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Our friends at the Ohioana Library have just announced a new series of events you won’t want to miss. They have organized day trips around Ohio they are calling “On the Road” with Ohioana Saturday Literary Adventure Series of 2013. Each trip focuses on a different literary topic or author – you will meet authors and visit the places that inspired them!

The series begins on April 13 in Dayton with a celebration of National Poetry Month. And our fans won’t want to miss the November 2 event – “James Thurber and his Columbus Haunts.” Mark your calendars!

For the full listing of trips and to purchase tickets, visit the Ohioana Library website here.

Thursday, November 1
5:30 – 6:30 reception
6:45 – 7:30 reading and chat
Thurber Center, 91 Jefferson Avenue

One of Columbus’s favorites, Robin Yocum, former reporter with the Columbus Dispatch who won 30 local, state and national journalism awards, has turned his talent to writing page-turning fiction. Last year his first novel, Favorite Sons, was named the 2011 USA Today Book News Book of the Year for mystery and suspense. His new novel, The Essay, will be released October 2012. As Donald Ray Pollock, author of the critically acclaimed Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time,  said: “After reading The Essay, a tough but compassionate story about a poor teenager in southern Ohio who struggles to make good, I am convinced that Robin Yocum is one of the most talented and graceful writers working in America today.”

Thurber House is pleased to shine the spotlight on this local author with a wine and
hors d’oeuvres reception followed by Robin reading from his new novel, chatting about his work, and answering questions. Both his novels will be for sale at the event.

Please call Erin Deel at 614-464-1032 x.11 or email [email protected] if you plan to attend.

Two huge special events are just around the corner – do you have your tickets yet?

Renowned historical non-fiction author Erik Larson will be joining us on Friday, May 4. His new book, In the Garden of Beasts, is set in Germany in 1933, when a benign man named William E. Dodd took his post as United States ambassador, just as Adolf Hitler began his rise to power. The book tells Dodd’s story, as well as the story of his unfaithful wife – and the impeccably researched story of Hitler’s Germany before World War II.

Thurber Prize for American Humor winner Christopher Buckley is a brilliant political satirist. He will return to the Thurber House stage on Wednesday, May 16. His newest work of satire, They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, features a Washington lobbyist and his female aide who start a rumor that the Chinese secret service is planning to assassinate the Dalai Lama, in order to push a top secret weapons system through Congress. The series of events that follow are vintage Buckley.

Both events will be held at the Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad Street. A wine and hors d’oeuvres reception for limited guests will be held before each reading, and tickets are available for the reception and reading, or the reading only. Ready to purchase your ticket before they are sold out? Click here!

As you may already know, we’re gearing up for a special event with Tess Gerritsen on Tuesday, July 12. Today, we’re announcing a last-minute ticket special for those of you who haven’t purchased your tickets yet:

The $15 tickets are now available buy one, get one free. To take advantage of this special offer, call 614-464-1032 ext. 11.

Tess is the international bestselling author of the Rizzoli & Isles police detective series, also a hit show on TNT. Her brand new novel, The Silent Girl, hit bookstores just a few days ago and we are thrilled that she will be with us in Columbus to share her latest edgy, murder mystery!

Summer Special Event details:

Tuesday, July 12, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Canzani Center, Columbus College of Art and Design
60 Cleveland Ave.
Columbus, OH 43215
For more information visit http://www.thurberhouse.org/tess-gerritsen.html

We hope to see you there!

This summer seems to be flying by … probably because we’re having so much fun with our annual programming! Things will continue to heat up through July, with a Special Summer Event and two more picnics in our annual Summer Literary Picnic series.

Special Summer Event with Tess Gerritsen

On July 12^th, Thurber House will host international bestselling author Tess Gerritson, whose brand new novel, The Silent Girl, will hit bookstores just days before she comes to Columbus. The Silent Girl is the latest installment in Gerritsen’s popular suspense series featuring Detective Rizzoli and medical examiner Isles. The books have been translated into 37 languages and have sold 20 million copies worldwide. Plus, the TNT-TV series based on the books, Rizzoli and Isles, just entered its second season. The Silent Girl is sure to follow in Gerritsen’s bestselling tradition.

The special event begins at 7 p.m. at the Canzani Center Auditorium at the Columbus College of Art and Design. Tickets for this event are $15 in advance and $18 at the door. Visit http://www.thurberhouse.org/tess-gerritsen.html for more details and ticket information.

Summer Picnic Series

In the third event of this year’s Summer Picnic Series, Leah Stewart will make her way to Thurber House on July 6^thto read from and discuss her newest novel, Husband and Wife. A happily married mother of two children, Sarah Price’s world gets turned upside down when she finds out that her husband has been unfaithful.

Next, the New Voices picnic takes place on July 20th. This picnic will celebrate three emerging Ohio authors: novelist Amanda Flower, essayist, and former Thurber House young docent, Ellen Waddell, and non-fiction writer Lee Kravitz.

Flower’s novel, Maid of Murder, was nominated for a 2010 Agatha Award for Best First Novel, and tells the story of a college librarian in Ohio who must hunt down the person who murdered her childhood friend and framed her brother for the crime. Waddell, who just graduated from New Albany High School and will be entering John Hopkins University in the fall, will read from her senior project, a published book of essays entitled, She Said, Looking Forward. Lee Kravitz, from Cleveland, will finish up the evening discussing his first book, Unfinished Business, which records an entire year doing the most important things in his life and reconnecting with those close to him.

Both picnics begin at 6:15 pm and takes place on the Thurber House lawn, with tours available before and after dinner. Tickets are $15 for the reading only or $25 for both dinner and the reading. More details and ticket information can be found at http://www.thurberhouse.org/2011-season.html.

Will we see you there?

Hosted by Connie Schultz

You won’t want to miss this very special event with Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author, Anna Quindlen! She is returning to Thurber House for a special evening of conversation, hosted by her longtime friend, Pulitzer Prize-winner, bestselling author, and previous Thurber House Literary Picnic featured guest, Connie Schultz!

In what is sure to be a captivating evening, Anna will be discussing with Connie her latest novel, Every Last One, an unforgettable portrait of a mother, a father, a family, and the explosive, violent consequences of what seem like inconsequential actions.

Quindlen is the author of 5 novels, 7 works of nonfiction, and was a columnist for Newsweek and the New York Times, and Schultz is a multiple award-winning writer and columnist for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

This Special Event will take place on Monday, April 4 at the King Arts Center, 867 Mt. Vernon Avenue.  Tickets for the reading are $25. They can be purchased online at www.thurberhouse.org, or by phone at 614-464-1032 ext.11.

For all the sports fans out there, you know golf, hockey, and basketball, but do you know anything about bull poker, ferret legging, or chess boxing?

Noted ESPN the Magazine columnist and New York Times bestselling author Rick Reilly takes time from his usual sports coverage to report on and try some of the most obscure sports.  In his new book, Sports From Hell: My Search for the World’s Dumbest Competition, Reilly experiences first hand the extreme, stupid, and often physically dangerous sports including the likes of the World Sauna Championships, Zorbing, and Jarts.  This hilarious evening will be hosted by Bruce Hooley, co-host of The Big Show on 97.1 The Fan- WBNS FM.

Reilly has been voted National Sportswriter of the Year 11 times, and in 2009 he won the Damon Runyon Award for Outstanding Contributions to Journalism He is the author of several books including Who’s Your Caddy and Shanks for Nothing, and is the host of Homecoming, a monthly interview show for ESPN that has features shows with Michael Phelps and John Elway, among many others

Reilly will read from his latest book on Wednesday, May 5^th at 7:30 p.m. at the Columbus Performing Arts Center, 549 Franklin Avenue.

Tickets are only $20, and are available online at www.thurberhouse.org, or call 614-464-1032 x11.

I have the house all to myself!  That never happens folks . . .  never! 
My subbing job was canceled!

B's at school.

Hubby's headed down to collect A and bring her home for Spring Break

and in one hour I'm headed here  to give Guardian a thorough, beginning to end, reading.




Sorry Ginger, you're going to have to give up your spot!





Um . . . how about we share it, instead?
Scoot over . . .

Hi,

An agent directed me to this link, which is full of marvelous tips and techniques to revise your novel.

The title is: The Art of Detection: One Editor's Techniques for Analyzing and Revising Your Novel. This is actually a speech Cheryl Klein, Editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, made for the Michigan SCBWI conference on October 2007.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeqjo1w/id21.html

I'll be using these techniques to revise my tween fantasy/mystery novel, The Luthier's Apprentice.

Happy revising!

Mayra

Moving right along here...grandkids were in school all day, so had time to spend on the computer. I've already gone through my KNOWING JOSEPH MS once and made some corrections...nothing major--mostly commas and such. Then I decided I should go through it again, so that is what I am working on now.

It's amazing on how easy it is to miss something when reading the same thing for the umteenth time. This time I found a missing period at the end of a sentence. I wonder how many times I have proof-read that MS and missed it. Have found many more things the second time, too. Whenever I am reading a book, I tend to find one or two errors in it, and wonder how people can publish books with such obvious errors...now I know.

Of course, there are whole sections of the book I would like to change/improve, but I guess we are beyond that now. I wonder...when we write, are we EVER finished with revisions?

Everything else is going along relatively smoothly...it was an 'at home' day today because we were waiting for the movers to come and get some of the stuff that needs to be shipped to Germany first (my son is in the military), and then shopping for birthday cake and a few other incidentals for Matthew's birthday, then off to Karate for Jay and Speech for Matthew. Only a couple of meltdowns, which we all survived.

Tomorrow is a golf day again...and hopefully the end of the editing for the second time.