Priya Venkatesan is a professor/lecturer (she’s referred to as both and I’m not sure which is correct) at Dartmouth in the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. She recently wrote an email to her students from last term. It says:
Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:
I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom [sic] shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [sic] discrimination laws.
The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit.
I am also writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.
Have a nice day.
I thought the “have a nice day” part was a sweet touch. It’s always nice to call people bigots and then wish them well.
According to Dartblog, this is real. Someone at Dartblog did an intereview with this lady. You can read about it here. The lecturer/professor apparently plans to sue Dartmouth employees and her students. I can’t quite figure out what her issue is with her students, but it does sound as if she received negative evaluations. And people think authors are overly insensitive about reviews. At least none have sued…to my knowledge.
As a lawyer, I find this somewhat appalling. If she was discriminated against by Dartmouth or harassed by fellow professors or Dartmouth employees, that’s one thing. Threatening the students because they hurt her feelings? Sack up, babe. You look ridiculous.
UPDATE: As of this morning, she dropped the idea of the lawsuit. Also, in case you’re wondering, she’s now a research assistant at Northwestern. I’m kind of hoping she no longer works with students.
I just finished judging entries for three contests. I noticed one trend: prologues. Out of 16 entries, something like 10 had a prologue. I’ve written 8 novellas and 4 single titles and have never written a prologue. Never even thought about writing a prologue. I feel like I missed a memo or something.
In a few of these cases – mostly in romantic suspense entries – I understood why the author used the prologue. Didn’t see that it was absolutely necessary, but did see that the prologue allowed the author to set up and introduce a previous crime before diving into the story. Other times, I didn’t have a clue what the prologue was supposed to tell me that couldn’t have been told in one of the chapters. In two cases, the prologues were way too long for my taste. See, I expect a prologue, if there is one, to be short and contian only necessary information I’ll need at some point. Seems to me, if it’s 6-8 pages long, it’s a chapter.
I’m wondering if the prologue is being viewed as a way (maybe an easier way) to introduce some backstory items rather than weaving them in later. Whatever the reason for it, the prologue is a device a lot of unpublished writers appear to be using. It’s fine. I just find it curious. Makes me think there was a online class or an editor talked about prologues somewhere or something.
Every now and then I hear news about something tragic or awful that’s happened to a fellow author and I remember how lucky I am for everything and everyone in my life. Today is one of those days…
Fellow Brava author Dianne Castell lost her husband this morning. So incredibly sad. Laurie said it best, so I’ll direct you here.
Please keep Dianne and her family in your thoughts.
As you may know, authors Jill Monroe and Gena Showalter are making a series of videos called Author Talk. They are funny and silly, and otherwise great promotion. This week is my turn. If you want to see my Author Talk video for RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, here it is:
Check out the other Author Talk videos here. They’re great.
And a few comments about mine…
-Jill and Gena both look better with towels wrapped around their heads than I do just looking regular. I consider that a great cosmic unfairness.
-I know it sounds as if I have a lisp. No idea why. I don’t have a lisp…at least I don’t think I do. It’s very strange. At least now I have something new to obsess about.
-Yes, I know I look terrible. I’d blame Jill…but I fear it’s just how I looked that day. Rest assured I’ve thrown that red sweater away…and am going to the gym again. Yeah, being on tape will do that to a person. Can’t explain the hair of the weird sunlight pattern either. Basically, I look better than this in person. Trust me.
-Jill possess an infinite well of patience, or she pretends to. We started talking about doing this video about 300 years ago. Okay, more like three months, but you get the idea. Between deadlines, every other excuse I could find and a fear I would not show up on film – unfortunately I now know I do – I delayed production. Jill stayed calm. Buy her books help me make this up to her. They are great and I need to work my way back into her good graces.
Huge thanks to Jill for doing this and to Gena for joining in.
The title of the story from Reuters is…Penis Theft Panic Hits City. I am absolutely not making that up. In case you can’t get the link to work (and that would be a damn shame), here is the opening paragraph of the story:
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
The police chief said this, and I just have to reprint it, so here you go:
“But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,” he said.
There is so much to say that I’m not sure where to start.
Yes, I know this is serious stuff. People have been killed over this. I get all that. But, really, there’s something about this story that makes me want to write a witch-related novel. Of course, somewhere a former client of mine is screaming “I knew it!” because he insisted his wife had cursed him in this way. And I did not believe him…or agree to look at photos.
Barry Eisler is the author of the hugely popular action series starring the tortured hero John Rain. Eisler came to the Romantic Times Convention in Pittsburgh. I thought it was brilliant marketing. First, Eisler is a good looking guy with an interesting past (worked for the CIA). He writes sexy action thrillers. He could have taken the position that romance is not his thing, looked down on the genre and kept away. Instead, he showed up, meet the readers, earned high praise and signed/sold a bunch of books.
I’m not sure if Eisler views his time at RT as a success, but as someone watching from the sidelines, I thought he handled the entire thing like a master. I sat a few seats down at the big booksigning and watched him work the crowd. He was on his feet and charming, and the women came to his table to chat. See, romance readers buy books. Lots and lots of books. Show them an author who is respectful of their reading choices and you have an author with a huge new potential following.
So here’s some book info for his most recent release, Requiem For An Assassin . If you want to check him out – and you should – look at this:
Hunted and finally cornered, John Rain faces his deadliest enemy ever: himself.
For John Rain, “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond” (San Francisco Chronicle), getting out of the life was never going to be easy. But with a new identity in Paris, and the help of his lover, Mossad agent Delilah, he was beginning to leave the killing business behind.
And then he receives a message from rogue CIA operative Jim Hilger: we have your friend Dox. Do as we tell you, or the former Marine sniper dies.
For a professional like Rain, the choice ought to be easy: do the job—a series of three hits—and save his friend and partner. But how does Rain know Hilger won’t kill Dox anyway, once the assignment is complete? How does he know that each of the hits isn’t simultaneously a setup for Rain himself? Most of all, how can he control the killing rage Hilger’s lethal game of extortion reignites inside him?
From the deceptively tranquil beaches of Bali, to the backstreets and boulevards of Paris, to the urban canyons of Silicon Valley and New York and the old killing fields of Vietnam, Rain must grapple with his age, his enemies, and, most of all, with the killer inside himself in a battle that not even Rain, “the stuff great characters are made of” (Entertainment Weekly), can hope to survive intact.
I am blogging at Access Romance today about this recently announced deal for Jennifer Weiner:
Best-selling novelist Jennifer Weiner has inked a two-year overall deal with ABC Studios.Under the seven-figure pact, she will create and executive produce series projects for the studio.Several of Weiner’s books have made the transition to the big screen. “In Her Shoes” was made into a 2005 feature starring Cameron Diaz. “Little Earthquakes” is in development at Universal, while her short story “The Guy Not Taken” is in the works at DreamWorks.
First, TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Notice how Amazon has, once again, misspelled my name. Grrr. Anyway…Yeah, it’s a Christmas antho. And, yeah, that’s a long time away. But the book releases on my birthday, so I think you should all pre-order it.
Second, I have the winners from last week’s contests:
-Winner of UNLAWFUL CONDUCT by Pamela Clare – Angie-la
-Winner of DIVORCED, DESPERATE AND DELICIOUS by Christie Craig – Stacy
-Winner of WHEN GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD BOYS – Robin
-Winner of HOW TO PROPOSE TO A PRINCE by Kathryn Caskie – Stefanie D
-Winner of LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS by Dorothea Benson Frank – MG Braden
Congrats to all!!! Please email me with your addresses so I can get those out this week.
Otherwise known as How I Almost (Accidentally) Stole A Book From The RT Bookfair. Let me explain my moment of true greatness…
Saturday morning was the RT Bookfair. It’s a grand event where 200 or so authors (it looks more like 3000) sit in a huge ballroom behind stacks of books and chat with readers, booksellers, other authors and passersby. The idea is to sign and sell your books. The authors file in around 10:30 and the doors open somewhere between 10:45 and 11:00. The signing then goes on until 2:00. For the record, that is a lot of time to be stuck on a hotel floor without a bathroom. Just saying.
Before the signing, I had checked out of my room and left my bag with the bellman (I could be making up that title). So, I sign and chat for a few hours. Had a lovely time. Meet Colleen Gleason in person for the first time, which was fabulous for me since I love her books. Meet Dakota Cassidy, who is a hoot and hand sold three of my books. I swear if I could pay her to do my publicity, I would. Met Jaynie R., May who came the whole way from Thailand, Laurie Damron, and a bunch of folks who said wonderful things about my writing and are now my favorite people on the Earth. Then the booksigning came to an end.
I continued to chat, thinking I had hours to retrieve my bag, get a cab, get to the airport and catch my 5:00 flight home. Yes, I left before the Fabio dinner. I started to pack up the bag I had with me, the lights went out in the ballroom. [Let me digress here and say that the Hilton was under construction - as in wires hanging from the ceiling in the hallway in front of my room - and was a bit of a mess, which is a nice way of saying a complete disaster.] Before the lights went out, I had gotten Colleen to sign RISES THE NIGHT to giveaway here. I had also picked up two other books to buy. But the lights are out and someone tells me it’s 3:15. God forbid I actually look at my watch to verify the time, but more on that later… The time was a problem since I had a plane to catch and I was going to catch that plane no matter what. RT could not check out the people buying books thanks to the electricity issue. [Good job Hilton!] So, I decided to forgo buying the books and vowed to apologize to Colleen and the other two authors later. I then took off through the maze of tables and past the 6000 DO NOT ENTER signs on the doorways out of the ballroom and headed toward where I thought the stairs to the fresh air might be. [A tad dramatic, but you get the idea that I was a little frantic to leave.] I come up to a RT worker and explain I’m not buying any books and ask her to let me through. She looks at my hand and says, “What’s that in your hand?” I tell her it’s my wallet, lift my hand to show her…and see that I am, in fact, holding Colleen’s book.
This is the point at which I babbled on about how I thought I put the book down, how I had a plane to catch and how I don’t usually steal things. The good news is that it was dark so I could not see the nice RT lady give me the you’re a liar and a thief look. I felt it. Didn’t see it. The further good news is that she did not call security or smack me with Colleen’s book – both of which would have been entirely understandable under the circumstances. Instead, she told me to give her money, she’d check out the book for me and send it to me. I think this was her respectful way of telling me to get out of her sight. Again, understandable. The bad news is that in order to give her my address and actually get the book I could not pretend to be Sally Dumbass from Idiot, Michigan, tho I thought about it. In order for the nice RT lady to send the book to me – which I told her was not necessary – I had to give her my card, thus letting her know exactly who the moron was who (accidentally) almost stole Colleen’s book.
And did I mention the mad dash that started this whole mess was unnecessary because it was really only 2:15…
To recap:
1. I almost (accidentally) stole a book.
2. I almost (accidentally) cheated Colleen out of a sale – sorry Colleen.
3. I managed to give an RT lady even more work to do when she was already overworked and tired – sorry to the nice RT lady.
4. I raced to a plane and got there really early.
5. I am the poster child for why RT needs to have all of those DO NOT ENTER signs posted at all the doorways.
6. If in the future someone at RT suggests that readers and authors can be trusted not to steal books so that the signs are not needed, I’m sure someone will point out the year that an idiot author (that would be me) tried to steal a mass market paperback by pretending it was a wallet.
The rest of the conference went better. More on that later…
Been having loads of trouble getting online. Probably has something to do with the fact the hotel is a construction zone. Uh-huh…
I head back home today – yay!!! Will have a full report on the conference once I get back. Until then, I have another giveaway. This one is women’s fiction by a NYT bestseller. It has a very lush cover and eye-catching cover. The book (paperback version) is THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS by Dorothea Benton Frank. Can’t upload the photo thanks to the bad internet service. Click on the link or trust me when I say it’s pretty. Booklist says this about the book:
Miriam Elizabeth Swanson’s life is one big pity party. Her husband of 20-plus years has traded her in for a newer model, her grown sons avoid her like the plague, and, likewise, her so-called society friends treat her like she’s the poster girl for the Ebola virus. If all that weren’t bad enough, her once-deluxe Manhattan town house has been carved up into apartments because she needs the rent to make ends meet, and her mother has morphed into a pot-smoking, aging hippie down at the family homestead in the Carolina Low Country. But when a new young tenant is brutally attacked by her lover, who happens to be married to one of Miriam’s erstwhile friends, Miriam experiences an epiphany that transforms her from a dour, nay-saying shrew into an upbeat, understanding confidant. Shedding her emotional baggage along with, let’s face it, a few pounds, Miriam learns the redemptive power of forgiveness and turns her life into a joyous celebration of family and friends.
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