Guest Author Jason Silva

I met guest author Jason O. Silva at this year's Duarte Festival of Authors. What stopped me at his booth were his beautiful book covers. What kept me there was his warmth.  

The first book in his "Edgar Trunk" series for children was a Gold winner at the 2011 Moonbeam Children's Book Awards. 

The second book is a brand new release. Please welcome guest author, Jason O. Silva.

For me, writing a guest blog entry is a little like dining at La Luna Negra. The decor, the atmosphere, the culture (just like this blog) are so colorful. The Flamenco show starts; you're enjoying it as a spectator. How do those dancers achieve such intensity? The experience is full. You are transported. The evening is a splendid, joyous memory in the making.

But then there is the moment. It happens every single time at La Luna Negra on a weekend night. The dancers disperse from the stage and enter the restaurant seeking an unsuspecting partner to fumble clumsily through a few moves with them as patrons jeer and applaud.

There are those who live for the spontaneous spotlight. They are a flame seeking a wick, ready to burn even brighter. I on the other hand abhor public showiness. I wear a t-shirt in the pool. I sit in corners. I keep my cell phone volume down on the lowest setting. So when a beautiful Flamenco dancer swishes through the tables to draw one of us out of the crowd, I pray on my life that she will not pick me. Because if she does, I will sit there like a slug and grunt, "No." I will refuse, even as she tugs my arm. I will act like that arm is asleep, like the limb isn't even mine. Pull all you want.

Afterward, the latent misgiving surfaces. I'm left wondering if I just spoiled the party. Did I knowingly walk into a charming and wonderful scene and then wreck it like an unruly child in a porcelain shop? These are the situations I avoid. Really, my hesitation stems from the fear that my performance cannot do the honor justice. I prefer to be a fan, to watch and enjoy, like with the Pasadena Daily Photo, to peruse, participate in a passive and carefree way, with none of the pressure of having to live up to the expectation of craft, sensibility, and wit contained within the wonderful posts.

But what are we without our foibles? Without our quirks and insecurities? These become for us the fodder for great characters, great moments, and that ring of authenticity that makes stories REAL. The truth is, if you never get out of the chair, you're never going to dance (in life, in writing, at La Luna Negra). There comes a time when we must face our fears, so here you go. Look out, Flamenco Lady!

Guest Author, Margo Sorenson

With her latest middle grade/tween ebook TIME OF HONOR (MuseItUp Publishing) featuring a prep school debater catapulted into the middle ages to prevent a murder, Margo Sorenson has writtentwenty-eight books for young readers. A Minnesota Book Award Finalist in YA Fiction and Milken National Educator Award recipient, Margo and her books can be found at www.margosorenson.com and www.amazon.com, and of course, our beloved Vroman's. Please welcome today's guest author, Margo Sorenson.

You couldn’t imagine that growing up in Altadena and Pasadena could have a medieval influence on my writing, could you?  Seriously, my most recent tween/middle grade mystery, TIME OF HONOR, involves Connor, a smart-mouth debater heroine who is catapulted back to 1272, and the medieval aspects of Pasadena helped me put her right back in the middle ages.

There’s more that’s medieval about Pasadena than just the history books in the Pasadena Library. Stop at Westminster Presbyterian Church, and just imagine it transported to a medieval city. Its gothic architecture would fit right in. Sitting there on Sundays as a kid and staring at the vaulted ceilings, I used to daydream (apologies to the ministers!) about living in the middle ages, so it wasn’t a big leap to write about Connor having to swap her jeans for a velvet gown (after a flea-check!).

My family, being the geeks we were, would often drive to the Huntington Library to look at the exhibits. There, too, the medieval influence of Pasadena worked on my brain. Looking at china and silver goblets on display fired my imagination about the people who used them and the conversations they must have had at the table. Granted, Connor had to learn to make do without a fork, since only knives and spoons were used in 1272, and – gross – she had to share a wine goblet with her dinner companion, but to see ancient utensils and plates really helped create the ambiance of medieval meals.

Even the white-glove Pasadena image of years ago was important for this book. Decorum was key; I dreaded attending the young people’s cotillion at the Hotel Green every month, in white gloves (absolutely!), hoping that I could shrink against the wall and not have to dance! There was a genteel rhythm to Pasadena life back then, and, although I didn’t appreciate having to behave, the adherence to etiquette translated well back to courtly life in medieval times. Connor also finds she has to squelch her impulses to fit into 1272, so she doesn’t get found out by the murderers!

Pasadena isn’t a medieval city, but living there helped me write about living in the middle ages. Do you think the castle in the cover’s background looks a bit like the Hotel Green?

Guest Author Kitty Kroger: Dancing with Mao and Miguel

I met Kitty Kroger at my writers group, where instead of critiquing each others' work we talk shop. Kitty mentioned her novel, Dancing with Mao and Miguel, and after the meeting I read the first chapter on her website. Now that I know it might be autobiographical, I'm even more intrigued. Please welcome guest author Kitty Kroger.

Although I’ve lived in NELA for 25 years, I spend more time in Pasadena than in Eagle Rock (especially at Vroman’s, the Laemmle, the New Delhi restaurant, Pita Pita, Sabor2 before it closed, the YMCA and Grassroots in South Pasadena, and with Altadena friends). But my novel is set in Jersey City because as a first novelist, autobiographical is obligatory, right?

Upon retirement I heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). When it began, I was in Las Vegas getting out the vote for Obama. Each morning I arose an hour before my roommates, cloistered myself in the bathroom, and wrote at the bathroom counter. 1600 words a day on my AlphaSmart keyboard. I had my subject—problem child raised by single mom; I had my outline; I was ready.

By Thanksgiving I’d reached my target of 50,000 words. Yeaaaaa! Then came the jolt: my writing group was less than overwhelmed by the first chapter, which finds the protagonist Jenny about to give birth. “We can’t relate,” they told me. “Start further back and show us why we should care.”

So I dropped back to write a chapter about Jenny meeting the father of her baby. Miguel is an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who works in the same factory as Jenny, a communist organizer. (Autobiographical? I’m not telling!) During the rewriting I got so caught up in their stormy relationship, in his experience in the Dominican Revolution of 1965, in her painful re-evaluation of the Maoist organization she belongs to and her terror of intimacy, that the infant never did make it to the light of day. (Sorry, baby.)

Writing this first novel was a roller coaster ride! On one day I’d be convinced that my writing was dreck. The next day I would know that Harper Lee should step aside. Peaks and depths. “Aha!” moments followed by thoughts of suicide (well, not exactly). It took me two years to not take every critique as a verdict on my Worth as a Human Being. I read drafts to anyone who’d listen—friends, relatives, myself, even my dog. My dad, who was senile by then, was a valuable critic because he’d nod off when the writing became too introspective (I had to repeatedly curb my tendency toward interiority), and his eyes would glow when I painted a scene and created tension.

“Tension”? That was another lesson along the way: “What do you mean I need tension in every paragraph?”

**********

You can read Kitty's blog, plus the first chapter of Dancing With Mao and Miguel, at KittyKroger.com.

Her other blog is at KittyKroger.wordpress.com.

Guest Author: Dylan Brody

John and I met Dylan Brody in our Van Nuys days when our dogs introduced us at the dog park. You may be familiar with Dylan: he's a recurring guest on John Rabe's Off Ramp on KPCC, and he regularly performs live in the Los Angeles area and around the country (check his website for his schedule). Dylan's Modern Depression Guidebook is available on Amazon. His promo video for the Guidebook made me laugh out loud. Please welcome today's guest author, Dylan Brody.

At some point as you put together your novel you’ll get stuck. It happens to everyone. When it happens imagine yourself inside the scene or directly involved in the action and pay attention to things that didn’t seem important until you put your focus on them.

Are there sounds you or your characters hear that you hadn’t noticed before? A smell in the air? What are the small things the characters do with their hands?

As you begin to flesh out these tiny details, you will find they serve you in larger ways. If Deloris twists a strand of hair around her finger as she thinks, the same gesture may be used later to let us in on the fact that she’s thinking without telling us. If Givenchy Gentlemen hangs in the air when Paul arrives on the scene, dark-haired and arrogant, we may know that a deception is in place when the scent of Givenchy Gentlemen accompanies a dark-haired, arrogant man who introduces himself as Frederick.

The more you allow yourself to sink into the reality you create, to take in the details and report on them, the more life the story takes on for you and the more its own natural path reveals itself.

Many writing teachers give the instruction to show, rather than tell. This cannot be accomplished, though, until you begin to see, rather than invent.  The farther you sink into the imagined reality of the world you seek to reveal, the more you will be able to relate your experience there through the senses rather than through exposition. It is one thing to say that a scene takes place in a doll shop. It is quite another to place dolls, porcelain and bright-eyed, in careful rows on shelves from which they can look down on arriving customers, each hoping in her inanimate heart to be taken from the musty, humid orphanage for abandoned childhood companions to a bright new home with a nursery and a Labrador. It is one thing to say that a place is dark and dusty. It is another thing entirely to watch the slow descent of motes through the single, pencil-thin shaft of sunlight that slants downward through a bullet-hole in one of the five foil-blacked windows.

Being stuck need not be an indication of writer’s block. It is merely a reminder to sink deeper, take in the details. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? See. Hear. Smell. Feel. Write.

Guest Author Margaret Finnegan and "The Goddess Lounge"

In my novel The Goddess Lounge, an Altadena mom attends a "goddess consultation" at a notorious LA coffee house/knitting salon/menstrual palace called The Goddess Lounge, and from there on out madcap adventures ensue. On my blog, FinneganBeginAgain, readers ask me to find goddesses to help them with issues as diverse as career advancement to leaky plumbing.

You might wonder: Margaret, what's up with all the goddesses?

I'm glad you asked! I believe we live in a world that lacks historical memory.  We throw out the past like it's old Kleenex. The problem is that if you only have your own personal past to provide context for your experiences, then whenever some new tragedy strikes you can't help but gnash your teeth and wonder how you of all people became so particularly and cruelly ill fated. Your partner leaves you and you gnash.  Your career falls apart and you gnash. Your child/parent/best friend/self becomes painfully ill and you gnash, gnash, gnash.

You know what helps with the gnashing? Stories, ancient stories that remind us that loss, pain and hardship are timeless and universal. The only problem is that, in the old stories, hardship turns men into heroes and it turns women into crazy ladies or dead crazy ladies. Which is why women need better stories. Enter goddesses.

Being a goddess was no cake walk. Husbands cheated on you. Children died and betrayed you. You encountered humiliation, sadness, sorrow.  But you didn't go all cat lady and die. You muddled through. And you didn't get a boob job to please a man or feel guilty for wanting something just for yourself. You knew your invaluable worth, and you expected others to know it too. You were better than a hero. You were a goddess.

Want to be a goddess? Here's what you do: Look around, and in the places of your life where you find disrespect and ingratitude, say: "I am a goddess. I will not put up with this shit." And in the places of your life where you find hurt and pain, say: "You poor little thing, come hide under my wings. I am a goddess, and you are safe."

**********

Meet Margaret at a book signing and reception for The Goddess Lounge:

Saturday, July 21

Three o'clock to four-thirty in the afternoon

SPACE Arts Center

1508 Mission Street

South Pasadena, CA 91030

A portion of all proceeds will go to SPACE art scholarships.

Watch a trailer for TheGoddess Lounge (narrated by Pasadena Daily Photo's own Petrea Burchard).

Buy The Goddess Lounge.

Read Margaret's blog and request agoddess of your own.

A Fantasy Novel

My favorite sights at last year's Renaissance Pleasure Faire were the behind-the-scenes campsites. Many Faire workers live in these tents (maybe only on weekends?), living out a mediaeval fantasy.

I have my own fantasies. One has become a completed novel called Camelot & Vine. It's about Casey Clemens, a minor Hollywood actress who falls through a gap in time, accidentally saves King Arthur's life, lies to him about magical powers she doesn't have and must face death and forgiveness to redeem herself.

I loved the process of writing the book. Now it's time to get it published. I'm not going to post about it every day (how many suits of armor and Avalon Funeral Homes can there be in the Dena, anyway?) but I might ask your indulgence from time to time and of course I'll update you when there's news. Today's post is by way of warning: next Thursday, May 3rd, my blog post will be a contest entry. I'll be posting my query letter (a sales pitch to potential literary agents) and the first 250 words of my novel as part of "The Writer's Voice" contest. There won't be any other explanation, so I hope you'll play along and not just say, "WTF?"

The contest is sponsored by four different book bloggers. Have a look:
Cupid's Literary Connection
Brenda Drake Writes
Love YA
Mother. Write. (Repeat.)
Nose around their fine blogs and see what's what. They've all got a lot going on. Maybe you've got a potential contest entry, too.

So this is a heads up. Next Thursday I'll be my own Guest Author. Feel free to comment and we'll see how it goes. And wish me luck! Some fantasies do become reality.

Guest Author: Tara Samuel

Tara Samuel is one of the reasons my husband John joined the independent film collective, We Make Movies. "She's good news," he says, and she is. I first saw Tara on screen in Ruby Booby, a film I told you about last fall, which she produced and starred in. She plays Ruby--quiet, unassuming, along for the ride and hoping not to get hurt. I can guess why Tara was attracted to the role--Ruby is her absolute opposite. Here's Tara: energetic, enthusiastic, a life force. I hope you enjoy her story.

The story of an independent director-producer team could be set in any city - but for us it was Pasadena. The filmmaking adventures of Jon Rannells and Tara Samuel are like a Family Circle map, dotting the Pasadena landscape: cross these train tracks to a fundraising evening of short scenes at the Rialto; jump this fence and attend a publicity stunt balloon launch at Lacy Park; run down this alleyway and find yourself at a wine & cheese screenplay reading at the Le Petit Vendome!

Our Film-Financing Coming Of Age story was set in Pasadena.

Curious about the balloon launch? But it's obvious isn't it? Jon and I decided that financing for his screenplay, Dream Box, could come from anywhere, including random places where balloons landed.  So we attached Dream Box "Evening of Short Scenes" invitations to balloons, launched the colorful carriers into the air and let fate take care of the rest. Would-be film financiers would find our charming postcards, and mark their calendars! Sit back and collect!

We knew of course that this savvy tactic would need to be complimented by door-to-door efforts. No face-to-face contact - not necessary - just your standard Dream Box Postcard gift bag - complete with Dream Box Pen - left on your lovely Pasadena front lawn. (Perhaps you, dear reader, are still in possession of one of these collector's items.) Each unsuspecting homeowner would be sure to light up at the sight of their bag, read the invitation, and be irresistibly drawn to us! Let the checks roll in!

Cut to the Rialto. Magical baroque setting, trademark sharp and original Jon Rannells script; intelligent and heartbreaking acting. 

Just a little low on audience members.

Cut to our next fundraiser - tucked behind Lake Ave. - hosted by the generous proprietors of the charming Le Petit Vendome! Never ones to give up - not ever - this event featured another outstanding screenplay written by Jon Rannells, Stand the Gaff. The setting was cozy and quaint. We were proud to be there. 

Just a little short on attendees.

And then, we ran out of patience. Waiting for a silly thing called a budget can get a filmmaker down. So we went into production. Held weekly candle-lit BBQ script readings in Jon's backyard under the Pasadena stars. Selected our shooting dates. Borrowed everything. Made our first feature film - RubyBoobyTheMovie.com - in the nooks and crannies of Pasadena. Now to fund the DVD prints, the festivals, the licensing…sigh…breathe…

My great awakening: Films need budgets. And the Independent Film Fundraiser in me will never die. Film-financing is a welcomed step; fence to jump; river to scout - in the HOW on the way to the far greater WHY. As my great friend John Sandel says: "These stories need to be released." John introduced me to California poet Gary Snyder: "We call them stories because that's where we store our wisdom."

So a group that I co-founded, WeMakeMovies.org - we are raising funds for five remarkable films. This is the new Hollywood model. And you, dear reader, are a part of it. Have your Film Financing Coming Of Age Awakening with me. I dare you to join the ride. This is just the beginning… http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wemakemovies/we-make-movies-slate-two?ref=live

Tara Samuel

www.scriptkicker.com

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 Along with Tara and the WeMakeMovies crowd, John S. and I are hosting a fundraiser at our house this coming Sunday, April 15th for their upcoming slate of short films (including John's!). Donations can be small or large. If you'd like to meet these independent filmmakers and become a film financier, contact me for details.

Guest Author: Kate Gale

Kate Gale, PhD is Managing Editor of Pasadena's Red Hen Press and
President of American Composers Forum, Los Angeles Chapter. Please welcome her to PDP.

Most Americans do some private writing. We scribble notes on the fridge, “Feed the dog!  No parties!” Sometimes love notes. “I will love you forever,” for the formal, “And I want you to bite your toes, you little love monkey,” for the less formal. 

But bringing some of that writing from private writing to public writing, bringing it into the realm of publication and possibly the creative commons and public discourse, requires working for a level of mastery with craft, plot, structure, setting, language. It requires the willingness to rewrite a piece many times, to throw away work you were sure was finished. It requires staying power.

My libretto, Rio de Sangre, went through dozens of rewrites and hundreds of cuts even as the music was being written. My current project, a memoir, was done,­ I thought, ­having spent ten years and having written literally fifty different versions of the text. My agent thinks differently and I am hard at work to finish ­by spring­ what I hope will be the ultimate draft. But it may not be, there are still more agents, editors, and marketing directors and publicists who doubtless weigh in. And you have to be willing to keep shaping.

I stay in the world of writing and publishing because I love stories. I love feeling them emerge when I write them myself and I love working with other people. The business of publishing isn’t an easy one. The part I hadn’t anticipated was raising money for Red Hen Press. I hadn’t counted on that at all. But I’m learning. I thought it was all going to be working with authors, lines, pages. 

I also hadn’t counted on how difficult many authors would be to deal with.  Poets and Writers current issue talks about writers wanting more attention from their editors. How about we just say writers want more attention. They spend a lot of time alone playing with stories and being god in the privacy of their own room and they’re badly socialized. 

When they emerge, they want a party to start. When you accept their book, they want to know if you’re going to drink champagne with them. (Seriously? We take 20 books a year, do I look like James Bond?) They want to know if you’re taking them to dinner. (How about your boyfriend does that?) And this is my personal favorite--how much time will you spend telling them what you loved about their book. Good god! 

If you need someone to celebrate with, get some friends. If you need someone to talk with, hire a therapist. If you need someone to tell you how amazing you are, hire a cheer leading squad. And if you need someone to think you’re the most amazing person in the world, then what I always say is, your editor is not your mother, your mother is your mother.

But, seriously, I love writers. They’re quirky, creative, brilliant, and definitely not boring.

***

If you're writing a story, make it a great story.  If there's a horse, add wings.  If there's a woman, put her on the roof, if there's a man, let him emerge from the cellar with dirt in his hair.

Visit Kate's website

Guest Author: Douglas Kearney

My sole contact with poet, librettist, performer and teacher Douglas Kearney has been online, and it's all been a pleasure. Read his post, click his links and definitely watch a video or two. This is one poet who doesn't just stand there and read.

Many thanks to William Goldstein of Pasadena's Red Hen Press for putting me in touch with smart, funny and thoughtful Douglas Kearney.

Horses mill before liquor stores that scowled with St. Ides posters.

Jump cut to a mile of deodar decked with light as pistols and champagne corks drum New Years’ Eve.

Turn to a tuning dial teetering between stations, song to hiss to talk to bzzzzz.

Altadena, right?

Sometimes—ok, a lot of times—I wonder what it means to be a poet of place. Home, block, town, city, state, region and on. How does one write of a place? “Of”, of course, as “about” AND as “composed from.” Like some of those dudes around those liquor stores would ask, “What you claiming?” which, for them, was a question of geography, allegiance and too often, life. For me, it’s a question of how to see and how to be seen seeing.

I set myself to write about Altadena. I cull my memories and I do the external research. I exaggerate, I lie, I shift a street, say Calaveras, back into its Spanish mouth and a skull leers back. And in that skull’s teeth are photographs of times I can’t remember in the house behind the house, next to the babysitters’ and ivy ivy ivy and daddy long legs. I write Altadena this way sometimes, about it. I’ve got poems that show it off like a forearm tattoo or a customized t-shirt. I boosterize like those license plate holders trilling “Beautiful Altadena” to everyone who lives anywhere else.

But more often, I write of Altadena. Composed from. The clash of coyotes and cockapoos; of the Tudor on my street and the ranch home a few doors down. Of mispronounced boulevards and illegible graffiti tags. The horses, Christmas trees and what the foothills used to do to my radio. Tension, juxtaposition, coexistence in the face of contradiction. I find that more and more, my work is of Altadena; my poetry, libretti, performance style, all seem to locate their syntax in this land.

I moved back about a year ago and I’m leaving again in a week. It costs too much, I wrote in a poem. But then I was writing about keeping the Christmas Tree Lane lit in war time. And I was writing about the darkness in my father’s house after my mother died.

She’s in Altadena’s earth.

Like some of those dudes who claimed some of its concrete and dust.

Like my poetry.

Altadena. Write.

Douglas Kearney’s SkinMag, a new chapbook from A5/Deadly Chaps will be out in January. Come to the release reading at Machine Project January 28 at 8. His second book, The Black Automaton (Fence Books), was a National Poetry Series selection in 2009. He has also written a chapbook as broadsides as an lp called Quantum Spit (Corollary Press, 2010) and his first collection, Fear, Some (Red Hen Press) was published in 2006. He’s performing around town. Visit www.douglaskearney.com for details.

Accolades

Just ten short months ago, Des Zamorano pioneered the Guest Author post here on the old blog with her novel, Human Cargo. Here's the book cover, to spark your memory:

In this mystery, Des' smart heroine, Inez Leon, is the private eye who tracks down some dangerous types and foils a heinous crime right here on San Gabriel Valley turf. It's an exciting read and now it's official: Human Cargo made the Latinidad List, Best Books of 2011. The list was created by Marcela Landres, former editor at Simon & Schuster and author of How Editors Think: The Real Reason They Rejected You.

In Landres' words, Human Cargo is: "A page-turner featuring a protagonist who could be your BFF—one who happens to be a PI with a black belt in Krav Maga."

You can download the ebook here and read it on just about any device, including a plain old laptop or desktop computer. You'll find more about Des and her work here.

It's exciting when our friends achieve. It's a thrill when they hit the heights. Congratulations, Desiree!

So, why the picture of the contemplative guy hanging out on the Caltech campus? Well, Inez has a boyfriend...

Guest Author: Vince Waldron and The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book

Vince Waldron and I go way back to our Chicago days, when we traveled the United States (well, some of them) as members of The Second City National Touring Company. 

Vince's The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book is so official its introduction is by Dick Van Dyke himself. The book even has a foreword by Dan Castellaneta. You know who Dan is, don't you? That's right. He was a member of The Second City Touring Company with me and Vince.

I'll be at Vroman's tomorrow at 7PM for Vince's book signing. Come say hello!

(and despite what Vince says, I say Eagle Rock counts!)

It was exactly four years ago this week that I chanced upon the most incongruous Christmas encounter I’ve ever experienced. Since it happened right here in Pasadena, I wanted to share the story with you, in the hope you might forgive me for guest blogging on San Gabriel Valley author Wednesday, even though I actually live across the Colorado Street Bridge in Eagle Rock.

I do live close enough to Pasadena to know my way around the hills that overlook the Rose Bowl from the west, where I often ride my bike on leafy wooded lanes with names like Patrician Way and Glen Oaks Boulevard, which at that altitude is so sparsely populated that you can sometimes spy entire families of deer walking across the untrafficked roads. In fact, this is the perfect time of year for spotting deer, as I discovered one fateful night not so long ago.  

It was already dark on that early winter evening, and I relied on the beam of my bike light to guide me up that hilly stretch of Glen Oaks near the old Annandale power station, if you know where that is. There are no street lights up there, so the road was pitch black. Which is why I was surprised to come upon a man -- he must have been in his mid-60s -- standing in the middle of a large, wooded yard, presumably his own, where he was busy putting finishing touches on an elaborate collection of brightly lit Christmas yard decorations, the centerpiece of which was a life-size reindeer statue.

A string of white Christmas lights ran up the fake deer’s front leg and continued on up over its head, which rocked eerily back and forth in a smooth, mechanical motion that was a mockery of any real deer in nature, who are, if anything, known for their ability to hold their heads, and the rest of them, quite still for long periods of time.

As it happens, I nearly had the opportunity to make a head-to-head comparison when an actual live deer suddenly leapt out of a thicket across the road and started walking directly to the glowing effigy that vaguely resembled him.

Although I was looking forward to gawking at what promised to be a once-in-a-lifetime clash of man and nature, the owner of the artificial ruminant was having none of it. As soon as he saw the live deer, the man raised his arms and, in what looked to be a well-practiced gesture, shooed the buck right back into the bushes from which he emerged. I never did find out what Bambi made of his brightly-lit doppelganger that night, and it wasn’t until I’d ridden halfway back down the hill to Eagle Rock that the absurdity of what I’d just witnessed finally struck me.

I’ve seen three Christmases since then, and more mechanical reindeer statues than I’d care to count. But I don’t think I’ll ever forget that chilly night in Pasadena when I watched a man chase a real deer from his yard so a reindeer of plastic and wire could nod its head untroubled through the long holiday season.

Thanks for inviting me into your laptop, iPad or other device to share my holiday epiphany. Merry Christmas and the happiest holiday season to one and all!

Guest Author: E. Max Hengst, and LAFD FF/PM

Each day, Max Hengst sees things most of us will never see. He felt he had to write about them. He told me he's a little concerned some people might be uncomfortable with the profanity he uses in the book. But to write about his work without using profanity might just be dishonest, and Max is a straight talker. 
Please welcome today's guest author, E. Max Hengst.

I wrote this book because you can’t make this stuff up. I am still serving on the Los Angeles Fire Department as a Captain and have seen it all. Every firefighter and paramedic (FF/PM) says they are going to write a book. I decided to do it about four years ago. It took approximately three years to write.

What you will read will make you laugh at the insanity as well as cry at the horror people are exposed to. In the beginning the book starts out profane. That was done to show how we really are. It is amazing to see what people do to each other. It’s a good thing there are those who will drop what they are doing at the sound of the bell to help others, strangers, to clean up the mess. Unfortunately some of my brothers and sisters on the department don’t come back.

The politics on the department can be appalling. I guarantee the majority of us didn’t sign up for the politics. After the shock and excitement of responding to calls in high incident areas wear off, the politics of saving those in need becomes more apparent.

Many of the incidents that we respond to stay with us and there are not enough chemicals or therapy that can erase them from memory. Calls or runs, as we call them, are the worst when children are involved.

Many people decide to write a book of this nature once they retire. Even though I am currently on the department I decided to go forth with this project because as a writer there is that need to write and I didn’t want this book to sit in manuscript form collecting dust. Let the chips fall where they may. After writing I tested it with my colleagues and fortunately it came back positive.

I have been living in the San Gabriel Valley most of my life. I came to Pasadena after an ugly divorce. I like Pasadena because it is close to work and I don’t have to travel far for any of my wants, needs or interests. I notice the Pasadena area also encourages the arts and that is a good thing for any writer. 

I will be signing LAFD FF/PM; Memoirs of an "Outside Dog" at Vroman’s bookstore on Colorado Blvd. on December 15th at 7:00 PM. I hope to see you all there. I hope to pique your interest.

Update 3/18/12:
Max was quoted today by Steve Lopez in an article on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.

Guest Author Robert S. Birchard

Bob Birchard and I might be related--we're not sure how or how many years back, but probably a couple of hundred--times removed as well as years. 
Bob is the president of the Society for Cinephiles/Cinecon, which presents the annual Cinecon Classic Film Festival. He also owns a vast archive of historic Hollywood images.

Bob's knowledge of film history is unsurpassed.

Please welcome today's guest author, Robert S. Birchard.

I was being driven to kindergarten when I first knew I wanted to become a reader. Peggy Phillips, she was seven, sat in the back seat reading out loud, showing off--and I wanted all the attention she was getting...

I was ten when I knew I wanted to write. Mrs. Zimmer handed us pictures clipped from old magazines and told us to compose stories using the pictures as a springboard for our imaginations. I can’t remember the first one I was assigned, but I asked for a second one to do on my own. There was an Indian on horseback, watching a train in the distance...

A year later I got interested in film when I saw the David Wolper NBC special, Hollywood: The Golden Years. I was hooked the second the host walked toward the camera and said: “Hi, I’m Gene Kelly, and I work in the movies . . . ” I thought to myself that I’d like to work in the movies, and discovered through clips from films like The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Ben-Hur (1925) and The King of Kings (1927) that silent films were much more than the chopped up slapstick comedies I’d seen on Howdy Doody Time and Lunch With Soupy Sales...

Growing up in Los Angeles, I got to know folks who worked in pictures in the early days—Tom Mix’s friend Sid Jordan, cowboy star George O’Brien, directors Allan Dwan, Henry King and Irvin Willat, comedian Harold Lloyd, singing cowboy Gene Autry and so many more.

I first got published at eighteen when I sent a “most interesting character you’ve ever met” college essay about an old cowboy I knew to Frontier Times on a whim. I received a fast $20 for that literary effort, but it was a start.

UCLA film school, then peanut butter and crackers until my friend from Junior High, Bill Evans, helped me land as a temporary PR officer for the Los Angeles Community College District. Night projectionist at BBS Productions, and projectionist on the “Bel-Air Circuit” for Peter Bogdanovich, Helen Reddy, producer Mike Frankovich, and Barbra Streisand...  

From BBS I landed at rbc films, non-theatrical distributors for the films of Charlie Chaplin, and through a series of “you can’t get there from here” circumstances I did work in the movies as a film editor. And all along the way I wrote...about the movies and the people that made them, and often about nearly forgotten films and filmmakers—over one hundred articles, and books that include Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, King Cowboy: Tom Mix and the Movies, Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara and Early Universal City.  (Bob's books on Amazon here, where they all get five stars, by the way.)

I even found a lost silent movie studio hiding in plain sight in Panorama City, but that is a story for another time...

(However, we do have pictures!)

On July 22, 1925, nineteen trucks hauled lumber from the Builders Lumber Company in Vernon to Uneeda Acres in Van Nuys to begin construction on the Thomas C. Regan Studio. Van Nuys architect H.B. Pentland's design for the administration building, dark stage and dressing rooms was designed to give the studio a distinctive look and attract attention.

Regan Studio today

Although no commercially-released film ever came from the Thomas C. Regan studio, the distinctive "castle" administration building of this "lost" silent movie studio is still standing and looks very much as it did when it was completed in 1926. Today it is home to American Legion Post 817 of Panorama City.

Guest Author: Elizabeth Pomeroy

Before it became fashionable to self-publish, Elizabeth Pomeroy formed her own publishing company--not just to publish her own books but important historical titles as well. Writer, editor, publisher, educator--it's a wonder she finds time for it all. Please welcome today's guest author, Elizabeth Pomeroy.

Why I write: It was historic places that got me started writing about local history. I braked for historic markers and always wanted to know more. Also I volunteered for an architectural survey in Pasadena some years ago. Little details of houses and neighborhoods could be so revealing, as we uncovered layers of history. I began to develop an eye for "anything old" -- a certain roofline or the old stone walls; even a row of derelict orange trees left over from a vanished grove.
 
If time is the fourth dimension, then knowing the history of a place puts you into that four-dimensional reality  --  neat !

Lost and Found: For five years I wrote a weekly column on historic places called "Lost and Found." This ran in the Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, and Whittier Daily News. My beat extended to 40 cities, the circulation areas of those papers. I looked for nooks and crannies of history, the overlooked and the obvious, including places we might pass every day.

Many Moons Press: Then I collected my favorites of these articles into a take-it-with-you guide published by my new small business, Many Moons Press. The book is Lost and Found, and it was followed by more articles in Lost and Found II. I said on the book jacket, "These are YOUR treasures, which history has saved for you in its vast Lost and Found Department."
 
Now Many Moons Press has published eight titles all about Southern California, including books on John Muir and the native plant expert Theodore Payne. Some of the books are new editions of wonderful titles long out of print. This series is called California Voices. Take a look at the website for information and reviews.

What next? Now I'm writing the Centennial History of the City of San Marino, which will be published by the San Marino Historical Society. It will be a beautiful illustrated book, with many photographs, historic and modern. It's due out in the fall of 2012, in time for the centennial year of 2013. So far it's a lively story of people and places.

Come and see:  I'll be at the Duarte Festival of Authors on Saturday October 8th with my books. Come and say hello; we'll talk history and share thoughts about books. I'd love to hear your comments on my work and to have your ideas about what Many Moons Press should publish in the future. We are looking for new projects.

Mantra: Thanks for listening, and here's my mantra for all book lovers and book people: "May the writers write and the readers read !"

Guest Author: Margo Sorenson and Aloha for Carol Ann

I had heard good things about Margo Sorenson's popular children's books ages ago. We scheduled her guest post long before I realized this was Banned Books Week! (I doubt you'll find her books on the banned list, but never say never.) Margo will be appearing at the Friends of the Duarte Library Festival of Authors October 8th on the Children/Young Adult panel at 10:30am. Please welcome today's guest author, Margo Sorenson.

As a kid growing up, I used to take the bus to the Pasadena Library, spending hours there, going over the books, making my choices, always keeping in mind I’d have to carry them all the way from the bus stop at the top of Lake up the hill to my house. Those were some hard decisions! There was a little delicatessen right by the bus stop, and I’d stop and buy one of those gigantic cookies with the chocolate drop in the center. That cookie lasted through at least a first chapter, but I’m not sure which I looked forward to more – the cookie or the chapter!

Those summer days filled with reading in the Pasadena area have influenced my writing, even though my most recent children’s book, ALOHA FOR CAROL ANN, takes place in Hawaii, as do others, since I lived on Oahu for ten years with my own family. Where you live when you’re young seeps into your cells and colors your perception of the world, and little bits of Pasadena, Arcadia, Glendale, San Marino, and Altadena still end up in my books.
 

DANGER CANYON actually takes place in Eaton Canyon and Henninger Flats, where I used to hike with my John Muir High School classmates. We were so foolish on one of those hikes that we almost didn’t make it back, and that scary, helpless feeling is one I tried to communicate in the story. When I do author school visits, the kids are in shock that, yes, I really was that stupid!

One of my unpublished YA* novels (and I have plenty of those!) takes place in Pasadena during the Beach Boy days. How well I remember telling my parents I was going to the Pasadena Library, and instead drove with my friends to Bob’s on Colorado Blvd. to check out the guys, “Little Deuce Coupe” blaring into the night air. I blush to think I earned my first ticket speeding through Bob’s alley.

When I was writing FUNNY MAN, another YA novel, I saw protagonist Derek as going to John Muir, even though I’d taught in other high schools myself. Of course, I won’t share the name of the teacher who ended up as his nemesis, Dowling the Dragon!
 

I’ve lived many places, Spain, Italy, Orange County, Hawaii, and Minnesota, but those junior high and high school experiences in the San Gabriel Valley are part and parcel of what I write for young readers. With any luck, they’ll have more common sense than I did during my own adventures!

*Young Adult

           

Guest Author: Kay Mouradian and A Gift in the Sunlight

Long-time visitors may remember my brief profile of Kay Mouradian in May of 2010. Besides her current novel she has also written books on yoga and meditation. (Wow! I want the brand new copy!) Please welcome today's Guest Author, Kay Mouradian.

 

I wish I had known more about my mother Flora. She was 18 when she came to America in 1920 to marry my father, a man she knew only from a photograph. Becoming an orphan after losing her family in the Armenian genocide, my mother took a chance that the man in the picture would take care of her and I am a witness to say that he did.
        
When I was a kid growing up in Boston, Mom would tell me stories about her tragic life in Turkey, but those stories went in one ear and out the other. I was too busy trying to be an American kid, like my Irish and Italian friends, so I never really knew what happened to my mother during World War I. All that changed when she nearly died at the age of 83. That’s when I started to read about Ottoman Turkey during the Great War and became overwhelmed with the depth of cruelty inflicted on the Turkish Armenians in 1915. I then learned how that catastrophe had broken my mother’s heart and changed her life forever and I knew her story needed to be told.

There is a saying in the literary community that if you want to know the facts read a newspaper, but if you want to know the truth, read a novel. That statement reverberated in my mind and I decided to tell my mother’s story in a novel. Since most of my writing had been in academia, I spent months scouring through books in the 808.3 section of my South Pasadena library learning about plot and character development, foreshadowing, and point of view. The actual writing was far more difficult, but I had a wonderful critique group who kept me honest.

I’ve often heard writers say that the best part of writing is the research and I also found that to be true. I went into used bookstores canvassing the history and memoir sections. After reading through the table of contents I bought and read every book that said "Constantinople." I went through the book stacks at UCLA and became mesmerized with the "Turkey in World War I" section. Then I read through 10 reels of microfilm from the Library of Congress of dispatches and letters from the U S Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire covering the years from 1913-16 and spent a week at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt library reading the personal papers of the Ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, Sr.

My mother’s story, A Gift in the Sunlight, is now in its second edition and can be purchased through Amazon, Vromans, and my website, agiftinthesunlight.com.

I AM MY MOTHER’S VOICE and her story is being made into a documentary...an Armenian Ann Frank story!

Guest Author: Linda Dove and "O Dear Deer,"

Linda Dove is that rare creature: a published poet. Besides her acclaimed books she has published poems in the L.A. Review, The Antigonish Review, Clackamas Literary Review and more, and has won several poetry awards. Please welcome today's guest author, Linda Dove.

I’ve encountered a few unexpected moments on the way to becoming a writer. After I published my first book of poems in 2009, I was surprised with the sense that I needed to take on a new voice, a new technique. Most folks would tell you to stick with what’s worked, or—more insistently—that you should keep to what you know, that you should write out of your authentic place. “Authentic” is a much-bandied-about word in writer circles, but I’m not sure anyone really knows what they mean by it. In any case, I felt like I wanted to try the sort of experimental writing that made my heart race when it was done well. I admired it because I didn’t understand it.   

So I did a lot of reading. For two years, I read everything I could get my hands on both in print and online—poetry collections, chapbooks, journals, anthologies, criticism, book reviews, theory. I followed poets on Twitter, 20 years my junior, who were starting innovative presses and e-zines. I not only read blogs, I read the comment sections of blogs, where the meatiest—some would say the nastiest—debates were happening. I once found myself sitting alone at a table in a decrepit Denver ballroom, which was sagging with Christmas lights though it was April, as I sipped red wine and waited for a packed house of Hot Young Poet Things—those who had never known a world without the internet—to present their work. If you perceive some anxiety about my age coming into play, you wouldn’t be wrong. I knew no one and was sporting the only gray hair in the room. At least I had an iphone to look busy with. 

In the midst of this re-education project, I got called for jury duty in downtown L.A. Surprise! I was launched into an alternate universe, full of odd-sounding legalisms and morgue photos and testimony about gang tattoos. My jury experience became the basis for my chapbook of experimental poems, O Dear Deer,, although I hadn’t planned on writing about the trial, which seemed too raw, too complex.  Wasn’t it wrong—sort of unholy—to experiment with so much grief? But I realized that, the more fragmented the lines, the more they spoke to human brokenness. I didn’t try to recount the events that led to the trial in my poems. Instead, I became fixated on deer, antlers, trees. Where clarity would have collapsed under the weight of its own detail, abstraction made room for what was truly authentic: the fact that nothing would ever be the same. 

My books are available at Amazon and, locally, at Webster’sFine Stationers. Please join me at two upcoming readings, where I’ll be introducing the poems from O Dear Deer, : 

Two Heads are Better Productions Presents the Kulture FaCtory’s Sundays at Ellouise, 55 Waverly Drive, Pasadena, Sunday, September 18th at 4:00 PM, $5 cover charge. This appearance is a “10 for 10” reading, which means you’ll get to hear 10 of us read for 10 minutes apiece—short but wide and sweet. It also happens to fall on my birthday! 

Webster’s FineStationers, 2450 N. Lake Ave., Altadena, Saturday, October 15th at 6:00 PM. This reading is happening in conjunction with one of Webster’s regular wine pairing events, "Latin Wines for a Passionate Evening," which will be held from 4:00 to 6:00 PM, so that’s added incentive to come out and have some vino with your verses. They'll keep pouring wines through the poetry reading, and there'll be food, too!

Guest Author: Irene McDermott and The Internet Book of Life

Today's guest author is all about computers--and libraries. Made for each other! Please welcome guest author Irene McDermott.

In the Old Testament of the Bible, the “Book of Life” contains the name of righteous souls. The Internet Book of Life: Use the Web to Grow Richer, Smarter, Healthier, and Happier, is my new book. This book of life lists the names of righteous web resources: reliable, useful sites on a variety of subjects designed to help families in all aspects of daily life.

I am a librarian at the Crowell Public Library in San Marino. People often ask me if the internet will put libraries out of business. When people think of libraries, they think of books. Yet, since the web came on the scene in about 1995, library use has increased by 50%. Many come for the computers and then pick up a best seller on the way out.

So, the internet has been nothing but good for libraries. I know that I owe my career to it. I studied for my master’s degree just as the graphical web emerged, from 1993 to 1995. At an internship at the Getty Institute for the Arts I learned about the web and taught it to the librarians there. The skills that I learned that summer, playing with the baby web, landed me a “cybrarian” gig at the USC, and later, my current job where I not only staff the reference desk but take care of the computers, too.

When my husband became ill with colon cancer in 1998, I used the web to find an experimental treatment that saved his life. Unfortunately, even the latest medical research could not save him from the glioma that took him from us in 2008. Still, we were active partners in the treatments that prolonged and enhanced the quality of his life thanks to timely information that I found on the internet.

A couple of years later, after I felt sufficiently recovered, I turned to an online dating site to find new love, a divorced dad who healed my broken heart.

As a mom, I find the web essential for managing my household. I use it for shopping, recipes, making travel plans, online banking, and even learning how to make repairs around the house. My son has become a search master, using it for school.

In 2002, I spoke to the Library of Congress about reference resources available to librarians on the web. My sister, who accompanied me, insisted that I share these helpful sites with the world. The Internet Book of Life is the result. I hope that the sites and the stories in my book will help families everywhere to save money and live happily.

Keep current with websites from the book on my blog: http://imcdermott.wordpress.com.

Guest Author: Steve Scauzillo

Today's guest author is many things:
He's a journalist (Opinion Page Editor and columnist  for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Pasadena Star-News and Whittier Daily News),
an educator (adjunct professor at Cal State Fullerton and Azusa Pacific University)
and a blogger (at Temple City Daily Photo). 
He's also the 2011 recipient of the Leopold Award for Distinguished Editorial Writing. 
Please welcome guest author Steve Scauzillo.

photo by Steve Scauzillo

Rip Van Winkle, I’m not.

Though I like to fancy myself as someone who lives a wanderlust life, loafing around, meandering the mountain trails, stumbling on something new that catches my imagination.

Then, wrapping my camera eye around it so I can take that moment home with me like I used to do the lightning bugs from grandfather’s back yard on Long Island, though just for a few moments. There’s only so many mayonnaise jars a kid can hold.

In the Washington Irving story, Rip wandered the “Kaatskil Mountains” in New York until one day, the sweet mountain air made him so tired he fell asleep and did not awake until 20 years had passed. You can read the story for the ending. But I’m more interested in applying Irving’s lessons to me, and to you and our local mountains, the San Gabriel Mountains. It’s true, I enjoy a hike into the back country, or even the lower canyons. These forays chill me to the bone every time. On my blog, which starts where I live in Temple City, just a few miles south and east of Pasadena, I’ve posted about the places I’ll go ….usually my favorite mountain haunts. They are timeless respites from a chaotic world. But do they change over time? If I fell asleep under an oak in Marshall Canyon and woke up 20 years later, would I recognize the place?

I hope so.

I want to tell you about a place where I had a Rip Van Winkle moment. It’s called Crystal Lake. I last stepped foot there around 1991, when I was a young reporter working on a story about habitat restoration. I’ll always remember the nudge in my rib from the ranger’s bony finger telling me to watch out! I was about to put my hand on the cleft of a rock that was home to a curled up rattlesnake.

Crystal Lake is the only natural lake in the San Gabriels. It is oblong, surrounded by pines, and filled with fresh water. It had suffered drainage problems and in 2002-03, was filling up with ash from the nasty Curve and Bridge fires. That’s when it was closed to the public. Nine years later -- about half the length of a Van Winkle nap -- Highway 39 had reopened and the place was accessible. Had it changed in those 9 years?

Since 39 reopened this past March, the lake is accessible. To get there, take the 210 Freeway east, exit at Azusa Avenue and go north. This becomes Highway 39  or San Gabriel Canyon Road. Once you leave the last house in your rearview mirror,  you enter some of the best canyons, riparian and later, pine forests in the world. And you don’t need a four-wheel drive car or chains. You may need chains in winter, so check with Caltrans first. Crystal Lake is 23 miles up the road, about 35 minutes from Azusa. You have to take the right turn-off before the 39 closure. The campground has been restored but is not yet operational.

The lake store is a story in itself. It’s owned and operated by Adam Samrah, who himself survived the Curve Fire by ducking into a low spot in the canyon and waiting for the conflagration to end. He vowed he would never leave the mountain, the place God spared his life. And he’s kept that promise. His store, the Crystal Lake Snack Bar is always open. He makes a mean chili.

If you go, don’t fall asleep up there. Well, OK, go ahead, it’s a perfect place for a nap. Just wake up sooner than 20 years later. But if you don’t, answer that question for me: Does it still look the same as it did 20 years earlier?

I hope so.

photo by Steve Scauzillo