Tim Weed's Blog, page 8

“250 Writers and Poets of Excellence” at Brilliant Light Publishing

[image error]Pleased to note that I’ve been named to a list of “250 Writers and Poets of Excellence” at Brilliant Light Publishing,  a new literary organization whose admirable mission is to “promote the work of poets and writers from the New England community who illuminate the inner and outer states of our natural and cultural environment.”

Honored to be included on this list along with many other New England writers whose work I admire. Click here or on the logo above to visit Brilliant Light and support their noble mission!

On surviving my first television interview

[image error]Actually, I very much enjoyed this recent televised conversation with Rick Cochran of Cape Cod Writers Center’s “Books and the World” program about fiction as an antidote to loneliness, setting as transportation, novels vs stories, travel and writing, what’s on the drawing board for me, and much more. The interview is slightly over 27 minutes long. 

 

 

 

New novel longlisted for the 2019 CRAFT First Chapters Prize

[image error]THE HAVANA STANDARD has notched another distinction, a good omen, one dares to hope, for finding the novel a good home in this challenging publishing environment . . .

Visit CRAFT Literary, a beautifully curated and highly recommended source for new fiction, interviews, and essays on fiction writing technique.

Porto to Salamanca on a Douro River cruise

[image error]Excited to return to one of my favorite corners of the planet to embark on this new National Geographic program, my first in nearly a year.

In my capacity as featured expert I’ll be delivering a series of lectures on the long, colorful history of the Iberian peninsula, from the earliest clues about human life to the Romans and the Moors and the rise and fall of the Hapsburg dynasty—and possibly beyond that, if we have time, to Francisco de Goya and the Peninsular War.

[image error]If there’s enough interest, I’ll also be offering an ad hoc field-based creative writing workshop, and hopefully getting some of my own scribbling done too.

Also looking forward to visiting some of the fascinating sites we have on the itinerary, meeting everyone else on our river ship, the Scenic Azure, and of course sampling some delicious food, wine, and port!

New novel is a finalist for the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Award

[image error]Just learned that my new novel, THE HAVANA STANDARD, has been selected as a finalist for the 2019 William Faulkner-WilliamWisdom Award for a Novel-in-Progress. The manuscript is currently being shopped around to acquiring editors, so fingers crossed . . . 

New Cuba travel essay out

[image error]Pleased to report the appearance of a new travel essay, “Cuba After Fidel,” out in Wanderlust: The Best of 2019 Anthology. 

Here’s the opening paragraph:

“At dusk on the evening of November 29, 2016, three days after the announcement of Fidel Castro’s death, I set off on foot with a small group of friends to Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución for a memorial rally attended by perhaps half a million people. It was not good planning but simple dumb luck that I’d booked a flight to Havana a few days after the revolutionary leader’s death, just as the official mourning period was getting underway. I was determined to take advantage. As a frequent visitor to Cuba since the late nineties, and in light of the diametrically conflicting narratives surrounding the revolutionary leader’s life, I’ve struggled to come to a satisfactory conclusion about Fidel Castro. This trip seemed to present an excellent opportunity to find out how the Cubans themselves felt about him—not the exiles celebrating in the streets of Miami, whose feelings were clear enough, but those Cubans who’d spent most or all of their lives in the society he’d presided over and shaped.”

If you’re a fan of travel writing and/or want to read on, you can buy the anthology here.

Two new reviews for A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing

[image error]So pleased to see that positive reviews for the collection continue to trickle in. The two most recent are from the Midwest Book Review and Trout Fisherman, a magazine based in Great Britain. Both reviews are excerpted below. You can read more excerpts and follow links to ALL known reviews here.

“This collection of stories by Tim Weed is grounded in the specificity of its settings, all of which contain hazards of one kind or another: a mountain lake, a jungle peak, an Amazonian river, a prairie giving way to construction, a seashore suddenly overcome by the tide, a city stuck in the past, a snowy slope (or two). But it is also full of mystery, and much of the mystery is cosmic . . . It is written so deftly, with such a light touch, that suspense builds in each story like a gathering storm.” — Patrick Joyce, Midwest Book Review

“Like other talented writers in this genre, Weed is not hampered by the brevity of the medium . . . His denouements are unpredictable and sometimes even merely hinted at, leaving the reader to fall back on his or her own imagination as to how the tale ends, which sounds frustrating but is actually quite a tantalizing device. ” — Trout Fisherman (UK)

Order the paperback, ebook, or audiobook at your favorite independent bookstore or IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Audible. Limited first-edition hardcovers can still be ordered from these fine independent booksellers!

 

 

Literary Roadhouse Podcast: Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever.”

[image error]A heartfelt thanks to Anais Concepción, the smart & effervescent host of Literary Roadhouse, a weekly podcast on a public-domain short story. It’s a fun and lively podcast with the noble mission of celebrating the short story form, and I had a very good time hosting a recent episode on Edith Wharton’s masterpiece, “Roman Fever.” You can listen to the podcast here—and to a wide-ranging follow-up conversation on video between Anais and me about nature,  Will Poole’s Island, a career combining writing and travel, National Geographic, Cuba, my goals of as a teacher of writing, the need to break writing “rules,” new writing projects, history as a foreign country, escapism, and more. Watch the video interview here.

“Diamondback Mountain” out at Craft Literary

[image error]Happy to report the release of “Diamondback Mountain,” the final previously unpublished story in the fiction collection A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing. The folks at Craft have done a beautiful job and I’m happy that they’re hosting this story, which holds a great deal of personal significance for me, as explained in the author’s note. In the story, a young ski instructor at a remote hotel in 1930s Colorado falls in love with a rising Italian movie star, but fate conspires to keep the couple apart. Read the full story here.

Radio interview: The Round Schoolhouse & the legend of Thunderbolt

V[image error]ery enjoyable conversation this morning with Olga Peters of the Green Mountain Mornings radio show on WKVT Radio 100.03 FM about the local landmark and the historical characters that inspired my novel-in-progress, The Confession of Michael Martin, one of fifteen works selected for the 2018 long list of the Historical Novel Society’s New Novel Award. HNS describes it as “A novel of adventure, friendship, and immigrant life inspired by the true story of early American outlaws that is intriguingly different from Hollywood mythologies.”

[image error]The history behind the story is also of local interest because it represents a landmark in early Vermont and Brattleboro publishing. It’s of general interest because it’s an early entry in the great American outlaw myth, and because of what it tells us about the power of narrative to grip the human imagination and about the blurred lines between what we call history and what we call fiction. I’ll be presenting the research in a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Brattleboro Words Project at 6pm this Thursday, December 13, at 118 Elliot Street in Brattleboro. If you’re in the neighborhood, please come by!

If you’re interested in the topic but can’t make the discussion, listen to the 10 minute interview here. My heartfelt thanks to Lissa Weinmann of The Brattleboro Words Project and Olga Peters (feel better soon, Olga)!