    See the trailer on YouTube.

    http://youtu.be/gnRKMt6LI4k

    Available at bookstores everywhere.

    ________________________________

    Product Details

    • Paperback: 176 pages
    • Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (April 23, 2013)
    • Language: English
    • ISBN-10: 0761174826
    • ISBN-13: 978-0761174820
    • Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches

     

     

     

    Who by Fire – a captivating story about relationships within the bonds of marriage

     

    Who by Fire by Mary L. Tabor breaks new literary ground as a complex tale of love, betrayal, and the search for one self. Quite simply, we have chosen Who by Fire for publication under our name because it is like nothing else we have read and has earned its place among books that matter.
    Order your discounted copy at a special publisher’s price of $10.99  (List $17.95) in our bookstore.
    #WhobyFire
    Reprinted from the author’s blog.

     

    Who by Fire is told by Robert, Lena’s husband, as he attempts to understand her affair with Isaac, an affair that he has become aware of after her death. He imagines the story of his wife and her lover.

    Robert the narrator is trying to know himself in the story he is writing as he tells his imagined version of his wife’s betrayal. The story becomes a paradoxical tale of his own undoing that he comes to realize by telling it.

    In the epigraph to the novel, Robert says, “Life has a way of raveling. Story discovers how it happened. That is the fiction.” This is the reader’s first introduction to Robert’s persona, a man who must control the world he inhabits. The telling of the story as he imagines it, reveals more than he would have wished and as this occurs, his telling moves into real time, for there is no way for him to deal with what he discovers except to report what is actually happening versus what he has imagined.

    Pre-publication praise:

    Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain: Mary L. Tabor’s Who by Fire is a lovely, innovative, deeply engaging novel about how it is that human beings make their way through the mysteries of existence.
     
    Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize: Mary Tabor’s Who by Fire, is a lyric meditation on love and desire, one that will catch you up in the blaze of its eroticism, its tender evocation of love and the passions and accommodations of a life lived through the flesh and through the imagination. Can memory lead to forgiveness? Who by Fire explores that question in a story I won’t soon forget. The beauty of the prose, the nuances of the characters, the ever-building plot—everything is in place for a novel that will touch you in all the right ways.

     

    Marly Swick, author of Paper Wings and The Evening News: Who By Fire is a profound and lyrical novel, deeply felt and deeply moving. Intricately layered, this novel loops through time with the dare-devil courage and grace of a seasoned stunt pilot. In the narrator’s unflinching journey of self-discovery, he comes to understand the past, both his failures and his saving graces. In the end, it is a hero’s journey, both for the narrator and the reader. This is beautiful truth.
     

    Michael Johnson, foreign correspondent and writer for The International Herald Tribune, American Spectator and The Washington Times: Mary Tabor’s captivating story of love and death tackles the tangle of relationships within and outside the bonds of marriage. Her eye-popping knowledge of men’s and women’s behavior is effortlessly recounted as couples face their anguished choices. Set in a world of art, music, anthropology and science, her novel enlightens the mind while it stirs the emotions. She does all this in a confident style of prose that ranks her alongside the finest novelists working today.

    • “The Fire,” excerpt from completed novel, Chautauqua Literary Journal, summer 2006, review of The Woman Who Never Cooked also appears in this issue.
    • “The Fire,” excerpt from novel, second prize for prose, Tall Grass Writers Guild (Lee Martin, judge) and publication in Falling in Love Again, anthology, Outrider Press, September 2005 (Mary L. Tabor, featured reader at Chicago Book Fair, June 2005).
    • “The Fire,” excerpt nominated in January 2005 for Pushcart Prize XXXI by Joan Connor.
    • Semi-finalist, 2004 James Jones First Novel Fellowship under former working-title Controlled Burn.

    Paperback: 248 pages
    ISBN: 978-0-988299-314-9
    Language: English
    Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 inches
    Publication Date: November 2012

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