Noble Pen Meeting

October 29nd, 2009
Happy Chef, 1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

“Drinking Zima is something Douglas Coupland would make a character do…. It’d be a device that would allow him to locate the characters in time and a specific sort of culture.”
–Douglas Coupland, jPod

Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
–Gore Vidal

Victories

George has become involved with European podcaster nerds, who are reading his material on their podcasts. He should be careful though, European nerds are not like American nerds. For instance, this is the American reaction to a broken computer and here is the European reaction. Actually, I believe the European video is the reaction to an IBM 5100 with a bad mainboard.

Ciuin has done most of her writing for school, but she will be performing ghosts stories at Usher’s Scary, Friday and Saturday night. She’s been working hard on her delivery. I hope her story has a Gypsy Witch in it.

I sent a followup letter to an agent which got me a new manuscript request. I didn’t even have to threaten violence to animals.

News

The Barnes and Noble e-reader is not a rumor. It is called the Nook, and they have a video where an attractive woman tells us all about it. It is only one of three e-readers published this week, but it is backed by B&N and if you say Nook e-Reader fast, it sounds funny. It also allows you to lend books to a friend–of course they have to have a Nook too, making you into kind of a Nook-crack dealer.

Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sears, and Target are involved in a book price war, dropping the price of hardcover bestsellers to $9–which is under cost, totally screwing small books stores, and making me say, “Sears sell books?”

Upcoming Critiques

Thursday, October 29nd. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Call of the Beast Query Letter by Shannon, I’ll mail this one out, as it’s a one-off.

George – Podcast material.

Thursday, November 5. Happy Chef, 7pm Welcome and Victories, 7:30pm Critique

Ciuin

Sometime in the future I am working on getting another author in to speak with us. She gave me a call last night, but I need to check her creds and set up dates. More details to follow.

Keep Writing

Shannon