Southern cooking show icon Paula Deen has joined forces with The Hachette Book Group (HBG).
The Emmy award winner and author of 14 cookbooks revealed that HBG will distribute all Paula Deen Ventures (PDV) titles worldwide in print and digital formats. This includes a new book coming out in September called Paula Deen Cuts the Fat.
“We are very excited to be partnering with industry-leading publisher Hachette Book Group. This is a perfect fit for many reasons, including Hachette’s philosophy regarding clients: treating each one as if it’s part of the Hachette family, while providing an incredible level of dedicated sales and operational resources,” stated P.J. Tierney, Vice President of Publishing at PDV.
Tracey Guest, director of publicity at Simon & Schuster, has been promoted to vice president, director of publicity.
Guest has been with Simon & Schuster since 1998. In her time at the publisher, she has worked on a wide range of books by authors including: Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Woodward, Don Rickles, Mike Birbiglia, Bob Dylan, Paula Deen and Sylvia Nasar. Guest’s most recent publicity campaign was for Jaycee Dugard‘s bestseller, A Stolen Life. Guest began her career at Dutton/Plume in 1991.
In an email, Adam Rothberg, SVP, corporate communications at Simon & Schuster, wrote: “Through it all, Tracey has demonstrated excellent judgment, warmth, spirit, and an ability to make good things happen for our authors in all forms of media.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a Linked Up, but with releasing a new episode of The Oxford Comment, working “frak” into my daily vocabulary, and trying to keep up on developments in Egypt, I’ve not found the time! Hopefully, today’s will make up for it. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
P.S. I promised our Twitter followers that if they came up with at least 5 good questions about insects I would have an entomologist answer them, so send in yours!
Apparently Kobe Bryant told Pau Gasol he needed to be more “black swan” on the court. [NYMag]
I was shocked by this: “Vodafone Forced to Send Pro-Government Text Messages in Egypt” [RWW]
There is a wonderful new Paula-Deen-as-hipster meme [Clabwag]
I have a lot of colleagues in the UK, so this “everything you ever wanted to know about the UK/GB/England in five minutes” was very helpful. My favorite (favourite?) part: “BFFs 4EVA USA?” [CGPGrey]
And since we’re on the topic of geography, I might as well present this from XKDC:
Yes, it’s been around for a while, but I think it’s important to remind everyone that you can talk like a pirate on Facebook. [NextWeb]
You got a few minutes to make some fleeting art? Then try this.
If you didn’t see the update to our article “Why the Trenta?” I’m sure you’ll be delighted to learn that Starbucks’ newest size can hold an entire bottle of wine. [Cockeyed]
Oh Apple, you’re so sneaky. [Atlantic]
Protesters are awesome: Egyptian volunteers clean the streets [Good]
And now, an enormous infographic:
Woo hoo!
Stacy Curtis just emailed me to let me know that the cookbook I illustrated is on a New York Times Best Sellers List. Thanks Stacy! Stacy also has a book on the New York Times Best Seller's Picture Book List, so I am in good company.
That's great news to finish off a nice Sunday afternoon.
CHAPTER BOOKS
1 THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, by Neil Gaiman. Illustrated by Dave McKean. (HarperCollins, $17.99.) To avoid a killer, a boy lives in a cemetery. (Ages 10 and up) 2
2 DIARY OF A WIMPY KID, written and illustrated by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet/Abrams, $12.95.) The travails of adolescence, in cartoons. (Ages 9 to 12) 78
3 THE MAZE OF BONES, by Rick Riordan. (Scholastic, $12.99.) A brother and sister hunt for the source of their family’s power; Book 1 of a new series, “The 39 Clues.” (Ages 8 to 12) 5
4 DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: RODRICK RULES, by Jeff Kinney. (Amulet/Abrams, $12.95.) How Greg embarrassed himself on his vacation; a sequel to “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” (Ages 9 to 12) 39
5 THE WAY WE WORK, by David Macaulay with Richard Walker. (Lorraine/Houghton Mifflin, $35.) Getting to know the human body. (Ages 9 to 12) 1
6 PAULA DEEN’S MY FIRST COOKBOOK, by Paula Deen with Martha Nesbit. Illustrated by Susan Mitchell. (Simon & Schuster, $21.99.) Recipes for the very young. (Ages 4 to 8) 1
7 THE HUNGER GAMES, by Suzanne Collins. (Scholastic, $17.99.) In a dystopian future, a girl fights for survival on live TV. (Ages 12 and up) 5
8 NATION, by Terry Pratchett. (HarperCollins, $16.99.) Two young survivors of a tsunami slowly forge a new society. (Ages 12 and up) 2
9 THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN, by Sherman Alexie. Illustrated by Ellen Forney. (Little, Brown, $16.99.) A boy leaves his reservation for an all-white school. (Ages 12 and up) 47
10 THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET, written and illustrated by Brian Selznick. (Scholastic, $22.99.) An orphan deciphers his father’s last message. (Ages 9 to 12) 80
Even in a lonely place
There shall be no fear
For a protector walks with you
Turn, and nothing is seen,
even in the moonlight
But she is there.
Even from the distant darkness
there is strength in her words
A Friend
“Su– sugoi…”
“That’s the ring. That’s the ring we found in the jewelry box in Jessica’s attic.”
“It’s made of sapphires.”
“Miss Shannon picked it up. I wonder if we’ll be finding that ring again soon?”
“My ring?”
LadyStar is the story of a group of girls who each have a powerful weapon they wear disguised as a priceless jeweled treasure. With their magical weapons, Jessica Hoshi and her friends can transform into the Ajan Warriors, champion defenders of the enchanted realm of Aventar!
“Hi! I’m Jessica Hoshi! If you like stories about action and adventure and discovering magical treasures and fighting evil monsters, you’ll like our books a lot! Me and my friends have lots of fun adventures together! You can read LadyStar: The Dreamspeaker for free! The whole book! Right in your browser! So tell all your friends and come visit us as much as you want! There’s always something fun happening on our site!”
“You know how some sites have like one free chapter so you can see how the book is before you buy it?”
“Yeah. That’s pretty cool. It’s just like going to the bookstore and reading some of the book before you buy it in the store.”
“But we have all our chapters on our site. We give all the chapters away for free.”
“Because we’re the crazy LadyStar peoples! Come on, Miss Shannon. We’ve got a guard cat that’s been asleep for six years! We’ve got a blond girl somewhere around here that’s as smart as Mozart about music but wears yellow tennis shoes as a fashion statement! We have a bird that makes magic flowers appear!”
“heh. We still publish articles about Pluto.”
“Yeah but it’s a planet.”
“Yeah, are you savvy?”
“Alright everyone out.”
“But mom!”
*giggle*
And it shall come to pass
that a gentle voice shall be heard
in the Golden Wood
Telling tales of wonder
and guarded by the Living Forest
“Let’s hear it for the PROFESSOR!”
“Woohoo!”
“It’s Talitha-chan! And she’s got some of the bestest powers of all. Her treasure is the Goldenwood Shield, which is the only treasure that we got that’s actually alive just like a real tree!”
“In Palace in the Sky, Hayashi fought that demon in the Venom Deeps that was casting fire spells at us.”
“But the Warrior of the Forest can call on plants and trees to fight for her and she zapped those baddies for us. Tough fight.”
“I think she’s going to get some new powers in Call of the Huntress too, and one of them is called ‘Autumn Canopy.’”
“Ooh, that’s a pretty name. I wonder what it does?”
“So go check out Forest Girl’s page and get all attuned with flowers and gardens and all that good stuff. Say a few words, Professor.”
“She’s real shy and stuff, but Talitha-chan is our best friend and we’re glad she’s a warrior just like us! Ja ne minna-san!”
LadyStar™ Call of the Huntress is Copyright © 2007 Heavy Cat Multimedia Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Shannon looked around. Some of the plants had grown rather close to the water on the opposite side of the narrow brook. One of the plants looked odd and Shannon couldn’t quite figure out why. She continued looking at it, trying to sort the leaves from the branches. It was a very dense plant, and the leaves were larger than most of the other plants, so it was hard to tell which leaf was which.
What she noticed, however, was the long light brown strings that seemed to run around and around the branches. It looked almost as if they were hanging there. Then Shannon realized they were. She stood up and stepped over the shallow water to get a closer look. Strung through the outer edge of the shrub’s branches were two long light brown cords that looked very much like they were made of the same kind of leather as her scabbard. Shannon picked them up. The two pieces were about the width of a shoelace, but at least twice as thick.
I wonder where these could have come from? Shannon thought. She looked back and forth, wondering if someone had perhaps dropped them or they snagged the plant as they passed. Then Shannon started scouting along the ground around the banks of the nearby brook, thinking perhaps whomever had lost these cords had perhaps dropped other items. After a few moments, however, Shannon had found nothing, so she carried them back to where she had been sitting.
As she sat examining the two laces, she glanced at the scabbard she had set down by the edge of the water. She picked it up and took a closer look at it. Sure enough, the scabbard and laces seemed to be made of almost exactly the same material. I knew it, Shannon thought. Maybe the scabbard and laces went together somehow?
Shannon examined the scabbard closely. There were twin sets of two notches cut into one side of the flat leather, but they were far too small to thread the laces through. Shannon exhaled impatiently and dropped her hands to her lap, still holding the laces and scabbard. What are these for? Why don’t they go together?
“You are going to be in such trouble when the farmer finds out you raided his apples,” a voice said from behind Shannon. She quickly turned to look. A boy about her age was leaning against one of the ash trees near the brook, staring off in another direction. He was dressed in ragged canvas pants and a dingy-looking light-colored long-sleeve shirt. He was tossing a small dark-colored coin of some kind with one hand. He turned his head to look at her and raised an eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t you be about your chores, princess?” he said with a smirk.
Shannon sat agape. At least a dozen different emotions collided in her mind, shouting for attention. The majority were various degrees of annoyance, anger, frustration, embarassment and apprehension. About all Shannon could manage was one sputtering response.
“I’m not a princess!”
“Whatever you say,” the boy replied, turning back to staring into the forest. His shock of brown hair was combed only in the most liberal sense of the word. Not that it seemed to concern him in the slightest.
“I could put in a good word for you with the farmer, but I’ll have to ask for a favor, you know,” he said.
“Why you..” Shannon got to her feet and clenched her fists. The boy turned and put his hands out to try and calm Shannon down.
“Hey, hey, don’t mean no harm, princess. I’m just on the lookout for a few coins so I can buy my breakfast all honest-like. Don’t want the merchants to think I’m a shady type.”
“Do I look like I have any coins? Why would I be picking apples if I had coins to buy them with you stupid, raggedy-looking doofus! And if I did have any coins the last person I’d give them to would be you. And stop calling me princess. I’m a high school student and I’m a squad leader in band!” Shannon almost shouted.
“And you’ve got a bit of a temper, haven’t you?” the boy winked. Shannon frowned, mouth open. She was rapidly becoming too angry for speech. She clenched her eyes shut.
“Ooooh!” she exclaimed in a frustrated tone, then whirled around and plopped back down on her spot by the brook.
The boy observed Shannon sitting with her back turned for a few moments, then put his hands in his pockets and sauntered over near where she was sitting.
“Where’d ya get that knife?” he asked.
“I found it,” Shannon snapped, then folded her arms with emphasis.
“Bet it’d sell for a tidy sum,” he persisted.
“It’s not for sale,” Shannon replied. “It’s mine.”
“Well, you said you found it. Could belong to someone else,” the boy said, rocking back and forth on his heels and looking out over the water.
“They don’t want to sell it either,” Shannon said. The boy chuckled.
“How do you know they don’t want to sell it?” he asked with an amused tone.
“Because I just do,” Shannon frowned stubbornly.
“Do you always get what you want?” the boy asked.
“Yes,” Shannon said with a note of finality.
“And you say you’re not a princess,” the boy teased. Shannon looked up with an astonished expression. The boy’s blue eyes made him look curious about her more than anything else.
“Ran away from home myself last harvest.” He smiled and nodded his head in an upstream direction. “There’s an abandoned barn on the opposite side of that stand of maple if the night breeze gets too cold for you. Watch out for the farmer though. He’s a mean one.”
The boy picked his way down the bank towards a large rock in the stream, then expertly hopped across to the opposite bank. Moments later he disappeared into the trees again.
Shannon sat with an expression of total incredulity on her face. Just who did he think he was?
“You know, one thing a lot of new people might not know about our site is we are publishing our whole story for free so anyone can read it.”
“Yeah, we got two whole novels published already. One is called The Dreamspeaker, which is the story of when we found the first five Ajan Treasures. We also got The Palace in the Sky which is a story about when we went to a place called the Venom Deeps and battled lots of scary monsters.”
“Both of those books are already complete, and we have parts of two more books published. One is called Call of the Huntress which is going to be published next, and the fourth book is called Winterdancer. Both of those books will be published free just like the first two really soon.”
“So come back and visit us and be sure to read our books, ’cause we have lots of neat adventures. Ja ne minna!”
“Hey everyone. We’ve had quite a few updates for the third book in our series, Call of the Huntress, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of what we’ve previewed so far.”
“That’s a great idea Shannon-sama!”
“Thanks, Hoshi! Okay, our first preview was By the Light of the Stars which is the story of the Warrior of the Night battling reptile-like monsters called Carcs.”
“Yucky. I don’t like monsters.”
“The second update was a four-part series called the Plot Against the Vicereine, about a noble in Aventar who gets attacked by evil assassins. Here’s Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.”
“The Vicereine seems like she’s real strong. I hope we don’t have to fight her.”
“Yeah, but she gave that little boy a silver coin even though the price of the flower was a lot less. I think that was really nice.”
“Yeah! That was nice, huh? I wonder what a cruss ring is though.”
“So how come you decided to do a preview roundup today?”
“Guess.”
“Ooh! You’re gonna have another preview?! Realeeeee?”
“Check back later today everyone! A brand new exclusive preview from Book Three of our series Call of the Huntress, right here. See ya then!”
“Don’t miss the new preview! Ja minna!”
Congratulations! That's extremely exciting for you.
Number 7 that amazing Susan.....Congratulations.
Congrats! I saw Paula Deen on The View, and they did a little session with a couple of girls to show how easy the recipes were. They showed the book and I think they might have used some of the illos for background on the set. It looked like a fun book!