Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 215
February 26, 2013
February 25, 2013
February 23, 2013
Be at the Next Author 101 University March 7 - 10 Los Angeles
Is your book written yet? If its not... do you know about the amazing benefits being a published author can bring to your business?
If your book is written, is it a bestseller yet?
If it is a bestseller, is it getting you the opportunities you'd dreamed of?
My friend, Rick Frishman has helped thousands of authors find the secrets they need to get their books published and make their dreams come true. And he can help you too.
For the last eleven years, Rick has put on an event called Author 101 University.
New and established authors from around the globe all come together in one ballroom to learn from some of the world's leading marketing and publishing experts.
Everyone has a lot of fun and most importantly, everyone walks away with what they need so they can grow their success as an author.
Come to Rick's next Author 101 University. Here's what can happen for you there...In one weekend, you'll:
* Connect with literary agents who want to represent you
* Get your new book published or your old book revitalized
* Make your book a bestseller
* Learn how to turn your online promotions into huge
exposure (and sales)
* Transform your message into a mega success business
* Network with truly amazing people - Author 101 University
consistently draws a great group
* And so much more...
Your dream doesn't have to be just a dream. Learn More Here
February 22, 2013
February 21, 2013
Join Me at the Santa Barbara Author-Mentor Workshop February 28 - March 3
The Santa Barbara Author-Mentor is a unique and intimate novel workshop that takes place on February 28 - March 3, 2013.It provides an ideal mix of experienced professionals dedicated to
working one-on-one with aspiring authors to not only teach them the
knowledge and skills they must have to be successful, but also provide
them with valuable commentary on their completed novel or
work-in-progress.
Faculty include Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Jane Smiley and Robert Olen Butler, literary agent of renown Kimberley Cameron, agent and major film producer Ken Atchity, writer/author and popular columnist Cary Tennis, and Algonkian director and editor, Michael Neff. More on them below.
Ken Atchity
Literary Agent and Film Producer
With more than forty years experience in the publishing world, and over fifteen years in entertainment, Ken Atchity and his organization
are responsible for launching dozens of books and films. His life's
passion is finding great storytellers and turning them into bestselling
authors and screenwriters. As well as being a famed literary agent at
AEI, he has produced 26 films, including "Joe Somebody" (Tim Allen;
Fox), "Life or Something Like It" (Angelina Jolie; Fox), "Shadow of
Obsession" (NBC), "The Madam's Family" (CBS), "Henry's List of Wrongs"
(New Line), and Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not (starring Jim Carrey;
Paramount-- approaching production). His 14 books on writing cover every
stage of a writer's career.
The
Santa Barbara Author-Mentor Novel Workshop creates an intimate and
professional environment that combines private meetings with small-group
workshops, thus enabling aspiring authors to wisely approach the
writing and publication of their novel. At the Santa Barbara event,
aspiring authors will: 1) work one-on-one with top authors and savvy
market professionals; 2) acquire the market skills and advanced story
and narrative technique they must know to become published; 3) learn the
necessary inside mechanics of the publishing business; and 4) leave the
workshop with a detailed plan to work towards publication of their
novel ... [more]
How Does The Santa Barbara Author-Mentor Workshop Differ from Other Writer Events?
In several fundamental ways, as we note above, but we will elaborate. Firstof all, and most importantly, the Santa Barbara AMW creates a way for
the writer to get close and relaxed with authors and professionals in a
manner that larger events disallow. Private face time with the right
people is priceless.
Second, attendees are taught (even before the workshop begins by
means of pre-event assignments and mailings) to address all the major
conflict/complication, plot, theme, narrative/voice, dialogue, scene
construction, and character arc-and-development issues that affect their
novel.
Third, writers are prepped in advance for their interactive
sessions with authors and literary agents, and the sessions are not
rushed. The authors and agents are relaxed during the sessions and not
bombarded by hundreds of conference goers.
Fourth, the Santa Barbara AMW requires the writer to complete
exercises far more advanced and beneficial than those conducted at other
conference workshops.
Fifth, amateur opinions do not arise to compromise the quality of
the workshop. Judgments on a writer's work are approved, filtered,
and/or provided by professionals in attendance.
Come Prepared to Write and Learn From The Best
Because this workshop accepts far fewer writers than most conferences,
those writers who are accepted are given more time to establish
relationships with professionals who are present; and unlike several
major celeb conferences, Santa Barbara AMW doesn't simply import name
authors or agents to give inspirational messages and smile over
cocktails.
Our prize-winning faculty are there to meet with writers in a setting
conducive to productive discussion of writing and publishing. Writers with manuscripts will have an opportunity to pitch their work,
and writers with works-in-progress will be able to network and learn
about the publishing biz. To read more information about our approach,
click on Frequently Asked Questions.
The Santa Barbara AMW employs the Algonkian workshop syllabus as well as
the Algonkian study guide and reference manual. Once you've examined
them, it will be obvious that literary craft at the Santa is taught
more exhaustively than craft at other workshops and conferences. [more]
The Villa Rosa Innis one of the finest Santa Barbara inns, combining an ideal location
with the sort of personalized attention you'd expect from the area's top
bed and breakfast inn. Every room at the Villa Rosa boasts a
spectacular view, whether of the ocean, the harbor, the mountains, or
their beautiful garden courtyard. The inn also offers deluxe rooms with
fireplaces. Its location is only 84 steps away from Santa Barbara's
stunning East Beach, as well as an easy stroll away from famous Stearns
Wharf, with its numerous shops, restaurants, and activities.
The inn provides a deluxe continental breakfast daily, so you can sit
back and enjoy the morning. For total relaxation, you can lounge by the
pool or soak in the spa in the garden courtyard. Later in the day, you
can enjoy mingling with other writers and faculty around complimentary
wine and cheese or evening port and sherry.
The Villa Rosa Inn is a unique environment that offers all of the
amenities associated with larger resort hotels, while maintaining the
intimacy of a small inn. The quality of construction, the ambiance of
the interior design and the attentive, personable staff ensure that no
detail is overlooked.
We could not have chosen a more suitable location for this type of intimate workshop.
Algonkian Writer Conferences
2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Ste 443
Washington, DC 20006
Algonkian Home Office:
Phone: 1-800-250-8290
algonkian@webdelsol.com
February 20, 2013
Huffington Post: Good News From the Vatican
The wicked witch is not quite dead, but the present pope has resigned -- supposedly because he's getting old; but really, insiders say, because he can't control the violent politics in the Vatican except by the ultimate diffusion of renouncing the ring of the fisherman. For the first time in six centuries (when Gregory XII resigned to end a war between clerical factions) that ring will be ceremonially broken while the pontiff still breathes, to make way for his successor; and the arch-conservatives in the Mafia-besmirched Curia must face the uncertainty of what politics the next white smoke will bring.
My thought is that Benedict XVI resigned because he could no longer pretend he believes in the historicity of the founding myth, knowing as a scholar that it had never and could never be proved -- especially by the anti-intellectual fundamentalists bent on returning the world's remaining faithful to the Dark Ages where priests would never marry, women would never be priests, every act of sex must result in Sunday-generous children, and Jesus' face is actually imprinted on the shroud of Turin as certainly as Boccaccio's Friar Onion sold feathers from the Archangel Gabriel and breast milk from the Virgin Mary.
The decadence of this pope, who turns in St. Peter's keys on Feb. 28, is not only obvious from casual googling, but also written on his every photograph -- the weary, uninspiring scowl of cynicism also evident in portraits of Renaissance profligates Alexander VI or Leo X. It always amazed me that the sacred college of cardinals couldn't have found someone to elect who wasn't a childhood member of Hitler Youth! No wonder his loyal butler, after service in the Vatican under saintly John Paul, leaked secret documents from the Unholy See. Joseph Ratzinger may not have had female mistresses, but he obediently and infallibly excluded women from the altar, protected a molesting priest, inflamed the Muslim world, refused condoms to spouses married to HIV victims, and staunchly continued to sever divorced Catholics from the sacraments.
Don't get me wrong. I love what the Roman Catholic Church supposedly stands for -- the potential for the divine in every human being -- though I believe that's whether he or she is baptized or not. I just no longer believe the divine is institutionally enshrined in an organization that has condoned murder, genocide, "holy wars" and sordid sins of the shepherds against their flock for nearly its entire two millennia -- truly as sinful itself as the Roman Empire of which it is, after all, the continuation.
The divine is what I responded to as a kid growing up midst the incense, magical stained glass and haunting Gregorian chant. But I've long recognized that I also experience it in Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Francesco Goya's paintings, Antonio Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, Diane Arbus' photographs, Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Paul McCartney's "Yesterday."
"Great poetry," said A. E. Housman, "makes your hair stand on end" -- and all the finest and best popular arts put us in touch with the transcendent and transformative best of the human spirit.
It's been a hard lesson growing up to the incontrovertible truth that the all too human hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church does not hold a hegemony on holiness, and that its ancient formula extra Ecclesia nulla salus ("outside the church no salvation") is the very root of its corruption. Not to mention the sacrament of Confession, which by allowing all sins to be forgiven allows all to be committed. That Jesus said to Simon Peter, "I give thee the keys to the kingdom of heaven," had to be the greatest piece of self-serving propaganda ever penned by a second century scribe. Justifying what an Irish-Canadian friend calls "centuries of organized thuggery."
Isn't it time that we all grow up, reject the charlatans that collect millions every Saturday or Sunday in the name of one intolerant God or another? Isn't it time that we embrace the patent reality that evil is our own fault and that it is our human responsibility, each and every one of us, to find, instead, the heaven in our hearts and manifest it in our daily deeds -- following the universal Golden Rule that nearly every spiritual doctrine in the world has advocated from time immemorial.
To restate all of the above more optimistically, thank you, Your Holiness, for, wittingly or not, setting an example. Let's all resign from this wrong-headed church and turn our hearts and minds to the God in whose "image and likeness" Genesis claims we are fashioned.
Dr. Atchity's first novel, "The Messiah Matrix," explores the labyrinthine politics of the Vatican, the doctrinal rivalries within the ancient church, and the enforced mysteries masking the true origins of Christianity.
Follow Ken Atchity on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kennja
February 19, 2013
What are the Secret Origins of the Power of the Vatican?
Check out this iinterview with Kenneth Atchity and Hilary Kennedy on Author's Spotlight.
February 18, 2013
Steller Review for Story Merchant Client Dennis M. Walsh's Nobody Walks on Criminal Element.com
Fresh Meat: Nobody Walks by Dennis M. Walsh
Katherine Tomlinson
Nobody Walks by Dennis M. Walsh is the true story of a man who set out to find his brother’s killer (available February 12, 2013).
In the summer of 2003, a meth-addicted criminal named Christopher Walsh went missing. More than a week later, his body was discovered in a storage locker in Van Nuys, California. Walsh had been shot five times in the head and neck and then stuffed head-first into a trash can before being put in the storage locker. It was the kind of crime that happens every day in the seedier parts of Southern California and like most crimes of its nature, it originally went unsolved. It wasn’t that the detectives investigating the murder were uncaring or incompetent, but murder in the Southland is a rising tide as implacable and unstoppable as the ocean rising over the New Orleans levees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
No one might ever have known who killed Christopher Walsh if it weren’t for his brother Dennis, the only male in his family who didn’t follow in the footsteps of their criminal father. As an attorney, not as a vigilante, Dennis M. Walsh turned his skills and education toward the cause of finding justice for his baby brother and this book chronicles the story every step of the way.
This is a gut-wrenching tale and one of the most potent moments occurs when Dennis is waiting to be let into the storage unit to identify his little brother’s body. He is blindsided by memories, from the day their mother brought him home from the hospital to the way Christopher always carried around a stuffed animal he called “Lambie Pie.” In that moment, before Dennis confirms his death, Christopher Walsh comes alive for the reader and when we discover, without any doubt, that it is his decomposing body sealed into the trash barrel and emitting a foul odor, we feel it like a punch in the gut.
We’re standing right next to Dennis as he responds to the condolences of the storage unit’s owner with a vow that will become his mantra for the next years of his life:
“There are four brothers left, and we’re coming,” I said. “Anybody who had anything to do with the planning, the murder, moving the body, or the cover-up is going to answer for it. Make no mistake about it—and you can tell each and every one of those assholes out there—nobody walks on this case. Nobody!”
There have been a lot of true crime books written by family members who have spent years hoping for some sort of closure only to be frustrated again and again. (YA novelist Lois Duncan’s Who Killed My Daughter? offers the results of her investigation into the death of her daughter Kait and names the person she believes responsible, but the case remains open.) These books rarely end well, and often the story behind the story they tell is of an author whose life is wrecked beyond salvage. Nobody Walks breaks that mold.
Walsh’s prose isn't particularly graceful but he is a storyteller and the story he’s telling is as compelling as any police procedural with its unraveling of family secrets and lies. For years, the Walsh family mantra had been “Don’t tell Dennis,” and after Christopher’s death he starts hearing stories from his brother Dan that alarm him. Many of those stories mention the name David Steinberg, a high school friend of Christopher’s recently involved in a shootout with an off-duty sheriff and who had once boasted to a confidential informant: “I jack people.”
Theoretically, Walsh isn’t in the investigation alone. But as his other brothers lose themselves in increasingly bloodthirsty fantasies of how they’re going to punish the killer or killers when they’re caught, he’s once again the outsider in the family as he insists they work within the system to do what needs to be done.
The cops don’t want Walsh’s help either, and as months, then years go by, it gets lonely for the author. Walsh is candid about the quality of that loneliness and writes about the companionship of his wolfdog Johnny Rio and Frank the cat, who are often the only living creatures he sees outside his law practice. Life goes on and death waits for no one. (One of the funniest moments in the book—albeit a blackly comic moment—occurs when he is scattering his mother’s ashes.) And through it all, Walsh continues to ask questions and pursue answers.
Where those questions take him and what those answers hold introduce us to a cast of characters with names out of a Damon Runyon story and lives out of an Irish tragedy. And we’re with Walsh all the way, not just on the same page, but there. This is a visceral, intense read. This is a story of justice delayed but not denied; a story of a brother’s love and a family’s sorrow. Poor Christopher.
February 17, 2013
Reimagining Sicily
Italian Americans constituted the fifth largest ancestry group the North
American Market. More than 75% of these came from the Southern
(Mezzogiorno) Region of Italy. Sicilian Americans are a subset of that
group.
There are
26 million individuals of some acknowledged Italian Ancestry in the
North American Market (17.5 million in the U.S. alone).
There are
70 million Italophiles in the North American Market.
There are
100 million potential readers in the North American Market.
The book:
Beauty is the source of the Sicilian imagination, and, for
Spano, the “reimagination” of Sicily (a Sicily beyond crime) has been the
journey of his life.
Throughout the Mark Spano’s life, when mentioning his
Sicilian heritage, “mafia” was the first word he most often heard in
response. The general public has only a single reference when it comes to
Sicily, and that is crime.
Little has been written for the popular market on the
cultural or historic relevance of Sicily. The most invaded place on the
planet, the three-sided island’s story rivals both Greece and Egypt as a
primary source for Western ideas. Sicily is more fascinating and more
diverse than so many of the more popular regions in France and other
parts of Italy. But for crime, Sicily has gone unexplored.
Mount Etna, an active volcano blesses the island with rich
soil, abundant minerals and yet another source of turmoil. The fertility
of the island is a source of great abundance. Food, family, the
land and sea are all central to life in Sicily. These are the
component parts of the Sicilian love of beauty. For Sicilians, beauty is
the promise that there is love in life when it has so often been absent.
Beauty is the source of the Sicilian imagination, and, for Spano, the
“reimagination” of Sicily (a Sicily beyond crime) has been the journey of
his life.
Through years of study and travel, he has attained the
knowledge of a very different Sicily. He has seen the places where
Sicilians work, play, pray, love and do battle in a sometimes hostile
homeland. By witnessing how Sicilians are capable of the best and worst
in humanity, the stark devastation and incomparable beauty of the island
itself, Spano has touched upon the great dichotomy that is Sicily. His
book will resonate across that gulf.
Writer and filmmaker Mark Spano is of Sicilian heritage. He
grew-up in Kansas City, Missouri in an intercity Italian-American
neighborhood. Spano is producing a feature documentary entitled
“Reimagining Sicily.”
See the video: http://markspano.com/Video/Sicily/Sicily.htm Facebook
page Website
To review this book proposal, send an email to DrK@storymerchant.com!
February 16, 2013
Be at the Next Author 101 University March 7 - 10 Los Angeles
Is your book written yet? If its not... do you know about the amazing benefits being a published author can bring to your business?
If your book is written, is it a bestseller yet?
If it is a bestseller, is it getting you the opportunities you'd dreamed of?
My friend, Rick Frishman has helped thousands of authors find the secrets they need to get their books published and make their dreams come true. And he can help you too.
For the last eleven years, Rick has put on an event called Author 101 University.
New and established authors from around the globe all come together in one ballroom to learn from some of the world's leading marketing and publishing experts.
Everyone has a lot of fun and most importantly, everyone walks away with what they need so they can grow their success as an author.
Come to Rick's next Author 101 University. Here's what can happen for you there...In one weekend, you'll:
* Connect with literary agents who want to represent you
* Get your new book published or your old book revitalized
* Make your book a bestseller
* Learn how to turn your online promotions into huge
exposure (and sales)
* Transform your message into a mega success business
* Network with truly amazing people - Author 101 University
consistently draws a great group
* And so much more...
Your dream doesn't have to be just a dream. Learn More Here
