Join Ink & Paper Group for Multnomah County Library’s 2009 Writers Resource Fair at Central Library on Sunday, March 15,  from noon to 3:00 pm.

Participants will learn more about the library’s Sterling Room for Writers and will tour the John Wilson Special Collections from 1:00 to 3:00 pm. Meet Ink & Paper Group representatives and other top editors, book designers, book marketers, and publishers from the Portland Metro area. Various writers organizations and book-related associations will be on site offering support, opportunities, and a growing sense of community. Read the full list of participating exhibitors here.

Admission is free and refreshments will be provided.

For more information, call 503.988.5473.

IVY LEAGUE STRIPPER WITH BREAST CANCER BARES BODY AND SOUL IN PROVOCATIVE NEW MEMOIR

This month, publisher Jen Weaver-Neist was thrilled to sign local talent Viva Las Vegas as Dame Rocket Press’s newest “eclectic and passionate” author. Replete with star backing and starry-eyed ambition, Magic Gardens: The Memoirs of Viva Las Vegas does not disappoint.

While seeking a publisher this past fall, Viva had to shift her focus when she discovered that she had breast cancer, which she writes about in “The Last Days of My Left Breast” in the March 2009 issue of Portland Monthly. While undergoing surgery and chemotherapy treatments, she continued her quest with an even greater determination, eventually partnering with Dame Rocket Press to deliver this story of the early days in her exotic dancing career.

Here’s what people are saying about this Dame Rocket Press discovery:

• The memoirs of Viva Las Vegas are “Pure Viva.” —Gus Van Sant, filmmaker (MILK)
• “In the sea of memoirs…Viva’s story is an island.” —Andrei Codrescu, Jealous Witness: New Poems
• “Seeing life through this broad’s eyes is a strange and beautiful blessing the likes of which words bring.” —Nick Tosches, journalist and author, King of the Jews
• This book is “the how-to manifesto of a Diva of the Demimonde, and a love song to life on the shady side.” —Katherine Dunn, author, Geek Love

Whether naked onstage at a dive bar in Portland, Oregon, or walking the red carpet at Cannes, Viva brings passion to her performances and audiences to their feet.

A preacher’s daughter and a graduate of Williams College, Viva could’ve been an Ivy League diva but found her calling as a stripper. Magic Gardens is her story, a memoir both gritty and glorious, taking readers through the murky caverns of the sex industry. She offers intelligent and witty arguments in support of the trade, her passionate, smart, entrepreneurial co-workers—a mother of three, a law student with loans—dancing right into our hearts.

While most stripper memoirs distance themselves from the sex industry, Viva brings her stripper family home. She dares us to embrace the humanity within to engage the humanity in them. Women are well paid and appreciate their bodies—unlike the corporate world, she argues, where women are stuffed into ill-fitting pumps and cubicles, doing data entry for meager wages.

For Viva, stripping is an art form as valid as Manet’s depiction of “Olympia” or Degas’s ballerinas. Audiences revel in her gifts. She is a sage, an activist, a compassionate voice that rocks polite society.

Dame Rocket Press is also happy to enlist the publicity expertise of Connie Kirk for this project, and looks forward to getting the word out to all of Viva’s coast-to-coast haunts. (Connie is the promotional genius behind Portland’s KenArnoldBooks).

Stay tuned for more information in the coming months, including the upcoming launch of Viva’s site, Vivacide.com.

By guest writer Susan Taylor

What business do I have writing an article for a small book publisher like Ink & Paper Group? After all, my business consults about digital media—websites, digital streaming video, interactive CD-roms. Aren’t we kind of the anti-book?

I don’t own a Kindle, but I have purchased an e-book or two. In fact, my business even published two. One of the hats I wear is as a writer of that overly emphatic, stripped-down web text—mostly bulleted lists—that is featured on websites that we all know no one likes to read. (Don’t you already just hate me?)
But here are a few ways I might be of help to you. Having spent a bunch of time looking over all the digital tools out there, I have a few to recommend that just might make your writing life easier. Tools to help you slog through the writing process, letter by letter, word by word. Tools to help you collaborate with others. Tools to help organize your complex plots, track your characters’ back stories, outline your plot.

Okay, here are some ideas:

Writing Tools: Of course there is the pricey, bloated granddaddy of them all: Microsoft Word. Then there are some open source, Word-like programs like Open Office and AbiWord, which are free. They can both do tables, footnotes, headers just like Microsoft Word and have big menu bars stuffed with icons. You’ll never feel alone. Both of the open source programs can save and open Word documents just in case. Another for novelists writing on the windows platform is yWriter, which allows you to search across multiple chapters and helps avoid the mess of one gigantic Word file.

Since every great writer can suffer from the occasional distraction, here are two programs that are made to help you through severe solitaire-itis. Write Room ($25 for Mac) and Dark Room (free for Windows) each give you a big black (or green if you prefer) writing field that covers all temptation and keeps you pounding the keys. (Both are from http://www.hogbaysoftware.com.) Also check out another full-screened editor, Q10, which even makes the old-fashioned sound of typewriter keys as you plug away (free for Windows only).

Collaboration: If you write collaboratively, or work with an editor, here are two free online services can help you keep track of who’s changed what, when, and why. Writeboard is from 37signals.com, a smart company which specializes in online project management (probably the best available today). And big daddy Google offers Google Docs, a method for storing documents online and giving shared access to them for editing purposes. It’s not nearly as robust a service as Writeboard, but it is easy and free. Each requires that you sign up and promises your work is protected and safe.

Outlining: If you like working from an outline, I’m a fan of the OmniGroup’s very quick and straightforward program Omni Outliner (Mac only for $39.95). Outlines can be expanded and collapsed; and you can add inline notes, check boxes, and multiple columns. You can even insert movies and make voice recordings—a mighty tool.

Project Management: For managing larger writing projects where a text processor simply isn’t going to suffice, check out these ideas: CopyWrite, “project management for writers of all kinds” and the ever-so-slightly pretentious Ulysses from Blue Technologies Group, “the text editor for creative writers,” where “Word and Style are not defined through buttons and palettes” (or so they say). Both are for Mac. Here’s a free online version of the same sort: Pro Novelist, “a writing environment and community for professional writers.” They even provide chat rooms and forums for when writer’s block strikes. (No solitaire, though.)

For Scholarly Work: Nota Bene is a word processor for scholars. It manages your bibliography, it features a database manager for those who have things to keep track of, and it processes text in Hebrew, Greek, Cyrillic, IPA, and Arabic (and a lot more, too).

For Screenwriters: There are just acres of software for screenwriters, probably to satisfy the million of those pesky, hyphenate, waiter-screenwriters living in Los Angeles. Some properly format the story, while others help to organize those characters and locations into something shootable. Final Draft, the industry standard at $229, will help you write your screenplay and will even format it for specific television programs. Do you have an episode of Lost just waiting to by templated? It’s big competitor, Movie Magic Screenwriter, will do much the same. A free version along the same lines is Celtx and Scripped. There is also scriptbuddy.com, for the mogul in you.

New and Unusual: Here are some oddball writing programs that just might suit when all else has failed. Check out Buzzword from Adobe, which has a very flashy interface and some lovely features. It is an online writing tool with formatting, versioning, and sharing. Another is Diamond from the rather mysterious Geoffrey Alexander—very trippy stuff indeed (free for Mac only).

So that’s a glimpse into the digital world of writing. I used Microsoft Word to write this, in case you’re wondering. I referred to material I had stored on my online digital assistant, Delicious, which I find to be a very handy tool for tagging and bookmarking ideas I stumble across on the web (http://delicious.com). It’s free and it’s simple. Oh, and I play Falling Star Solitaire on Mike’s Cards—not free but endlessly useful.

Susan Taylor is the co-owner of Imagine Productions in Portland, Oregon.

So, the economy is nuts right now (though our industry is no stranger to making a dollar stretch!), and we are again reminded of how important it is to stick with our friends, joining forces and supporting one another.

Ink & Paper Group is HERE TO HELP! But we need to hear from you in order to do our best with this endeavor.

Remember, there are three main areas to our mission:

1. TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
2. CUSTOM PUBLISHING
3. INDUSTRY CLASSES & SERVICES

Please take a moment in the next week to provide your input via this SHORT BUT SWEET eight-question survey. We’ll report the results (along with our plan) in next month’s newsletter.

Thanks so much, and take care of yourself. We’ll be in touch!
~Your Friends at Ink & Paper Group

Here’s another installment that arrived over the holidays from Hate Mail‘s fiendishly festive author, m.m. garcia. (Please forgive the tardy post.)

Fun U.K. Christmas Facts:

1. Children leave mince pies and whiskey for Santa. I can’t decide if it’s because they love him or hate him.
2. Mulled wine, or spicy red wine, served warm is a popular beverage. Warm red wine.
3. Her Majesty, the Queen, gives an annual holiday speech that nobody watches. I watched it, and I offer this quote that I think sums up everything the aristocracy has stood for over the ages: “Over the years, those who have seemed to me to be the most happy, contented, and fulfilled have always been the people who lived the most outgoing and unselfish lives.” Too true, your Majesty, too true.

Here’s hoping nobody gives you a Christmas cake, and if they do, may it be marzipan free!

~Monica

If you’d like to see the first overseas correspondence from m.m. garcia, please poke here.

BUZZAROONIE.COM: Now there’s a place for our people (a.k.a. “booklovers”) to gather and share the latest information from our industry (especially if you’re in Portland). Yes, it’s the hip new way to stay connected via our own cool site (move over Facebook!), and we have our friends at KenArnoldBooks to thank for this brainchild. Check it out and get involved! We are our own best fans and supporters.

MOLALLA WRITER’S FAIRE: In January, our editor-in-chief, Linda Meyer, participated again in this annual event, teaching a workshop on preparing your manuscript for an editor, which also included some helpful pre-publication tips. Read more here: http://inkandpapergroup.com/2009/02/after-the-faire/.

BIBILOTHERAPY: An article about books as healing tools: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/05/fiction.scienceandnature

MOCKUMENTARY ON HOW BOOKS ARE MADE: http://isbw.murlafferty.com/2009/01/13/how-a-book-is-made-totally-true/

PUBLISHER BO BJÖRN JOHNSON GETS PUBLISHED IN FOUR AND TWENTY: Last month, our very own Bowler Hat Comics publisher was published himself in this fabulous short form poetry journal. Check out this issue and others here: http://4and20poetry.com/past-issues/.

“My dad is a preacher. My mom is a teacher. They gave me heaven and earth. By the time I was out of their house, I’d lived on four continents, I spoke five languages, and I had learned to look for beauty, truth, and salvation in all things. I knew that my sole responsibility on this earth was to let my little light shine. It seemed a no-brainer to me that my little light would shine brightest, was most needed, in the darker corners of life. I don’t think it’s surprising at all that I ended up naked, glowing, incandescent in one of the darkest corners imaginable.”

~ Viva Las Vegas, Magic Gardens: The Memoirs of Viva Las Vegas
(Due for release from Dame Rocket Press, August 2009)

Duet with Hummingbird (Ana Callan) is graced by the paintings of artist Lori Presthus. From Lori’s signature hummingbird on the cover to the beautiful images throughout the book, Lori’s art complements Ana’s poetry. At a recent Three Muses event, Lori generously allowed us to exhibit several original works featured in the book. She has created archival prints, notecards, and bookmarks of these paintings, all of which were well received by buyers.

Lori’s work is currently on display in galleries and specialty stores in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An extensive catalog of her art is available at LoriPresthus.com. While visiting her site, be sure to check out the Collage, a lovely blend of art and cello recordings by Lori, who is also a professional cellist.

Sales information is included on Lori’s site. Prints, cards, and bookmarks from Duet with Hummingbird are also available for sale at the offices of Ink & Paper Group, home of Three Muses Press. If you haven’t yet seen the book, we invite you to check out our small Three Muses gallery of images from the book.

This morning, Amazon presented its second-generation wireless reading device, the Kindle2, set to officially release on February 24. Click Amazon’s photo at left to read the product details. What follow is an excerpt of today’s Publishers Weekly article,

With a media line that stretched nearly to Madison Avenue and such publishing heavyweights in attendance as Random House’s Markus Dohle and HarperCollins’s Brian Murray, Amazon unveiled the Kindle2 in an elaborate, and crowded, presentation this morning at New York’s Morgan Library. The new device is significantly slimmer than the original–about as thin as a pencil–has a text-to-speech function that can read the book out loud, and easier and improved navigation. The device also includes improved graphics and more storage–it will hold 1,500 books, Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos said, and its battery will hold a charge for two weeks. (Read the full article here.)

The  publishing industry as a whole has been monitoring, and often actively participating, in the development of such “readers” since their inception. What do you think? Will the Kindle2 be on your wish list this year?

Too long at the faire? Hardly. The recent Molalla Writers Faire was well attended and upbeat, thanks to in-depth workshops and a thought-provoking keynote address by publisher Ken Arnold, of KenArnoldBooks. Participants and presenters alike commented that the hours flew by, in keeping with the “speed of change.” Ken addressed broad-spectrum changes in the publishing industry, then directed attendees’ attention to the resultant possibilities offered to authors, including more accessible publishing routes (Print on Demand, e-books, and short-run custom publishing, to name a few) and exciting advances in book-related technology such as the Kindle2, Amazon’s new electronic reading device.

Future-minded book designer Marie Miller, of BookSmart Design, lead a spirited discussion of trends in book design. While her workshop focused on book design for print, attendees ultimately wondered  how, or even  if, current design trends will translate to the electronic book world. Sounds like another workshop in the making…

Three Muses’ publisher Linda Meyer had her eyes on the future of book publishing, too, but for this faire, she concentrated on “what to know before you submit your manuscript to a publisher,” a less time- and /or technology-dependent theme, but no less applicable to authors of today and tomorrow. In this difficult economy, learning to prepare your manuscript for publication and to begin building a marketing platform  will save time and money for author and publisher, increasing the chances of making it “into print,” on paper or in electronic form.

Next year’s faire is already in the works.  Stay tuned for more information.