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A New NBCC Award for a First Book, in Honor of John Leonard

May 29, 2013 /1 Comment/in /by

I am an associate member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), the only association of freelance and full-time book critics in the country. Readers of this blog may recall the superb literary event, with readings and awards, they put on every spring in NYC. This link is for my coverage of the most recent celebration this past March

This morning I was excited to learn that the NBCC is adding a new category for their annual awards, a citation that will recognize the best first book of the year. It could be a novel, a book of short stories, a memoir–it will not be limited to a particular genre. The award will be given in memory of the late John Leonard, longtime NBCC member, and eternally effervescent man of letters. The announcement was just emailed to members, with the screenshot of it pasted in below these lines. The NBCC is a great organization of dedicated readers and writers. You can follow them on Twitter, @BookCritics and check them out on the web, NBCC.

NBCC.

 

The POT THIEF Mystery Series–Licensed to Open Road Integrated Media

May 28, 2013 /3 Comments/in , , /by

I’m happy to announce that as literary agent for author J. Michael Orenduff, in conjunction with the Silver Bitela Agency, my company Philip Turner Book Productions recently licensed the six-book POT THIEF mystery series to Open Road Integrated Media, a major player in digital publishing. The books, previously self-published by Mr. Orenduff, are The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, The Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy, The Pot Thief Who Studied Einstein, The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier, The Pot Thief Who Studied D. H. Lawrence, and The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid. They will all be published by Open Road in print and digital editions beginning in 2014.

As a devoted mystery reader myself, I adore the POT THIEF books and have earlier written about them here. They are set in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico, featuring dealer in Native America pottery Hubie Schutz and his sidekick in sleuthing, wise-cracking Susannah Inchaustigui, a descendant of one of the region’s old-line Basque ranching families. They meet most afternoons at Hermanas Tortilleria, to sip margaritas and discuss their latest puzzler. After years running Undercover Books, a bookstore where I sold lots of mysteries, and as an editor publishing mysteries, I know the mystery market well and am particularly excited that the many readers of Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn mysteries, also set in the American Southwest, will now also be able to discover the POT THIEF books. In their earlier editions, the POT THIEF books won numerous awards and raves from mystery readers, including this one from Anne Hillerman, the late mystery master’s daughter: “I inhaled this book. Witty, well-crafted and filled with unexpected plot turns, The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid will delight J. Michael Orenduff’s many fans—and win him new ones.”

If you haven’t yet heard of Open Road, I suggest you visit their website. They have more than 3000 active titles, including five books by my longtime author Ruth Gruber, as well as titles by dozens of important authors such as William Styron, Rachel Carson, Andre Dubus, and Mary Glickman, always in digital editions, and sometimes in print editions, too. They’ve been operating for three years, innovating and growing along with the emerging ebook market. The company was recently profiled in an excellent piece via this link at paidcontent.org. 

I’m delighted for my author J. Michael Orenduff and also very pleased to be working with Ed Silver and Babz Bitela of the Silver Bitela Agency, who are representing the POT THIEF brand for film and TV rights. In fact, they are already sharing with producers an excellent screenplay based on the series, written by previously credited screenwriter, Robert C. Powers.  Announcements of the deal I made with Open Road have appeared in Publishers Weekly and in PublishersMarketplace.com, both of which mention the Silver Bitela Agency (these may only be available by subscription so I’ve made screenshots of both to be sure they can be read by GGB readers). Happy I could share this great news the same week as Book Expo America (BEA), the book industry’s annual convention, taking place at NYC’s Javits Center May 30-June 1. Please click here to see deal coverage from the two book industry outlets.

Paul Elie, on J.S. Bach and His Modern Interpreters

May 26, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

A great conversation this morning on one of my favorite weekend radio programs–CBC Sunday Edition, hosted by Michael Enright–with Paul Elie, author of Reinventing Bach, a National Book Critics Circle finalist in criticism, examining how Albert Schweitzer, Pablo Casals, Leopold Stokowski, Glenn Gould and Yo-Yo Ma have interpreted Bach over the past century. I had heard Elie read from his work last March at the readings hosted by the NBCC with many of this year’s finalists. In a post about that occasion, I wrote,

BachLike all the categories, Criticism was filled with standout titles. Paul Elie, (Reinventing Bach), read a fascinating passage about the blockbuster album of 1968, “Switched-on Bach,” for which Walter Carlos had played Bach on the recently invented moog synthesizer. Elie quoted Glenn Gould on the fusion of Bach and the new electronic instrument, where the Canadian pianist heard an ideal match. Gould relished the moog’s absence of vibrato and inflection, which I imagine probably had an aural quality for him akin to a harpsichord.

Elie is very knowledgeable but not pedantic in discussing Bach and the modern musicians. Today’s program is highly recommended listening.

Neil Young at Glastonbury Fest, 2009

May 26, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

Stunning video from BBC Four of Neil Young playing his song “Words (Between the Line of Age)” at the Glastonbury Festival in England, 2009. Pegi Young is singing backup, the late Ben Keith is on pedal steel, Chad Cromwell is drumming, Rick Rojas in playing bass, and someone I can’t ID is on keyboards. This song first appeared as the final cut on Neil’s album “Harvest,” in album in 1972. A number of songs from the festival are viewable via this youtube link. Enjoy!

#FridayReads, May 24–“Before the Frost,” a Kurt & Linda Wallander novel

May 24, 2013 /1 Comment/in /by

Henning Mankell photo#FridayReads Henning Mankell’s thriller 2004 thriller Before the Frost, featuring Detective Kurt Wallander and his grown daughter Linda, who like he did earlier in life, chooses to become a police officer. With surprising synchronicity, in Michael Connelly’s 2011 Detective Harry Bosch novel The Drop, (my May 10th #FridayReads), his teenage daughter informs him that she is going to choose police work for her career. I don’t believe these two writers, one in Sweden, the other in Los Angeles, read each other’s work or have directly influenced each other. Instead, I believe that with these authors–who have each written ten or more books featuring their detective protagonist–become extremely invested in their characters and loyal to them, so that in their protean creativity, they endow the two characters–late middle-aged single fathers in each series–with full lives and late-in-life-joy from growing closer to their own child. This highlights one of the things I love most about these books, Mankell’s and Connelly’s, as well as those by other authors I enjoy–featuring characters Travis McGee, Bernie Gunther, and Joe Gunther (no relation to the former), by John D. MacDonald, Philip Kerr, and Archer Mayor, respectively: The author is so devoted to their creation that they give them full lives, and I as a faithful reader, feel obliged to be solicitous of and devoted to them myself.Mankell photo

Cleveland’s Pro Baseball Team, Mildly Renascent

May 24, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

As readers of this blog will know, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and under the tutelage of my sports-loving dad, I became a fan, too. I remain a fan and a follower of all the Cleveland professional sports team, the NBA Cavaliers (By lottery this week they won the first pick in the upcoming collegiate draft, a pleasant prospect.); the NFL Browns (I attended the last Cleveland pro sports championship, when the Browns won the NFL title in 1964, two years before the minting of the Super Bowl.); and the baseball Indians (In case you wonder, I am tired of the nickname, embarrassed by it, and wish the franchise would dump it; I tend to just call them the Tribe or CLEVE. At least this year the front office, though still resisting calls to change names, they do seem to have sidelined the brazenly racial “Chief Wahoo” mascot logo.). The history of failure–or least, shortfalls of the ultimate goal–by my teams, hasn’t deterred my fanship, illustrated by a piece I wrote last year, How to Enjoy Sports Even When Your Teams Have a History of Failure.

The Tribe haven’t won a World Series since ’48. This season, so far, the team has been playing surprisingly well, and at the moment they lead their division by a half-game. In their past 25 games they must be playing at about a 17-win and an 8-loss clip. They could still collapse after July 4th, but things look bright right now.

The above is prelude to the fact that last night the Tribe opened a 4-game series in Boston vs. the Red Sox at Fenway Park. It was the first game back in Boston for Terry Francona, now the CLEVE manager, after he held the job in Boston for 8 years, until 2011. As this Cleveland Plain Dealer story reminds, he won two World Series championships during that tenure, and then was quite unceremoniously dumped by the BOSOX brain trust. I’m really glad Cleveland has him in the dugout now. I’m sure his calm leadership is one of the reasons the Tribe is playing so well this season. Who knows, maybe the team can keep it up.

Last night’s game ended up as a route, for my side. The Tribe scored early and often. Their march through the innings went like this: 1-0; 4-0; 4-3; 5-3; 6-3; 12-3, the final score. The Tribe currently leads the American League in homers, with 60, yet oddly last night, though hitting double digits in run production–though they had a total of 16 base hits, with 4 doubles and a triple–they did not hit a homer. Still, it’s alright, for as Mark Reynolds the Tribe’s leading basher with 12 HRs puts it in beat writer Paul Hoynes’ game story, “‘Sometimes, homers are rally killers,’ said [the DH/3rd baseman] with a laugh.”

“Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology” Morphing into a Magazine

May 22, 2013 /0 Comments/in , /by

rustbelt112912Readers of this blog may recall the contribution I made last year to the book Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” a personal essay about a bluesman I followed avidly all the years I lived in my hometown. Now, less than a year after the book’s release, the enterprise has gone so well that the editors of the collection are planning to create an an online magazine, Belt, that will expand the concept of the book in to a continuing forum for writing about Cleveland, and more broadly, the Industrial Midwest. Co-editor Anne Trubek has announced a Kickstarter campaign to which I will make a contribution, and I encourage you to consider doing the same. With three weeks to go before their deadline they’ve already gained pledges that take them to more than half of their $5,000 goal. Like me, you’re probably receiving a lot of requests like this these days–this is definitely one worth offering your support. Here’s a link to the Kickstarter page with a video about Belt. 2 Mr Stress album cover

Josh Ritter in NYC, a Buoyant Showman at Terminal 5

May 21, 2013 /2 Comments/in , /by

Josh RitterMy wife and son and I bought tickets for Josh Ritter’s May 18 gig at Terminal 5 back in the winter, shortly after the show was first announced. When the night finally arrived this past Saturday, we were excited we’d be hearing him live for the first time. It was also our first time hearing a show at this venue, and we were surprised and pleased by how smoothly Terminal 5 operated. Though we arrived earlier than 7 PM when the doors were scheduled to open, we were admitted immediately, sent up to a rooftop patio and soon allowed downstairs in the big performance space. Our early arrival meant we were very close to the stage when the opening act, the Felice Brothers, took to the stage. Though hailing from towns in NY’s Hudson Valley, I heard tinges of Tex-Mex rock from this likable 5-piece, along with echoes of Doug Sahm and his Texas Tornadoes, driven especially by the keyboard and accordion work of boisterous brother James Felice. They were a great warm-up band and I was glad I later I had a chance to buy their CD, “Tonight at the Arizona.”

After an interval to reset the stage, Josh Ritter stepped up to his mic right at 9:00 PM. He addressed the audience:  “It is so good to be here, this is my home now. Thank you for being here. We’re going to have an amazing night. If at any point in the show I look nervous, it’s  because I am.” With that he started finger-picking a Gibson acoustic guitar for his first song, “Idaho.” As he segued from his first song to his second, members of the Royal City Band began joining him on stage, with Sam Kassirer taking a seat at the keyboards, while Zachariah Hickman*, sporting an extravagant  handlebar moustache, picked up a Fender bass, followed by Austin Nevins on lead guitar and Liam Hurley on drums. The first song with the full band was “Southern Pacifica”–with its opening verse “Southern Pacific/Red, white and blue/Where are we running to,” and the  memorable chorus, “Remember me to Roxianna/You know she’s still lovely/Tell her I was on the move/Last time you saw me/That you only saw the back of my head.”

A bit more than halfway through the show, Josh spoke to the audience about his new album, “Beast on the Tracks,” a kind of breakup album written following his recent divorce. He alluded to the personal anguish that led to the composition of the new songs, and the resilience that allowed him to record them and, now sing them live for people, night after night, and do so joyously and not in sorrow.  As the band then moved in to playing the songs from “Beast,” Ritter became even more buoyant than earlier, even while some of his lyrics became darker. I was reminded of other breakup albums, almost a genre of its own: Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” released in 1975, and widely regarded as expressing his pain at the end of his marriage to the same Sara who he sings of in “Sara” from “Desire.” More recently, Canadian artist Kathleen Edwards released “Voyageur”–Rolling Stone reported she wrote the album after enduring a breakup of her own. 

For nearly two hours Josh Ritter and his fine band ranged widely across his rich repertoire, playing nearly 20 songs on the ride. Ritter is an exciting and ebullient performer, continually interesting to watch on stage. He lowers himself to his knees while continuing to strum his instrument; cups his hands to his mouth and howls like a wolf; turns his back to the audience to direct his band like a vested conductor; strides in close to Nevins as the sideman plays arcing lead riffs with clear tone; tosses away guitar picks like pistachio shells; and connects with everyone in the crowd like he’s playing and singing just for them. It was a thrill to hear and see him play live. His performance was a triumph of his winning personality. Below are pictures from this superb show, many taken by my wife, artist Kyle Gallup.