Busboys and Poets Hyattsville Bookstore

Busboys and Poets – Hyattsville

Well Considered and Cologne No. 10 For Men are now being sold at the new bookstore in Busboys and Poets in Hyattsville, Maryland, an excellent independent bookseller. Buy them there!

The Elements of Style – Updated by Pritchard

Hyattsville Arts Festival

To all wordsmiths and students of grammar:  There I am, sitting at my table at the Hyattsville Arts Festival, waiting for someone to look at my wares—Cologne No. 10 For Men and Well Considered. I am reading my recent acquisition—William Strunk, Jr., The Elements of Style, Updated and Annotated For Present-Day Use, by Stanford Pritchard. A fortyish man stops in his tracks and asks me, “Is that the Elements of Style?” I say, “Yes—by Strunk, but updated by Pritchard.” He looks at me in amazement and says, “I’ve never seen anyone actually read that before.” I suppose he likens it to reading the dictionary.  Hundreds of thousands of copies of previous versions sit on shelves above desks throughout the land, right next to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, but are rarely opened and used. I say, “Yes, I’m studying it to see how my writing stacks up.  So far, not too bad.” He smiles and moves on, obviously neither a grammarian nor a fan of fiction. The festival is lively with lots of people, children, artists, crafters, musicians, food, beer, and book buyers. The rain holds off all day. And in spare moments, I have a pleasant time reviewing my grammar, usage, principles of composition, misused expressions, commonly misspelled words, punctuation, clichés, and other irritating solecisms highlighted by Pritchard’s dry wit, and noting in the margins a few things I may need to change in my new novel using Word’s Search Document.

NIMBY? no, YIMBY (at St. Mary’s College Chesapeake Writers’ Conference)

Baroque Concert at St. Mary’s College of Maryland – 7-13-2012
Larry Vote, guest conductor

We hear a lot about “Not in my backyard,” but Friday night it was “Yes! in my backyard” — a concert of baroque music by the Chesapeake Orchestra, the River Concert Series Festival Choir,

St. Mary’s College Concert Audience

and three professional soloists (soprano Joan McFarland, countertenor Roger Isaacs from South Africa, and trumpet soloist Jeffrey Silberschlag), all under the direction of guest conductor Larry Vote.   The music was Purcell and Handel, the third of six Friday night programs in the River Concert Series at St. Mary’s College of Maryland (www.smcm.edu/riverconcert).

And the concert was right in our back yard–we were staying in a townhouse backing up to the green and the concert tent pavilion with a view of the St. Mary’s River, while attending the Chesapeake Writers’ Conference of St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

The conference was delightful. http://www.smcm.edu/summer/writing/

• On Thursday evening on this tree-sheltered campus, we heard poetry readings by U. of Maryland poet Elizabeth Arnold
  

  Elizabeth Arnold

  and author Patricia Henley:  Arnold has published three books of poetry: The Reef (1999), Civilization (2006), and Effacement(2010).

  

  Patricia Hensley

  Henley is author of two books of poetry, four short story collections, a stage play, and two novels, including Hummingbird House, a finalist for the National Book Award.

• On Friday evening, Jeff Hammond and Matt Burgess read to us.
  

  Jeffrey Hammond

  Hammond has published three scholarly works on early American literature and several books of creative nonfiction, including Small Comforts: Essays at Middle Age.

  

  Matt Burgess

  Burgess’ first novel, Dogfight, A Love Story, was a New York Times Editors’ Pick and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. His second novel, Uncle Janice, is forthcoming from Doubleday.

• On Saturday evening, we heard readings and saw slides from Wayne Karlin’s book Wandering Souls: Journeys With the Dead and the Living in Viet Nam.
  

  Wayne Karlin

  Karlin is the author of seven novels and three books of creative nonfiction, and has received several State of Maryland Individual Artist Awards in Fiction.

During the day we had craft sessions in one of three genres—fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction–and worked in small workshops in groups of about a dozen participants led by acclaimed writers, reviewing and critiquing each others’ work. My fiction group was led by Patricia Henley, and I was continually impressed by her comments and insights. Saturday morning there was a publishing roundtable discussion led by two agents, a novelist and a small, independent publisher.

Attendees at Publishing Roundhouse

Besides the concert and a good Latin jazz trio on Thursday night, Sabor Trio, there were activities such as kayaking and trips to nearby parks and shops, as well as tours of historic St. Mary’s City,

Social Time

site of the fourth permanent settlement in British North America, Maryland’s first capital, the birthplace of religious toleration, and Lord Baltimore’s 17th-century capital.  http://www.stmaryscity.org

Altogether, the conference was pleasant, informative, and inspiring. For more information contact the conference director, Jerry Gabriel, author of Drowned Boy, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction.

Jerry Gabriel, conference coordinator

 

Not an art book either

One of my earlier posts http://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2010/09/28/not-a-romance-novel/ told about the assumption some people make that Well Considered is a romance novel when they see the black protagonist and the white female character (a neighbor) in the cover illustration even though the characters are not making eye contact and both look troubled about something. We learned to incorporate into conversation about Well Considered that it is a thriller with history built into it, not a romance novel.

I will add that Well Considered and Cologne No. 10 For Men are also not art books although they now can be found at the Art Under Pressure store at Busboys and Poets in Hyattsville, MD. Art Under Pressure was a welcome addition in the Arts District, selling art supplies, but also books and other items.

On Sunday, July 29, (6:30-8:00) I and three other authors will do readings and sign books at the Busboys and Poets Restaurant in Hyattsville, MD. Books may be purchased at the Art Under Pressure store in the restaurant http://busboysandpoets.com/events/event/author-event-david-l.-levy-andra-damron-julia-duin-and-richard-morris.

David L. Levy (fiction: Revolt of the Animals, http://earthhomepublishers.org),
Andra Damron (nonfiction: Hyattsville, www.Arcadiapublishing.com),
Julia Duin (nonfiction: Days Of Fire And Glory; Quitting Church; Knights, Maidens and Dragons, www.juliaduin.com/books), and
Richard Morris (fiction: Well Considered; Cologne No. 10 For Men, www.richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com ).

Not as predicted

Memorial Day weekend did not turn out as I had predicted http://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/tis-the-season/. In that post I had commented that Well Considered was likely to sell well in Bowie, as the setting of the novel is there, and that Memorial Day at the Memorial Day Writers’ Project near the Vietnam wall was where Cologne No. 10 for Men and my Skytroopers CD would be popular. One Memorial Day my wife had to return home to resupply copies of Skytroopers. This time I was partially correct.

Charis Center in Old Bowie

At Old Bowie Artsfest I was pleased to see Well Considered sell to a bigger audience than I had expected. This was even more surprising because this is a new festival in its first year with a small number of vendors and  small but steady traffic. We were quite impressed with the Charis Center in Old Bowie and hope they will be able to do whatever needed to stay in their location in a previous Episcopal Church. They provide arts classes such as drama, dance, visual arts, and music to homeschoolers during the day and then in an afterschool arts program and summer programs. There is a hearing coming up regarding the property which could affect their operation. In addition to passersby who were attracted to Well Considered, a number of people were interested in our poster advertising my July 29, 2012 reading at Busboys and Poets in Hyattsville along with David Levy, Julia Duin, and Andra Damron. Some people had been to Busboys and Poets in Washington but not to the Hyattsville location and seemed interested in combining our upcoming book reading with eating that wonderful food that Busboys serves.

Memorial Day Writers’ Project 5-28-12

On to Memorial Day … although we had heard on the radio that Constitution Avenue  beside the mall was closed in preparation for President Obama to speak at the Vietnam memorial, we had no idea that pedestrians would not be able to cross the street. So we had to drag our books, tables, water, etc. from 20th Street to 18th to be able to cross over and then back to 20th to locate our Memorial Day Writers Project tent.

Two Paths Converge

Baffled at Barricade
At Security Checkpoint

It was a disappointment to discover that approximately $1,000 of rental tent, rubber floor matting, chairs, and sound equipment had disappeared overnight when the usual tents for Memorial Day and Veterans Day all had to be relocated to make room for the security perimeter around the wall and the elaborate setup for the President’s appearance.

The usual parade of veterans passing by on their way to the ceremony did not happen; we were in a different location than usual. All we got was a parade of baffled tourists and residents coming from two directions around the pool and ending up at the security barricade along Constitution Avenue with no signs and no one directing them as to how to continue down or across Constitution Avenue, how to get to bathrooms since the bathrooms and porta-potties were all inside the security perimeter and unavailable to the public without going through the metal detector checkpoint, or when they would have access to see the memorial wall. We observed the VFW nearest the barricade becoming the unofficial question answerer after those of us who were there for the whole day finally started getting answers to some of our questions.  The speaker system for the event, which was located right behind the tent we had taken over from a group who was not returning after Saturday, overpowered most of our readings and songs, which we were doing without our sound equipment, and the speakers began their music and narrations long before the ceremony started. So, yes it was a disappointment that we did not get to honor veterans with our performances as we do every Memorial Day and Veterans Day and that we sold hardly any books or CDs.

But as a Vietnam veteran (rifle platoon leader, 1st Air Cavalry Div. 67-68) I feel proud and honored that President Obama issued his official “Thank You” and “Welcome Home” to Vietnam veterans (and also honored veterans of other wars). I don’t think any other president has officially honored Vietnam veterans this way. I was moved by his words.

Other than this, the lunacy of this afternoon seemed to fit in perfectly with the satire in my Vietnam War novel Cologne No. 10 for Men.

Can’t top this for a Memorial Day preview

Sunday I will be participating in the new Artsfest in Old Bowie, MD. Then on Monday, Memorial Day, I’ll be in D.C. on Constitution Avenue near the Vietnam Memorial with the Memorial Day Writers’ Project. I can’t top this link http://www.memorialdaywritersproject.com/ComingEvents.htm for previewing the MDWP event on Monday.  Just got a new order of my Skytroopers CD — will be singing from it and reading from Cologne No. 10 for Men.

Also, I got an email announcing the new eBook anthology from this group – $4.99. I am singing some of the songs.

A Common Bond II

After purchase you can download to your viewing device of choice, then click on audio files to hear the music. Here’s a link that tells more about this eBook and MDWP https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/165160. It has click-through ordering.

0 of 10 available … that’s good!

This morning we accessed the Prince George’s County library website — wanted to locate the opening time of the Hyattsville branch to determine when to swap the old books and check out the new ones. While using the website it seemed a good time to “visit” my novel Well Considered. The information came up that zero of the ten copies in the County library system were available to be checked out — some were reserved and the remainder were checked out until next month. Sounded like there might be a group of people reading it at the same time for … a book discussion? Further research showed that Surratts-Clinton library is having a discussion of Richard Morris’ Well Considered on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. So zero of ten available turned into a very good day! 

An awesome queue…at the Gaithersburg Book Festival

Jenny Lawson

An awesome queue of over a hundred enthusiastic fans followed Jenny Lawson from her speakers’ tent to the book signing tent. People were still in the signing line more than an hour later at 6:00 P.M. when everyone was packing up. We looked in the program to find out who this Pied Piper was and discovered it was Jenny who was signing her best-selling book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened ( A Mostly True Memoir). I was unable to hear her speak on this balmy, sunny Saturday, May 19, at the Gaithersburg (MD) Book Festival, but I did get to hear some others as I took breaks from signing books in my own booth. I made it a point to hear Richard Peabody with his new book of short stories by Washington area women. I have a story in his earlier collection Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by 50 DC Area Guys. Another on my “to-hear” list was Julia Duin, a Hyattsville (MD) author friend and newspaper writer and editor, who wrote Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community, revealing “The details of a scandal that rocked the charismatic and Christian community movements, and the Episcopal Church.”

John Corey Whaley

Well over a hundred authors spoke and offered their books at the fair, including Jim Lehrer (Tensions City: Inside the Presidential Debates, from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain), Judah Friedlander from NBC’s 30 Rock (How to Beat Up Anybody), Baratunde Thurston (How to Be Black – a New York Times bests-seller), Donna Britt (Brothers (and Me)), Tim Wendel (Summer of ’68: The Season That Changed Baseball),

Julia Duin

Keith Donohue (Centuries of June), John Feinstein (One on One: Behind the Scenes with the Greats in the Game), L.E. Modesitt, Jr. (Princeps),  and Luis Carlos Montalván (Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him).

Michelle Ray – “Falling for Hamlet”

I shared a booth with novelist David Levy (Revolt of the Animals) selling and signing Well Considered and Cologne No. 10 For Men. Levy’s Revolt of the Animals is an entertaining satire about animals taking over the earth to save it from humans who are bound to destroy it.

I had the pleasure of listening to award winning young adult novelists John Corey Whaley (Where Things Come Back), Pam Borchorz (Drought), and Michelle Ray (Falling for Hamlet), as part of my effort to get ideas on writing for young adults. My next novel, which I am now revising, is of that genre.

Pam Bacholz

I picked up some really useful tips, such as:  don’t use adjectives and adverbs.

David and Me

‘Tis the season

Rick, Audrey & Dayana – Sense of Wonder – 2012 Greenbelt, MD

‘Tis the season of festivals all around us. Riverdale Artsfest was wonderful and will definitely be on our list to watch for next year   http://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/a-curiosity-shop/. Procrastination prevented us from having a booth at the Green Man Festival in Greenbelt last weekend but, as a result, we got to enjoy the festival from a spectator perspective. My book cover illustrator, Audrey Engdahl, was there in her other role as musician along with Rick Engdahl and Dayana Yochim, collectively known as Sense of Wonder http://rickandaudrey.com/audrey/.

Saturday will be my third year at the Gaithersburg Book Festival http://gaithersburgbookfestival.org/. Accounts of the previous two festivals may be found at  http://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/end-of-the-world/ and http://richardmorrisauthor.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/delightful/. They put on an amazing festival the first year and it was even better the second time around. Looking forward to the third!

On to Bowie May 27 and June 2 for the first year of Bowie Artsfest http://www.gazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120502/NEWS/705029541/1025/new-festival-coming-to-old-town-bowie-spotlights-the-arts&&template=PrinterFriendlygaz  and long-time Bowiefest http://www.cityofbowie.org/Government/CommunityServices/SpecialEvents/bowiefest.asp. In between there will be Memorial Day May 28 on the Washington D.C. mall with Memorial Day Writers Project http://www.memorialdaywritersproject.com/. Cologne No. 10 for Men and also my Skytrooopers CD are usually my best sellers on Memorial Day and Veterans Day while Well Considered is more popular in Bowie. People enjoy puzzling the locations in the book in addition to enjoying a thriller with lots of Maryland history in it. Like most fiction, both books contain some fictionalized real events and a lot of veterans recognize in Cologne some of their own experiences from military service in general or Vietnam specifically — they certainly won’t recognize the ending, however, in this war satire! Hope you First Cav people will make a point of finding me.

A Curiosity Shop

Clarke Bedford and Vanadu

If you think you’ve seen it all, you should have been down by the train station at the Riverdale Park, Maryland, ArtsFest2012 on Sunday. It was an excellent place to explore curiosities and treasures.

• Artist Clarke Bedford from Hyattsville, Maryland, a curator at the Smithsonian’s Hirsh Horn Museum displayed Vanadu, his outrageous gothic art car (http://clarkebedford.com/cms/index.php/contact-info/intro/).

One String Willie

• One String Willie (David Williams from Philadelphia) (www.onestringwillie.com) made diddley bows (one-string slide guitars) for kids out of 2x4s, nails and wire and taught the children how to play them

• Staff from the College Park Aviation Museum at the world’s oldest continuously operated airport, College Park, assembled on-site a replica of the Wright Brothers’ biplane wings. www.collegeparkaviationmuseum.com/

Chris Benjamin and Model Trains

• Delvin Fanning, and other University of Maryland soil scientists, displayed a large Russian map showing the types of soils all over that country as well as four-foot-high samples of different types of soil

Young Docents from Riversdale Mansion

• Chris Benjamin from the Riverdale Model Railroad Club displayed Model trains—a perfect complement to the full-scale freight trains that shrieked and roared and rumbled past the festival all day long.

Young Docents from Riversdale Mansion

• Minature docents from nearby Riversdale Mansion, dressed at the Doll House, a nearby antique doll shop, made frequent appearances (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riversdale_Mansion)

• We authors resided in our literary corner, telling people stories; among us were Yi Weng, who displayed a book of imaginative cartoons (www.brushmen.com), some of the six authors who wrote Fourth Sunday, the Journey of a Book Club and call themselves B.W. Read (www.bwread.com), and Ann Ferguson (represented by Audrey Bragg) author of the children’s book, A Fine New Home for Young James Madison. Well Considered caught people’s interest because of its Maryland history and racial issues (and suspense), and a Vietnam vet bought Cologne No. 10 For Men. Several people expressed interest in having me do readings to a group.

Richard Morris

Dozens of artists filled booths in the Town Center, and bands played on the performance stage all day–R&B, Blues, Oldies, Jazz-Pop, and Mexican–emceed by David Burd, news personality at DC’s WTOP-FM (103.5).

Overall, ‘twas a pleasant day in Riverdale Park.