Working Titlez

Spell it right!

The number of manuscripts I’ve seen — and even printed books — with this common misspelling is staggering.

Sometimes they’re long. Sometimes they’re short. But they’re always written by someone other than the author — preferably that someone is SOMEONE.

Someone well-known. Foreword writers can be an expert or authority in field that is the subject of the book or a celebrity who enjoys a relationship with the author or a passion for the book’s topic or purpose.

First Lady of Nevada, Dawn Gibbons, wrote a gracious foreword for 100 Years in the Nevada Governor’s Mansion. Siegfried and Roy were naturals to ask to pen a foreword for our book on the history of the legendary Stardust. Former governor Kenny Guinn was honored to write a foreword for civil rights activist Bob Bailey’s memoir and we tapped former Governor Mike Huckabee to write the foreword for Bayou Country about southeast Arkansas. Boxing champ George Foreman contributed the foreword for Fight Town. One of my personal favorites was visiting composer John Williams at his Los Angeles film studio bungalow to discuss his foreword for More Than a Parade, our pictorial history of the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid provided the foreword for Silent Heroes of the Cold War. I would say that these and other luminaries have unfailingly been honored to be asked and very helpful and interested in the process.

Give some thought to who you know, or who you know who might know the person you wish to approach. If you have a noble cause or a subject close to their hearts, many famous folks will listen to your pitch to write a foreword. Don’t be shy — it can’t hurt to ask.

Once an agreement has been reached to provide a foreword, you should offer to send your manuscript for their review. At this point, you can gingerly feel out your SOMEONE as to their intention to write the foreword themselves, or if they prefer to have the author or editor write for their review and approval. Yes, that happens.

Can your SOMEONE be NO ONE? Sure. While your publisher is looking for any and all advantages to help sell your book — and the credibility or star power from a famous expert or celebrity may help — forewords can be written by anyone. A foreword’s purpose is to give the reader some perspective on the subject and/or the author before they delve into the text. Nor do all books require a foreword.

But if you have one, spell it right!

by Krissy Hawkins
Each year, the Vegas Valley Book Festival (VVBF) presents its Crystal Book Mark Award to an individual who has significantly advanced the cause of literature in the Vegas Valley. This year Jim Frey, chairperson of Nevada Humanities, presented popular columnist and author, John L. Smith, with the award in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the advancement of literature in the Vegas Valley.

Smith carries the distinction of being a fourth-generation Nevadan, an award-winning columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the author of a dozen nonfiction books, including Sharks in the Desert and Bluegrass Days, Neon Nights, as well as a contributing author to Restless City, the serial novel project of the book festival.

This event marked the second annual presentation of the Crystal Book Mark Award. The first went to Kris Darnall, one of the originators of the Vegas Valley Book Festival and a colleague at Nevada Humanities. The rules dictate that the award cannot go to anyone currently on the planning or literary committee of the VVBF and that the recipient must have made a major contribution to the encouragement of reading in the community through service or through a body of work that enriches, clarifies, or encourages reading and writing in and about the Vegas Valley.

This year’s presentation took place at the Clark County Library at a panel led by Smith entitled “Amelia’s Long Journey: The Challenge of Writing What You Know.” In Amelia’s Long Journey (Stephens Press) Smith tells of the joys of becoming a parent and raising a beautiful little girl, and the terror of almost losing her. With the skill of a journalist and the heart of a father, Smith lovingly chronicles Amelia’s life: her early carefree years, the diagnosis of a cancerous brain tumor, the surgeries, the treatments, the remissions, the relapse, the recovery, as well as the courage, humor, and optimism she showed throughout.

Amelia’s Long Journey is not only a story about a brave girl’s fight against cancer, but a story about a precious little girl’s love for life. Proceeds of the book benefit Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Southern Nevada, Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation, and St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

What happens when a parent’s perfectly normal day turns into every parent’s worst nightmare?

For the Smith family, life was good. John, most known to R-J readers as Nevada’s best-read newspaper columnist, and wife Tricia, were the parents of a beautiful little girl, Amelia, then eight-years-old.

That perfect and perfectly normal life was shattered with the terrifying diagnosis of a brain tumor. Little Amelia was whisked to specialists in Phoenix on an medical flight for life-saving emergency surgery. Then the worst-day-in-their-life got worse yet with the news the tumor was cancerous. The next days, months, years were dizzying rounds of doctors and hospitals, chemotherapy and radiation, recoveries and replapses.

As the Smith family went through this terrible ordeal, John pondered the old adage — write what you know. Should he write about Amelia’s health crisis? In the ensuing five years, John did write about his brave and stalwart daughter as she endured the relentless pain and suffering that comes with modern medical treatments for cancer.

AMELIA’S LONG JOURNEY will debut at the Vegas Valley Book Festival. John will present the keynote address, “The Challenge of Writing What You Know” this Saturday at the Flamingo branch of the Clark County Library. John and Amelia will sign books together.

Amelia’s favorite childhood cancer charities will benefit from sales of the book. They include:

• Candlelighters Childhood Cancer Foundation of Nevada
• Make-A-Wish Foundation
• Nevada Childhood Cancer Foundation
• St. Baldrick’s Foundation

The book acknowldeges the crucial supportive role these charities provide to the families of children with cancer.

When: Saturday, November 7, 7:00 PM
Where: Clark County Library Theater, 1401 E. Flamingo
Web: www.ameliaslongjourney.com

Vu Tran, the seventh author in our Restless City serial novel, has won a 2009 Whiting Award. With the literary prestige comes a check for a cool $50,000. The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation named ten recipients of the 2009 Whiting Writers’ Awards. The awards have been given annually since 1985 to writers of exceptional talent and promise in early career. The short stories of Vu Tran have appeared in such journals as the Harvard Review, Southern Review, Glimmer Train, and the Antioch Review and have been selected for inclusion in the 2007 O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Mystery Stories 2009, The Best of Fence: The First Nine Years, and Las Vegas Noir. Born in Viet Nam and a refugee at the age of five, he and his family were relocated to Oklahoma where he grew up and earned a BA and MA from the University of Tulsa. Mr. Tran also has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD as a Glenn Schaeffer Fellow at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He writes often of Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans and of the immigration experience. Mr. Tran’s first novel is forthcoming from W.W. Norton. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and also works as a free-lance editor.

Where do you find your best inspiration? That in-the-groove place where the ideas just flow and you’re on the creative high ground? Our Stephens Press book designer Sue Campbell may have the cleanest floors in the state of Colorado — as doing the mundane allows her to enter that altered state where thoughts flow and swirl and bump and collide into the new and wonderful. Check it out in the latest Shine journal.  Sue’s poetry has been published for two months running.

Writing is a solitary endeavor, and save for some tweaking by an editor, the storyline and characters are the author’s own. The author is in charge of what happens when, what each character does, says, and even looks like. So how did seven of the region’s best authors, all tremendously accomplished in their own right, deal with having to share?

John L. Smith said, “In school I often got into trouble for failing to work well with others, so I wasn’t optimistic that I could cooperate on a story with six  writers. Collaborating on a writing project was pretty new for me. But it was intriguing to participate in a collective creative writing project. And I think the story works.”

RESTLESS CITY will debut at this year’s Vegas Valley Book Festival. A signature project of the festival organizers, editor Geoff Schumacher invited seven of the area’s best-known authors to each write a sequential chapter in a yet-untitled book. The only provisions were it had to be set in Las Vegas, be fiction, and each chapter was limited to 3,000 to 4,000 words. Oh, and they’d have a short couple of weeks to write their chapter.

H. Lee Barnes. John Irsfeld, Brian Rouff, Leah Bailly, John L. Smith, Constance Ford and Vu Tran were game for this admittedly experimental project. Barnes set a high standard with the first chapter, and introduced his colleagues to a story we’ve come to label Vegas Noir. By the time John Irsfeld added his contribution, the title RESTLESS CITY was coined by editor Geoff Schumacher.

The concept of a serial novel was recently a bestseller in THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT by thriller-master Jeffery Deaver and a team of likewise bestselling mystery and suspense writers. I read THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT with great curiousity, wondering if I could sense the different voices from chapter to chapter. Yes, I could.

As I can in RESTLESS CITY. But not in a negative way. It is more of an undercurrent that something has shifted as the story moves on. Too, there was a greater anticipation as to where the story would go next as each new author took the reins.

According to author Brian Rouff, RESTLESS CITY required him to “step up my game”. Rouff said “Chapter three was a great opportunity because I got to delve into back story. John Irsfeld gave me a lot to work with. In turn, I finished my chapter with an old-fashioned cliffhanger for the next author. I hope the readers had as much fun as I did.”

THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT was such a success, that Deaver and his colleagues have produced THE COPPER BRACELET. Deaver was fascinted to “see how a group of authors with vastly varied writing styles and approaches to creativity produced such a cohesive thriller with a relentlessly fast-paced narrative”.

Vu Tran, the final chapter author said, “Writing the last chapter and trying to tie up everyone else’s plot and character threads was in turns a unique, infuriating, and fun experience. Complementing and resolving other people’s ideas was even more difficult than I thought it would be, but I ultimately found it very satisfying and educational.”

RESTLESS CITY is available at www.RestlessCity.com and will be available on Amazon and in local bookstores shortly. Both a print and eBook formats are being published. The book will debut at the Vegas Valley Book Festival with a reading by final author Vu Tran on Saturday, November 7 at 4:00 PM at the Historic Fifth Street School (on Fourth Street). Authors will be available to sign books.