Busy Reading Manuscripts

Today's the last day of my Big Bold Sale, after having cut my prices for manuscript critiques by 40% for these past four weeks of June.

Now I'm reading and reading. I'm glad to be doing the work, and it's nice to make a Bold Gesture and get big response. I've met some new writers from both halves of the globe (all English-speaking) and heard from a lot of people I've worked with before.

So now there's the matter of finishing the work itself, which feels not so much bold as step by step by step. That's what often happens, I think, when a Bold Move turns out well.

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Turkey Town

The pig spa that I wrote about here a couple of weeks ago has been rivaled in real life.

A travel story in my local paper had turned out to be an April Fool’s trick on us readers. I believed it—and then posted here about the bold deception. The story described an inn where the happy guest can pat pigs, eat a pork diet, and have beauty treatments involving bacon fat.

So yesterday I was flipping through an old Guideposts magazine and came upon: Cornwell’s Turkeyville! This time the place is for real.

On a patch of farmland north of Marshall, Michigan, is a destination dedicated to pleasures provided by the turkey. In addition to the restaurant that cooks 20,000 birds a year, there’s a dinner theatre, an ice cream parlor offering Turkey Trax ice cream, a gift shop, a playground, and a turkey pen. Writer Mary Lou Carney noted some of the kinds of turkey sandwiches available, including buttered turkey, turkey salad, sloppy tom, smoked turkey. Or you could dig into turkey stir fry.

The only thing missing here was a turkey skin conditioner. At least it wasn’t noted in the article.

My point (aside from wonderment at the existence of such a place): If turkey’s your thing, don’t hold back. If you want to build a pig spa, do it. No joke. The world may very well beat a path to your door.





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Pig Spa

I'm ever scanning the world for sterling examples of boldness to report on, and I found some true moxie yesterday in my local News & Observer.

The story by Kathleen Purvis was about Hog Heaven, an inn and spa devoted to an appreciation of pork. "'I figured if California could have the Napa Valley, maybe it was time for the South to celebrate what makes us truly happy,'" owner Sue Trotter says. "'And no place appreciates bacon like the South.'"

This North Carolina mini-resort doesn't stop with a pork-heavy menu and opportunities to spend time with the cute little piglets: "...You can relax under a cooling raw-bacon eye mask while you get a facial with high-quality leaf lard, prized for its antioxidant content."

I was worrying a bit about how comfortable it would be to eat pork while patting a pig; especially since I liked the hogs that wandered the streets near where I lived in India, found them surprisingly personable. And then of course I came to the final punch line: April Fool's Day. I'd been completely suckered up to that very last sentence.

What was bold was that story. And the photograph that went with it.





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The Boldest Business

I'm alarmed and saddened by the ongoing disaster in the newspaper industry.

Yesterday was a sort of Black Monday here in Raleigh, another long list of very good reporters and editors got their pink slips at The News & Observer. In the last few weeks, one major American paper has died and another has cut back to a very trimmed-down online existence. Newspapers' very continuation is threatened.

I'm frightened by the thought of an America without serious daily news reporting. Imagine what some of our sneakier administrations would have gotten away with if no one were looking. Blogging, as we now know it, is not enough. Blogging is rarely more than comments on recycled news. And the advertising on blogs will not support the kind of news gathering operation that is adequate to covering what's going on. Who knows when that revenue rise, if ever? Our country can't go a minute without reporters.

Reporting is the bold business of poking into places that often tell you to stay out. We need that as much as we need police and firemen and a whole lot of other basic services.

I'm hoping someone will come up with a bold solution fast to SAVE THE NEWSPAPERS.






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What Roy Blount Wants for Christmas

Roy Blount, Jr., that jolly old elf, is current King Pen of the Authors Guild, and just sent this out to the membership. I think it's a great idea.


"We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let's mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that's just for starters.

Clear out the mysteries,
wrap up the histories,
beam up the science fiction!

Round up the westerns,
go crazy for self-help,
say yes to the university press books!

Get a load of those coffee-table books,
fatten up on slim volumes of verse,
and take a chance on romance!

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children's books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they'll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: 'Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now.'"

(Okay, you're not an old elf, Roy, but jolly good funny.)

If you happen to be a Durhamite, you might choose to party at The Regulator, or in Raleigh at Quail Ridge Books & Music.

(Note: the line breaks and boldfacing are all mine.)





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Pink Courage

The magazine Pink has a highly specialized set of blogs on its website. Aimed at women, but there's wisdom here for anyone. Note: Wake Up Inspired, and The Courage Expert. Also blogs on such subjects as Romance, Style, PR and Copywriting.

Manage Yourself is currently exploring a particularly interesting question: "How do I know when I'm limiting myself?" I think I am. And I think it has to do with the vestiges of a sort of rebelliousness: writing just a tiny bit "difficult," as a sort of playing hard to get.

Anyway, Pink has some good resources for the courage and boldness and creativity seeker.

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