odd blogs file: dispatch 1
For your enlightenment and entertainment, today I present the first installment of the Odd Blogs File, featuring sundry quotes from the vast blogging world. Here’s J. Del Col, master of the very practically-titled blog Hunting discussion & tips on deer, duck, elk, dove hunting etc.: Stay Informed!, on what not to do if you don’t want to get caught poaching:

We had one clown drive through town with a dead bear in the back of his pick-up. It wasn’t bear season, and the bear had neither been run over nor had it died of a heart attack.

Today’s Exercise: Write about the dumbest thing you ever did.

improper ambitions
The wonderful Christine U’Ren has a new play, Improper Ambitions, which will be at Bella Union Theatre Company through Oct. 2. From Bella Union:

From the doomed court of Marie-Antoinette to the radical Impressionist circle, two painters confront war, romance, and the French Academy in Paris. This exciting new play is based on the true lives of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, the queen’s favorite portraitist, and Berthe Morisot, one of the original Impressionists…this production brings to life such luminaries as Marie-Antoinette, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt.

triple book alert: twins; maleka, my love; and red stick men
Lauren Cerand of Lux Lotus turned me on to Marcy Dermansky’s debut novel, Twins. At the moment it looks as though it’s only available in the UK, but there’s this nifty thing called the Internet…plus, Marcy’s having a shindig in New York that’s open to the public.

Meanwhile, you can read Dermansky’s novella, Maleka, My Angel, in its entirety here. Sure, I’d never heard of Dermansky before I saw her name on lux lotus, but sometimes that’s a good thing. Then I noticed that Maleka was chosen as the winner of the 2002 Andre Dubus Novella Award by my old teacher from my undergrad days at U of Alabama, the very tall and mercifully kind and wonderful-haired Tim Parrish, author of a very good story collection, Red Stick Men.

You can read one of Tim’s stories, Break-In, here.

the ugly on pretty
Well, I suppose we all knew that publishers like pretty people better, but in her latest entry, Agent 007 strikes a cruel blow to unattractive authors everywhere.

I make myself answer the question, “If you didn’t know what he looked like, would you still be enthusiastic?” The answer is Yes. But truthfully, if the question is, “If you found out he was cringeworthy, would you still be interested?” the answer is No.

Personally, I find this “looks matter” attitude to be, as she puts it, cringeworthy. It’s really absurd to think that an author’s looks can make or break his/her chances of publishing a book. Think of all the wonderful books we would have missed out on if all publishers and agents thought this way–Ulysses, for example.