The Department of
Good News/Bad News
The
Good News
H. L. Mencken
"If Mencken had never lived, it would have taken
a whole army of assorted philosophers, monologists, editors
and patrons of the new writing to make up for him. As
it was, he not only rallied all the young writers together
and imposed his skepticism upon the new generation, but
also brought a new and uproarious gift for high comedy
into a literature that had never been too quick to laugh."
--Alfred Kazin
The
Bad News
"And here too is Mencken, the human being of wildly
contradictory impulses: the skeptic who was prey to small
superstitions, the dare-all warrior who was a hopeless
hypochondriac, the loving husband and generous friend
who was, alas, a bigot."
The Diary of H. L. Mencken
--Edited by
Charles A. Fecher
Wisdom
"Just because the microphone in front of you amplifies
your voice around the world," said Murrow,"
is no reason to think we have any more wisdom than we
had when our voices could reach only from one end of the
bar to the other."
--Edward R. Murrow
Politics
"The business man has failed in politics as he has
in citizenship. Why? Because politics is business."
--Lincoln Steffens
Tom
Wolfe
The Father of New Journalism
On nonfiction:
"I regretted in many ways publishing the book The
New Journalism, because in effect it set down a bunch
of rules and standards by which non-fiction could be practiced.
In a way that undercuts what made it so fresh and original.
There were no rules for non-fiction when the New Journalism
began. There was a great deal of spontaneity and there
was never the sense that it was something to live up to.
That was the charm."
On
fiction:
"Incidentally, all movements labeled as "new"
are doomed. They die very quickly. What was new about
it was the utilization of techniques in journalism that
had previously been used only in fiction."
-- Tom Wolfe
CONSULTANTS/ADVISORS
ADVISORY
BOARD MEMBERS
Bill
Carlson
Tucker Hall
Tampa, Florida
Peter Dekom, Esquire
Entertainment Law
Beverly Hills, California
Rhea
Law, Esquire
Fowler White et al
Tampa, Florida
Jim Lynch, Vice President
Cisco
Milpitas, California
Brian Nestor, CEO
Nestor Sales
St. Petersburg, Florida
Janet Roderick
Director, SBDC
Little Rock, Arkansas
NOY
HOLLAND
Author and 2003 Fiction Judge
PETER MEINKE
An American Poet.
2002 Fiction Judge
KATHERINE
SANDS
Author of PitchCraft
and NYC Agent.
MICHAEL C. WHITE
Author of A Brother's Blood (Harper Collins), which
was a NY Times Book Review Notable Book
of 1996
as well as a Barnes and Noble Discover Great
New Writers Selection.
2003 Fiction Judge
FICTION
COMPETITIONS
Word Smitten annual awards for fiction.
The
Storycove
The Storycove Flash Fiction Contest awards $150.00
plus publication.
Annual
Deadline May 1
TenTen
Contest
The Ten Ten (1010) awards $1,010.00 plus publication.
Annual Deadline is July 1
INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
For Virtual Interns with journalism or English
Literature majors.
To apply, email us.
NATIVE
SHORE FICTION
Showcase for published and unpublished writers.
WRITING
TIPS
Query letters, manuscript format, contacting agents,
working with editors,
book promotion
and public relations. The realistic process for getting
your book published.
To
make us your Home Page, press Control D on a PC or the
Command Key and D on a Mac.
Welcome to www.wordsmitten.com,
where the writing is crisp, the towels are wet, and
the wit is dry.
Read
our exclusive interviews
with:
Brenda Copeland
Editor
at Atria Books
Peter Dekom
Entertainment
Attorney
Diana Finch
Literary
Agent
Margo Hammond
St. Petersburg Times
Book
Editor
Marcela Landres
Editor
at Simon and Schuster
Scott Manning
Publicist
for Black Hawk Down and other great books
Katharine Sands
Manhattan
Agent
Elisabeth Scharlatt
Editor
at Algonquin Publishing
Eric Simonoff
Literary
Agent
Read
WSQJ.
What, you're fuzzy about WSQJ? No, it's not an herb,
not a wildly growing cousin to tang-kuei, it is Word
Smitten's Quarterly Journal where in the Winter 2004
edition, you'll find Thisbe - which is even better than
finding wild growing things.
Looking
for Thisbe?
Find her here.
This
year, we are delighted to welcome a great new addition
to our staff. Tim Ljunggren, founder and former editor
of Insolent Rudder, joins WordSmitten as our
senior online editor. Along with the challenges he faces
with WordSmitten, he spends great amounts of his time
as husband, father, counselor to the creative spirit
in hundreds of individuals, and freelance writer.
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ABOUT
US
Contact
J. J. Marino
Editorial Assistant
WordSmitten, LLP
press wordsmitten.com
(727) 409-0500 Phone
St. Petersburg, FL 33737-5067
WordSmitten
A Southern
haven for beach bums.
Where the writing is crisp, the towels are wet
and the wit is dry.
Started
by a group of journalists and authors undergoing media-withdrawal
symptoms in 1999,
WordSmitten provides some snappy patter and exclusive
interviews for the book publishing industry. We cover
the people, the books, and the business of writing.
We're in a business that changes. The online world grows
and we hope to grow with it. We now have a radio broadcast
of WordSmitten, giving a voice to regional, national,
and international authors, editors, and publishing executives.
Our WordSmitten Writing
Workshops are exciting for us because they are so
popular each one is a sold-out event.
Initial
missions change, companies find new directions, and
in 2007, our WordSmitten group of companies (Native
Shore Fiction, The Storycove, and our WSM OnAir) faces
today's economic issues with great optimism. We have
ideas for the future in spite of and perhaps because
of the dot-com watershed, the world in turmoil, and
the uncertain times. But, we do believe in stories.
We believe in the written word. We are WordSmitten.
Current
projects for the company include searching for notable
book publishing individuals to interview, creating a
new fiction department to showcase new authors (Native
Shore Fiction: because everyone is familiar with their
own native shore), two fiction competitions, and continuing
reports on writing conferences for writers who strive
to continually enhance their professional careers.
Founder and Executive Editor
Kate Sullivan created
the concept for WordSmitten in 1999 and after completing
the business model testing went *live* in February 2001.
A graduate of UCLA, she studied journalism with Jim Howard
(formerly associated with the Los Angeles Times),
was managing editor of New Look Magazine and
in addition to being the Director of Communication for
the University of Hawaii's SBDC was a columnist with a
Hawaii daily newspaper. Her fiction appears in online
and print publications.
Bill Loewenstein who participates in the Word Smitten
site says of Kate Sullivan, "She's the kind of person
who has poker wit. When she talks, people listen and then
she gets them to blow coffee out their noses."
For
more than thirty years,
Bill Loewenstein has been
a professional writer and writing teacher living both
on the mainland and in the South Pacific. He has a bachelor's
in journalism from Michigan State University and a master's
in communication from Western Michigan University. He
has written for and edited weekly and daily newspapers
in the Pacific, served as a foreign correspondent for
magazines and newspapers, traveled widely throughout
Asia and Indochina, and advised government and non-profit
agencies in the United States. He currently teaches
both fiction and non-fiction writing at Baker College
and Michigan State University. During the years he lived
in the South Pacific he published a widely read island
newspaper, and although he now lives on the mainland,
Word Smitten's team delights in providing Bill with
his own private cyber island within our editorial pages.
As soon as he could, Bill Loewenstein left the daily
grind of running a newspaper, moved from the islands
and found teaching journalism to college students more
interesting than standing watch for a Pacific Ocean
tsunami. He moved from Hawaii to Michigan in the late
1980s and each winter visits Florida where he writes
short stories.
Kate comments, "I take Bill with me to my writing
group when he's here on a visit. He then spends the
next two days cataloguing our discussions, some rancorous
and some unorthodox, politely guised as critiques of
short stories. He's not to be trusted which is why I
like him. I prefer having friends
who need to be watched."
A
novelist and editor,
Shelley Singer lives
in Northern California where she teaches creative writing
and for more than a decade has worked with writers as
a manuscript consultant and editor. She is the author
of twelve published novels and many short stories. The
most recent novel is Royal Flush, the sixth Jake
Samson-Rosie Vicente mystery, published by Perseverance
Press/John Daniel & Co. in 1999.
"Shelley Singer is simply the best. I'm reasonably certain
that without her help, my first novel would be buried
in my backyard somewhere, rather than going into its
third printing. She encouraged me from chapter one to
the end, gave me detailed and insightful feedback, and
helped me take an amateur draft of a first novel and
turn it into a polished manuscript.
Nobody can guarantee you success, but if you're already
in the ballpark, Shelley Singer is the coach who can
help you hit a home run."
Rick Riordan, triple-award-winning author of Big
Red Tequila, The Widower's Two-Step, and
The Last King of Texas.
Since 1991, Singer has taught fiction writing at the
University of California Extension in Berkeley and San
Francisco (Mystery and Suspense Writing) and at Santa
Cruz. She holds private workshops as well as one-on-one
manuscript consultations, working with writers individually
on literary novels and in every genre from memoir, mystery,
and science fiction to horror.
Brenda
Townsend Hall
is a graduate of the Universities of
London (BA honors) and Southampton (doctorate). A lecturer
in English literature and then a language trainer, she
crossed the English Channel and settled with her husband,
a musicologist, in deepest rural France. She continued
language training in French companies and started producing
teaching materials and translating.
Following
the acceptance of her first piece of creative writing,
a verse play, The Crane, by BBC Radio 3 in 1992,
she has continued to produce poetry, short stories,
feature articles and a novel (published by Zander E-books,
Necklace
of Warm Snow, a finalist in the 2003
EPPIE awards). Now a freelance writer and editor, she
writes nonfiction, specializing in the environment,
sustainable development and issues relating to the European
Union. However, she continues to write fiction and has
just embarked on a novel set in the seventeenth century.
As a British writer living in France she suffered a
sense of isolation and so had the idea for the website,
Worlds
Apart Review,
which she co-hosts with another British writer, Valerie
Collins, who lives in Spain. Brenda Townsend Hall, Ph.D.,
lives in France.

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