Archives 2001

Daniel & Daniel has published Yellow Bricks & Ruby Slippers ~ An Anthology of Very Short Stories, Essays and Poems Inspired by The Wizard of Oz. The stories are set in any land or any age, told from any point of view, yet inspired in some way by that classic American fairy tale and/or film. The One Rule: each story had to be exactly 99 words long, not including the title (no longer than five words).

Next year's theme: Snow White

I am collecting stories for a piece called "Wedding Woes." Our granddaughter was married in May and the six party helpers showed up and then refused to help because "they didn't work outdoor events." This left family and friends scrambling to do it all. The company we hired had promised that with their helpers the bride's mother would be a "guest at the wedding." The owner shrugged it off by saying he must have sent the wrong crew--not even an “I'm sorry.”

After telling the story to others it seemed each person had a horror story too, and everyone loved hearing of the mishaps of others. When everything goes right it is wonderful, but when things go wrong it is a lot more interesting.

~ Donnie Nair
Donnienair@aol.com

I am writing a 12-part series of children's tales inspired by the Chronicles of Narnia. As I write them I am test marketing them on my Sunday school class of middle schoolers.

I am guest hosting (and reading my observations on show issues) the Community Connection show on KDAR, 98.3 FM at 2:30 p.m. on Fridays.

~ Sally Franz

I am working on a few poems, and, as usual, a few short stories. You'll be the first to know when I finish.

~ Betsy Mooney

I am writing a book of poetry, entitled Lives, that will contain poems of biography and autobiography.

~ Carol B. Decanio

I seem to be editing a lot, learning Gaelic, and writing articles for magazines like Driving West.

~ Diane de Avalle-Arce

I finished and sent off a Western a month or so ago. (I couldn't help it; it was something akin to a sneeze interrupted by a giggle).

~ David Sutton

I wish I had some earth-shaking, or even interesting, news to share, but alas, all I've written this summer is an anniversary poem for some friends.(Strictly inside stuff, though.)

I'm still plugging away trying to get an agent for Caught Dead, my psychological murder mystery. I'm going to the Big Apple to attend the 80th birthday party of my retired former agent, Bobbe Siegel. If for no other reason, a roomful of New York agents talking books has got to be worth the trip.

~ Harriet Ackert

I'm still on Summer Vacation, but I do have news. I have been accepted as a patient at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD--a Stage II Clinical Trial Patient. (Your tax dollars at work!) This place is as good as it gets.

The Terry Fox Run/Walk is October 14th, and I'm recruiting. Wanna join and walk with us? It supports the Cancer Center of SB. Brunch is supplied by the Biltmore. Let me know if you want to go.

~Jan Winford
Winjannie@aol.com

My children's picture book manuscript, Day of the Magi, is being considered by Stephanie Owens Lurie at Dutton. I've heard positive things about her, so I’m praying that I will have the opportunity to work with her.

~ Tracey Semeleng-Zabel

I’ve been writing commentaries for various publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Change magazine, on standardized testing.

~ Rebecca Zwick

I'm a regular contributor to Outdoor Photographer, PC Photo, Plane & Pilot and Pilot Journal magazines. I've written hundreds of stories for them over the last 20 years. I did a memorial story for Jean-Paul Ferrero for Nature's Best magazine recently. He was a vibrant and dynamic man of 50. I also wrote a story about a jaguar tracking and collaring expedition I made in January to the Yucatan Jungle for Nature's Best. And that expedition is chronicled as a 10-day expedition, day by day as we lived it and booted it up by satellite, complete with digital images, at www.oneworldjourneys.com (click on Lord of the Mayan Jungle icon, I think the story is still up.)

I've started a novel, have the first chapter done -- a sci-fi, B movie, monster, love story. Working title: We, Monster.

I’m doing photo shoots on a regular basis for the flying magazines. I'm shooting the Reno Air Races this year, first time in a few years and that'll be fun.

~ James Lawrence

Christina Forsythe and I just got back from Russia. She got intrigued by the Akhal Teke horses and put together an unbelievable feat of Internet legerdemain, befriended horse breeders in Russia, heard of a big breeders convention, wangled a deal with Horse Journal Quarterly to do three exclusive articles on the Akhal Teke horses, and took me along for baggage (well, photographer and co-interviewer, and, very grudgingly, assistant writer). She wants us to do the first English-language book on the breed, as well, and the thousand photos I took will help.

At the convention, the Argentinean ambassador was in attendance. Chris had been his TA at University of California at Santa Barbara when he was a visiting lecturer. (She glows when she gets on a roll.) Between the ambassador and the Olympic jumper they'd hired to help officiate, my Spanish got as much of a workout as Chris's Russian. Both of us are resolved to resume our language studies.

~ David Sutton

I met my Knopf editor (A Brief History of the Flood) in NYC in early September, and unless she has bamboozled me completely with her wit (meaning she laughed at my jokes), she's great and I'll love working with her. How odd to meet someone who knows absolutely nothing about you except what she's read in your book of fiction!

~ Jean Harfenist

I've just finished a poetry collection, All Sorts of Things with Wings -- with poems about angels, airplanes, bugs and birds, memories, summer days. It's making the rounds now along with a gaggle of middle grade novels and picture books. My other big project -- aside from packing to move back to SB -- is a book on ancient Rome under contract for Oxford University Press.

~ Marni McGee

The 2002 Tidepools literary journal will include one of my poems, "Shattered." My poetry was featured at The Laguna Poets in February in Laguna Beach. The Inevitable Press published my first chapbook, When the Moon Spills Her Milk. And now, see New Books page for info about my new chapbook, Underbelly.

Also, I attended the July, 2001 Idyllwild Poetry Conference that featured Lucille Clifton and David St. John. It was fantastic. Poetry every night under parachutes billowing in the breeze at an open-air amphitheater!

~ Kathy OªFallon

My poem "Into the Stillness" was selected for publication in poetry.com's Winter 2002 Anthology, Under a Quicksilver Moon. This was a nice surprise, since poetry is not my usual genre and was written as part of a class assignmnet. After participating in several SB Adult Ed writers' classes and the most recent SB Writers' Conference, I am working on my first novel, Reunion.

~ Ann Dockendorf

Home Is Where The Bus Is by Anne B. Johnson will be out soon. Publishers Weekly gave it a small blurb in their August 13 edition. Under the heading HIT THE ROAD JACK, they wrote, "The Johnsons didn't just spin their wheels. In 1960, they gassed up a decrepit Santa Barbara city bus, hustled their 8 kids aboard and headed out, hitting 14 countries in 20 months."

At the Cold War's height, Vernon Johnson decided to do his bit to abet world peace. His widow, Anne Beckwith Johnson, recalls those wayfaring days in Home Is Where The Bus Is (John Daniel & Co., November 2001) "The plot line is the trip," says publisher John Daniel, "but it's also a story about family life, like Cheaper By The Dozen. Along the way, they met Anita Ekberg filming La Dolce Vita in Rome. They met Khrushchev. It's a true story about international relations."

Other books from Daniel & Daniel Publishers:
That Air Forever Dark, by Bradford Dillman, a wild novel about a bunch of American tourists marooned on a savage island in New Guinae.

Subversives, by Frank Frost, a collection of hilarious stories reminiscent of Roald Dahl or the Twilight Zone.

All for Animals, by Karen Lee Stevens, a guide to living a more compassionate life in the company of animals.

Journey of Love, by Sharon Eve, a guide for the grieving.

John Danielªs new collection of stories, Generous Helpings has now been published by Shoreline Press, and it can be previewed at http://www.danielpublishing.com/books/suppl/daniel04.html

Fair Game? The Use of Standardized Tests in College, Graduate School, and Professional School Admissions Decisions by Rebecca Zwick will be published by Routledge Falmer in Spring 2002.

Underbelly, a poetry chapbook by Kathy O'Fallon, (FarStarFire Press), is available on www.Amazon.com.

Jim Lawrence says: A photo book I wrote for a conservation organization Celebration of the Land: The Last Sanctuaries. (Agrupacion Sierra Madre, September 2001) won the 2001 PMA Benjamin Franklin Award. It's a coffee table-sized book (and heavy!) with 13 essays that accompany the photographic work of 13 nature photographers from all over the world, including Art Wolfe, Jim Brandenburg, Frans Lanting, Jean-Paul Ferrero and Fritz Polking. Another book I wrote, Plateau Light, with David Muench, won the same award in 1999.

I just completed Wild L.A., a similar style book about the surprising breadth and depth of nature areas within a 90-mile radius of downtown L.A., for Sierra Club Books.

A series of six humor books by Sally Franz, titled: The Baby Boomers Mini-Field Guides to: Aging, Menopause, Co-Dependency, Mid-life Crisis, Your Aging Parents, and Raising Teens.

Also out this spring was I Love Him When... by Sally Franz, and out this fall will be an essay collection A Book Of Life's Firsts with contributing author Sally Franz. All of these books of Franzªs are published by Nightengale Press an imprint of Wimbleton Press, London.

Marni McGee reports: Sleepy Me came out in May 2001from Simon & Schuster. It got good reviews and was an ABA "Pick of the List" -- which, needless to say, was thrilling. The illustrations are fabulous. I just love `em. This makes the next bit of news equally exciting.

The companion book to Sleepy Me, with the same whimsical illustrator, Sam Williams, is coming out next spring. It's Wake Up, Me. Also in Spring 2002, The Colt and the King will be published by Holiday House. This one is the Palm Sunday story, written from the point of view of the donkey that carried Jesus. And then the year after that, in 2003, Butterfly, Butterfly will be published by Boxer Books, illustrated by Manya Stojik.

Carol B. DeCanio, 1999 Bill Downey Award recipient, received an Award for Excellence in Writing at the June 2001 Santa Barbara Writers Conference.

In April, Rebecca Zwick was the recipient of the 2001 National Council on Measurement in Education Award for Outstanding Dissemination of Educational Measurement Concepts to the Public, for "insightful and balanced scholarship in publications on standards and high stakes testing and use of the SAT in college admissions."

Kathy O'Fallon was the runner-up for the best unpublished poetry manuscript at the San Diego Book Awards in 2000.

Liz Newman: I completed my MFA in Creative Writing!

Tim Pompey just received notification that he won first place in the Still Waters Press Winter Poetry Award 2000 and will have his chapbook, "Getting Through The Fog", published late 2001. The announcement can be found online at: http://members.plexi.com/~nekton/Poeteria.html