Friday, July 31, 2015

The long and winding road to find an agent and a publisher: but THERE IS LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL, YES!

'






 
 
'Cli-fi mystery''
novelist Charlene D'Avanzo has signed with a publisher -- Torrey House Press-- and their motto is "conservation through literature" which matches the author's intentions exactly, she says in a recent post. The first mystery in her "Maine Oceanography Series" will be released in May, 2016 ("Death in a Hot Sea") and she's working on the second novel in the 3-book series now and will deliver it in December. YES: NICE: She has a 3 book contract, arranged by her agent, Dawn Dowdle  of the Blue Ridge Literary Agency, LLC.

see interview with her agent here:
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/agent-advice-dawn-dowdle-of-blue-ridge-literary-agency


BACKSTORY TO HER SEARCH FOR AN AGENT AND A PUBLISHER: A GOOD NEWS STORY FOR WRITERS!

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 5:59 AM, Charlene D'Avanzo
wrote to me out of the blue at Cli Fi Central:

>> Dan - I've read your Cli-Fi blog and wonder if you can help me. I've written
>> a mystery titled "Death in a Hot Sea" and am looking for an agent. Just FYI
>> - my query is below so you can see what this is about. Thanks so very much,
>> Charlene D'Avanzo
>>
>>
>> Dear AGENT: ........ I hope you will enjoy ''DEATH IN A HOT
>> SEA,'' a 72,000 word amateur sleuth mystery and the first in [what I hope will be] a series. My
query is below and I appreciate your time and consideration.
>>
>>
>>
Maine oceanographer Mara Tusconi ....is excited as she bounds onto Research Vessel Endeavor for a cruise
focusing on the biggest environmental issue of our time - Earth's warming.
>>
>>
>>
>> But the battle against climate change gets personal - and deadly - when .......
>>
>>
>>
When Mara investigates........she uncovers a seaweed-biofuel hoax
subsidized by a gigantic oil conglomerate. ......
>>
>>
>>
>> PS: I am a marine ecologist and an award winning environmental educator, author
>> of a non-fiction book and dozens of scientific articles, plus editor of two
>> scholarly journals. I'm also an avid sea kayaker with a house in Maine (sea
>> kayaking is key in this novel).
This book would interest fans who enjoy
>> mysteries by Nevada Barr (Park ranger Anna Pigeon series) and Barbara Ross
>> (Maine clambake series).


----------------------------
I wrote back to her the same day, giving her this advice:
RE:
www.sunburypress.com

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:07 AM, Dan Bloom <danbloom@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Charlene!
>
> I used to spend teenage summers in Maine, summer camp in Bar Harbor,
> and climbing Mt Cadilac, 1960s.
>
> I love your proposal! Sounds great for cli fi mystery YES.
> and there is a writer in Finland named ANTTI Tuoaminen  he wrote a cli fi
> NOIR novel called THE HEALER, published now in English too, google it
> at
> amazon and it is cli fi thriller detective story set in the future.
> scary and very
> cli fi. he emailed me too. he got lucky because he already had track
> record in Finland with three earlier novels so his publisher did the book.
>
> To find an agent is so hard. Near impossbile these days. Unless
> you live next door to STephen King and he does u a favor and
> asks HIS agent to rep you. otherwise, they don't answer their mail
.
>
> My advice is this: publish the book as an ebook and POD book paperback
> with a indie publisher, i know a good man at Sunbury Press in Pennsylviania
> he has done 3 books for me, and he has a good PR website to get word
> out because that is KEy, i would ask him to publish your book as a CLI
> FI MYSTERY on the cover print.....is it ready to send?

>
> google LAWRENCE KNORR or write to him at
@sunburypress.com
>
> That's my advice, but the PR and promotion will be up to you and the
> mass media will likely NOT review the book, but you can use internet
> and blogs to get word out and if the first book does well and catches
> on, an agent might appear for second book. TRY IT. most people these
> days are doing it this
> way. a search for an agent without an introcution is near impssiobe

------------------
My second letter to Charlene: with more advice:

Dear Charlene,

There are lots of great sites for aspiring writers to help them on
their route to publication. Here are few that I I FOUND ONLINE


agentqueryconnect.com
agentquery.com
absolutewrite.com
writersdigest.com

AND YOU HAVE YOUR OWN RESEROUCES TOO SO GO GO GO

YES TOO MANY SELF PUB BOOKS TODAY ARE NEVER EDITED AND
THAT IS NOT GOOD.

------------------

another letetr to Charlene reads:

On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 9:58 PM, Dan Bloom <danbloom@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Charlene
>
> I ALSO ADMIRE YOUR PLUCK AND ENERGY ON THIS AGENT QUEST, so yes, GO GO
> GO on this search first......and you are right, an agent leads
> to an EDITOR who is vital, and a major publisher leads to great PR and
> distribution. ITS THE WAY TO GO but so so hard to through the gates.
> \BUT YOU CAN DO IT, I SEE YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES.
>
> MINDY MCGINNS DO YOU KNOW HER? SHE GOT LUCKY WITH BOOK CALLED NOT A
> DROP TO DRINK FROM MAJOR PUBLISHER
> MAYBE HER AGENT OR HER EDITOR CAN HELP GOOGL:E HER NAME AND OBOK TITLE
>
> I AM IN TOUCH WITH HER IT IS A CLI FI YA NOVEL SHE WROTE
>
> \MORE LATER
>
> MIDNIGHT HERE IN T AWIAN
>
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 9:50 PM, Charlene D'Avanzo
> wrote:
>> Dan - thanks so very, very much for your ideas and positive energy. I really
>> do appreciate it
.
>>
>> I may follow your suggestions with Sunbury Press in the future, but at this
>> point I am still going to try to find an agent.
I belong to a wonderful
>> organization called Sisters in Crime which sponsors "Guppies" groups (the
>> great unpublished - they have a terrific sense of humor) and within Guppies
>> I belong to a Agent Quest. We give each other advise with getting an agent
>> (e.g., critiquing the query). People in this group DO get agents. It seems
>> to be a matter of persistence if you have something good, which I do believe
>> I have. About half the agents I query get back to me with a polite "no" and
>> many never get back as you say - but their website say that is the case.
>> Right now, one agent has requested more from me - first 50 pages and the
>> synopsis.

>>
>> Another reason for going with a agent is the help you get from an editor -
>> which I am very interested in getting. I've been working with an editor I
>> hired for over a year and she's been extremely helpful (this is my first
>> attempt at fiction).

>>
>> So, we'll see. I may well go the self-publish route. My motivation for
>> writing "Death in a Hot Sea" is very serious - that scientists are doing a
>> terrible job reaching the public about the climate change crisis
. So
>> perhaps the arts are a better way - and I would like to reach as many people
>> as possible with this book.
>>
>> Charlene

==============
another letter from CHARLENE to me:

Dan - I leave today for a one week cross country ski trip in Bryce Nat'l Park in Utah. I will get back to you when I return. Thanks for this idea, Charlene

----------------------------
LATER I WROTE TO HER with more informal advice for her novel and finding a home for it:

Charlene

i can help with Pr ideas

my hobby

1. you publish the book ASAP with SunBeery Press
2. you do intervuiews when book is out with Hampshire College
press release office first of all
3. then with Springfield REpublican newsppaer local news
4. then with Boston Globe newspaper and magazine section
5. then with Massachusetts associated press reporter in in Sprinfrield
or Boston
6. then with NEW YORK TIEMS science reporter Justin Gillis
7. then with Publishers Weekly magazine in NYC
8. then you write oped on sciene ed for NYTimes with book listed as
your recnt publciation
9. then you do TV interview with GMA and TODAY SHOW and CNN and BBC
10 then........

but first you need a book in your hands to show reporters. POD means
PRINT ON DEMAND, and Larry can make a good quality ebook first
and also a POD book which means when orders come in, he prints
it and sends out. he is honest man

----------------

==================
and another letter from Charline to me:

Hi Dan - Thanks for your PR and publishing advice for my novel. Actually, at this time, I am waiting on a few things. I went to a "CrimeWave" conference in Portland, Maine (near where I live) and the acquisition editor from Five Star Publishers, a small firm I really like, loved the 5000 words she read. She asked me to submit a query with her recommendation. I know there is a long way to go with this but I still want to pursue a traditional publishing route with a small publisher.

Thanks for keeping me in mind. Charlene


--------------------------------------------

> On 2/21/14, Charlene D'Avanzo <.> wrote:
>> Dan - Terrific news about the "Time" magazine cli fi interview - absolutely terrific.
>> For some reason, your email with the suggestion about what I might do
>> disappeared, along with my response to you. Please tell me once more
>> which site you are referring to. Thanks a lot, charlene
=============================================
in conclusion:

WELL,  TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT.....Charline found the an agent, and the agent brought the book project to a publisher and Torrey House Press went for it, and asked for a three book contract, and Charline is now on her way. BRAVO!

and as you read at the top:

an-interview-with-mark-bailey-publisher-of-torrey-house-press/

http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/an-interview-with-mark-bailey-publisher-of-torrey-house-press/

''Cli-fi mystery'' novelist Charlene D'Avanzo has signed with a publisher -- Torrey House Press-- and their motto is "conservation through literature" which matches the author's intentions exactly, she says in a recent post. The first mystery in her "Maine Oceanography Series" will be released in May, 2016 ("Death in a Hot Sea") and she's working on the second novel in the series now and will deliver it in December. She has a 3-book contract, arranged by her agent. Agents and publishers these days for YA novels and mystery/detective novels prefer and like 3-book contracts with their new authors. It ropes them in, and publishers profit from the concept, and writers get a three book time period to prove they have a reputation that can attract fans and readers. GO GO GO Charlene. Nice to meet you back in 2014 out of the blue.



==========================

NOTE FOR WOULD-BE AUTHORS:

Contact Us / Submissions

Contact Us

Torrey House Press, LLC
2806 Melony Drive
Salt Lake City, UT 84124
mail@torreyhouse.com
(801) 810-9THP

For all foreign and subsidiary rights inquiries, please contact our rights agent:
Nancy Stauffer Cahoon
Nancy Stauffer Associates, Literary Agents
30 Corbin Drive #1203
P.O. Box 1203
Darien, CT 06820 USA
Tel: 203 202 2500
nancy@staufferliterary.com

Submission Information

Torrey House Press (THP) publishes Western literature and environmentally-oriented fiction and nonfiction for the book trade. We are interested in well-crafted works of narrative nonfiction and literary fiction with a natural history, environmental or a natural landscape theme, or about the politics and practice of sustainable living.

In an effort to be green and organized we strongly prefer that you submit your manuscript electronically through our submission manager link below.

If you have a completed work that you feel is a good fit for THP, please submit your entire manuscript along with a synopsis, some background on yourself and why you feel you are a good fit for THP, and your thoughts on who your market and readership is.
For queries on proposed work, please submit a one or two page overview of your book idea along with information about yourself, why you are qualified to write on the subject, who your audience is and how you would propose to market your work. 
If we like what we see we will request a full proposal.
For a full proposal, once requested, please include a cover letter, a resume, a preliminary table of contents, a one or two-paragraph summary of each chapter, a list of other books on the topic, details and specifics of your target audience, a summary of any market research you have done, and any completed chapters you have.
When you submit please tell us how you found us in your cover letter.
Thank you for your interest in Torrey House Press. Please allow up to three months for us to get back to you.

Mary interviews Charlene online here:
/////interview-with-charlene-davanzo-death-in-a-hot-sea//////

http://eco-fiction.com/interview-with-charlene-davanzo-death-in-a-hot-sea/

BRIEF EXCERPT from avery good  interview with Mary:

Mary: You have written a novel, Death in a Hot Sea, about an oceanographer in Maine threatened by climate change doubters. This novel is with an agent now so has not been published yet. How much can you tell us about this novel? What inspired you to write it, and do you foresee continuing as a novelist after this book?
 
Charlene: The inspiration to write this mystery came to me as I listened to Ray Bradley, a well known UMass climatologist whose temperature reconstructions are prominent in IPCC reports. Bradley and Michael Mann, an equally famous climate scientist, were embroiled in a vicious climate change doubters’ assault based on their “Hockey Stick” graph. This graph clearly (too clearly, I guess) shows the relationship between industrialization, fossil fuel use, and global temperature increases. Incensed, Bradley detailed the harassment—demands for huge amounts of data, accusations about statements in emails between scientists, appearances before congressional committees, and so on.
 
After Bradley finished his presentation, I sat in the auditorium and watched this smart, generous man field questions from a dozen people crowding around him on stage. He’d devoted his professional life to trying to make sense of the global climate and now was accused of lying about his data by powerful politicians backed by big oil. I desperately wanted to “do something”. But what?
 
The idea [for the novel] just popped into my head. Many fiction writers have used novels to promote social change. Why couldn’t I? No matter that I had no experience whatsoever writing fiction. I could learn. I decided on mysteries because I love the genre and could envisage a story featuring climate change researchers hounded by climate change doubters.

SAYS CHARLENE'S AGENT, Dawn Dowdle :

My family and I live in Lynchburg, VA, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am an avid reader of cozy mysteries for relaxation and enjoy attending Malice Domestic when I have the chance. My reading interests have widened in the last few years.

The agency is a boutique agency, where we primarily represent Romances and Cozy Mysteries
.

One of my favorite things to do is attend writers' conferences. In addition to networking with other agent and editors, I try to meet with any of my authors who might live in the area, as well as meet new authors.

Always a lot of fun!

Literary Agent Interview: Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary Agency


“Agent Advice” (this installment featuring agent Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary Agency) is a series of quick interviews with literary agents and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else. This series has more than 170 interviews so far with reps from great literary agencies. This collection of interviews is a great place to start if you are just starting your research on literary agencies.
This installment features Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary Agency. A freelance copyeditor, Dawn reviewed mysteries for years before starting Blue Ridge Literary Agency in January 2009. She lives in Lynchburg, Va., where she also facilitates a local writers’ group and is very active in her church. Although she read mysteries for fun, she handles most types of fiction and children’s fiction. She also blogs and Tweets.
(Hate writing synopses? Here are nuts & bolts pointers for you.)
She is seeking: mysteries, cozy mysteries, thrillers, urban fantasy, romance (no erotica), sci-fi, women’s, general, historical, Christian, young adult, middle-grade, and young readers. She does not seek: poetry, scripts, short stories, children’s picture books, memoirs, nonfiction, or screenplays.



GLA: How and why did you become an agent?
DD: I was a freelance editor and ran a mystery website promoting mystery books for authors. I like helping authors. One of my friends had me edit her manuscript. I really enjoyed it. She queried it to agents. One day she complained about the agent’s response—a small piece of paper with her manuscript’s title written incorrectly—and how queries always have to be so perfect to agents. She said, “I wish I could just do this myself.” So I started wondering what it would take to be a literary agent.
I have learned most tasks on the job throughout my life, so I started investigating being a literary agent. I decided to start an agency in January 2009 and began making contacts. Now I have mentors as well as 2 interns and a Rights Director affiliated with my agency. I represent approximately 80 manuscripts and have approximately 30 of those under contract with publishers. [Recently,] The Armageddon Chord by Jeremy Wagner, published by kNight Romance Publishing, became a best seller on BN.com. It was rated #6 in sales!
(Should you mention your age in a query letter?)
GLA: What’s something you’ve sold that comes out now/soon that you’re excited about?
DD: Paradise 21 by Aubrie Dionne came out August 5. I am very excited about this science fiction romance. When she queried me, I read the synopsis and was confused. I decided to read a few pages to see if the writing was good. I read every page of the three chapters she sent and wanted to know more. I immediately contacted her to offer representation. She is my first author signed with Entangled Publishing, a newer publisher. I’m very excited about this new publisher and this first book in her new series. There are two more books publishing in this series, Tundra 37 publishes in December and Haven 6 in April.
GLA: Besides “good writing,” and “voice,” what are you looking for right now and not getting? What do you pray for when tackling the slush pile?
DD: I’m always looking for a well-written cozy mystery. These are what I read for fun, so I’m always looking to work with writers of cozies. I’m also on the lookout for a good edge-of-your-seat thriller. I am always looking for a good romance. I work with many subgenres of romances: contemporary, historical, paranormal, suspense. I’d also love to get a steampunk.

2015-GLA-small
The biggest literary agent database anywhere
is the Guide to Literary Agents. Pick up the
most recent updated edition online at a discount.


GLA: On the flip side of that, what are you tired of seeing? Any specific topics or subgenres?
DD: Vampires, science fiction, thrillers that aren’t thrilling and historicals.
GLA: You run a writers’ group in Lynchburg, Va. Tell us a little bit about it (i.e., What does the group do, what was your purpose in creating it, is it made up of your clients, etc.).
DD: I do have a few clients in the group, but it is made up of anyone in the area who likes to write. We actually have two groups now. I only attend one, as I don’t have much time. We do a lot of critiquing and encouraging. We have a “book social” release party when one of our authors publishes their book.
GLA: What are 2-3 of your biggest chapter one no-nos? What makes you stop reading?
DD: Too much backstory or description. Not getting the story going. We do need to know something about the characters, but we also need to get invested in the story quickly. Catch my attention!
(Learn about pitching your novel to an agent at a writers’ conference.)
GLA: You require writers to include a marketing plan when they query you. What do you like to see here?
DD: I’m looking for the types of plans the author has to promote their book. It’s a tough business. Promotion is what will help your sales. Books no longer sell themselves. Authors can’t just write. If you’re not willing to promote your work, most publishers aren’t interested. I’m trying to find this out sooner.
GLA: Going one further, what should all new writers be doing—even before they snag an agent and/or sell?
DD: Get your name out there. Be on Facebook, blog, participate in online discussions. You need a platform to attract a publisher.
GLA: Will you be at any upcoming writers’ conferences where writers can meet and pitch you?
DD: None right now, but I did just attend The Write-Brained Network’s “One-Stop Workshop for the Serious Writer” in Harrisonburg, Va., Saturday, Sept. 2011.
GLA: What is something personal about you writers would be surprised to hear?
DD: I met my husband through a phone ad I placed 25 years ago (long before the Internet). We were engaged 6 weeks later and married 4 ½ months after meeting!
GLA: Best piece(s) of advice we haven’t talked about yet?
DD: Spell-check your query. Follow all directions for queries.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL:
======================================
On April 1, 2015 Charlene wrote on Google:
I'd love some help identifying likely publishers for my amateur sleuth mystery "Death in a Hot Sea". The protagonist is an oceanographer and underlying themes are climate change deniers and the nature of climate research. It's a traditional mystery format. I've just signed a contract with a literary agent who will be pitching the book to publishers.
Thanks a lot, Charlene
 
=========================
 
On May 2 she wrote:
Friends: I very much enjoy Mary's interviews with women working in nature and the arts.(Thank you!) It appears that most adult novels referred to here are not published by well known presses. I wonder how that impacts the audience these authors reach.
For my own mystery, "Death in a Hot Sea" (which features an oceanographer harassed by climate change doubters), I've decided to go the traditional route. I have an agent now, and we'll see if she's able to find a publisher. [SHE DID!] I was a marine ecologist and college professor for over 40 years, but learning the craft of eco-fiction is by far the hardest thing I've every tried to do.

Charlene
 
---------------
Joe said:
The main advantage of traditional publishing over independent publishing is three-fold, in my view: print distribution, reviews, and brand. Traditional publishers have better access to print distribution networks, i.e., bookstores. Trads also develop contacts with reviewers who have large audiences in major media, e.g., New York Times. Trads with well-known brands, such as Penguin Random House, may be perceived by readers as offering higher-quality material. It's a kind of endorsement. IMHO, small presses may be weaker in these areas, but it varies from press to press.

Some of these factors also affect ebooks. The main problem in the electronic market is getting heard above the noise. It's hard for readers to find you. Reviewers are harder to find, and if you're not an author with a well-known brand, people won't buy as readily. The content has to be extremely compelling to compensate.

I'm curious how you found your agent. Query? Personal contact?
 
============================
 
CHARLENE replied to Joe:
Thanks for these insights Joe - these are many of the reasons I decided to try to go with traditional publishing. It does take a whole lot longer than self publishing though.

I found my agent through regular querying. I belong to "Sisters in Crime" a terrific national group (with a great sense of humor) and through them, "agent quest". We critique each others queries, synopses, etc. and basically offer support in the absurdly difficult job of getting an agent and/or publisher.

In addition to what you've mentioned, going through all this has resulted in a much better book since I rewrite, rewrite, rewrite based on comments.
============================

Thursday, July 30, 2015

''Cli-fi'' = ''Climate Literature Interface'' + ''Fictional Interplay''


''Cli-fi'' = ''Climate Literature Interface'' + ''Fictional Interplay''

Invited to an Asian 'cli-fi' conference on ''Micro-blogging and Journalism''

 

 

I SAID ''YES''  -- OF COURSE!
 
Dear Mr Bloom of the Cli Fi Report - cli-fi.net
 
I am writing about a symposium we  are organizing in Asia with my colleagues from the University, and we would like to invited you to attend -- all expenses paid.  The theme for the event is ''Microblogging and Journalism in Asia nations.''  Several people from Micro-Nesia will also attend. It it will be held at the University there.

There will be about 20 invitation-only participants from free and democratic Taiwan where freedom of the presss is important, ......from Communist and media-controlled China,....... and from semi-controlled now by Communist China SAR of Hong Kong .....and 2 from New Zealand and the Philippines.
 
We wanted to ask you, Dan,  if you would like to attend as a participant given your active social media profile and journalism background. Also environmental media will be a theme as we plan to getting some environmental journalist from Commie China also.

If you available to do this, all flights will be paid for by the council and 1 night accommodation. You will be looked after by staff from the University and would stay at the University dorm.   You could stay longer of course on your own time.

 

How to Work with Media For Cli-Fi Coverage

Getting Cli-Fi Media Coverage That Moves Readers FROM: THE CLI FI REPORT, cli-fi.net DO: Tell stories – successes, about real people who are _____. Cut your issue with a hook – local, timely and attention getting. DON’T: Use technical program names or acronyms (ICM, NOAA, IPCC, OCS, or toss off large dollar figures (“the XYA commission says that for US$4 billion a year…”) MOST IMPORTANT TIP (from Tip): The first rule of politics, according to the late Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O’Neil, applies to media coverage too – “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” 1. What are the different kinds of media, and media coverage? Print: News story, Feature story, Column, Editorial, Op-ed piece, Letter to the editor Television News Story, feature piece, kicker (human/animal interest) Radio News, feature, talk-radio with guests (phone or in studio) Specialized Press – Sea Technology, diving, surfing, fishing, boating magazines TIP: Try. Ask. Don’t fear failure when dealing with the media. No one gets coverage every time they try. Even if they don’t do your story, ask why they didn’t and how they might. You’ll get to know more media folks, how they think, and what they might cover in the future. TIP: Follow the media with an eye to using it. When you see a story on your issue, or a related one, notice who the reporter is. They may cover your issue on a regular basis, or have a particular interest in it. Send them your next press release, in addition to sending it to the assignment desk, and call them. The same is true for columns, and even editorials. Call and find out who wrote the editorial on your issue. TIP: Positive reinforcement helps. Write a ''letter to the editor'' praising a good story on your issue, and the writer. Letters to the editor are coverage too – and the third most read part of a paper. TIP: Remember editorials (the position of the newspaper) and “op ed” (the page across from the editorial page) pieces. Be bold – when you see an editorial on your issue area, call the paper, get the Editorial Department, and find out who wrote the editorial. Ask to speak to them. Tell them the issue you’d like the paper to endorse. Make it timely. Remember, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. 2. Importance of story – clients, actual projects – and the “hook”. TIP: People are more interesting than facts and figures. Portray your issue through their stories. But… TIP: Stories usually aren’t enough by themselves. You need a hook – something that makes the story timely. TIP: Different stories may lead to different reporters. A vote in Congress may lead to a conversation with a paper’s DC reporter. 3. How do we get media coverage? TIP: Try to get media coverage. It usually doesn’t come on its own. TIP: Make relations with and responsiveness to media people a priority. ALWAYS make the reporter or writer’s job easier for them. TIP: Gather interesting success stories. TIP: Develop and maintain a personal relationship with a reporter or an editor. There are only a handful of reporters well versed on literature issues and covering them on a regular basis: Help your reporter get the cli fi ‘stoke.’ TIP: Sometimes, no matter what you do, you won’t get coverage. If there’s a train wreck in the town next door, or Donald Trump says something particularly news worthy, those stories may crowd you out, no matter how good your story is. TIP: “Day of” coverage, especially in the morning paper, has extra power – to spur more turn out for an action, to raise the spirits of your members. TIP: ALWAYS send a letter to the editor after you get a story or an editorial, especially if you can be positive. It’s additional, free coverage. CC the writer of your piece. 4. Press releases TO WHOM: Specific reporters/writers, assignments editor/city desk. CONTENT: Who, what, when, why, where; contact people. Keep to one page. No kidding, keep to one page. They get lots of them. If they’re interested, they’ll ask for more information. GOAL: Reasonable minimum – one all news radio station, one paper, one TV station. The media can be like schooling fish – news radio and the morning paper often define what’s the ‘news’ for the day (especially for local TV). KEY: Follow up calls the day before and the day of. Then more follow up calls. Ask for a reporter you know, ask for the assignment desk, ask what time they arrive on the day of your event. Call, call, call, resend your release again and again. Be available all day long. Have your leaders/story tellers/experts available all day long. THE EVENT: Plan an event – The event, location and/or target should help to make it more newsworthy, and tell your story better. 5. The goal—an ideal, advocacy-oriented connection with the media Having a respected and respectful relationship. Getting your calls returned and your stories considered. Becoming the source of story ideas for key reporters and editors. Being an “authority” on your issue – getting quoted in other people’s stories, appearing on talk shows, etc.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

ASU professor Ed Finn on the value of the cli-fi genre as AGW ramps up

Ed Finn writes (slightly edited for clarification and amplification): The trouble with climate change is that it’s too slow: a creeping disaster causing incremental changes to our lives one year at a time. It moves so slowly, in fact, that by the time the forecast for destruction proves correct (years or decades after it was made), we’ve already turned off the news. As a topic, a debate, and a modern theological schism, climate change seems to be washed up in popular imagination even as the ice melts, the forest fires rage, and the drought deepens. Occasionally we’re confronted with stark reminders of its power, like images documenting the retreat of glaciers or starving polar bears, but because the political trench war over climate change has been going on for so long, we can barely move beyond hopelessness to muster some pity. It is, as Al Gore put it, an inconvenient truth, but the title backfired on him — the truth proved so difficult to contend with that we work harder and harder to ignore it. We are so immersed in the slow boil of climate change that we’ve lost sight of it completely, and we need to escape lived reality before we can even learn to see it. A jetpack, a flying car, a TARDIS… We need better stories about the future to talk sensibly about the present. It turns out we need the unreality of fiction to understand reality. Cli-fi, speculative fiction, —  call it what you will -- it all runs on the same biofuel of imagination. So what can cli-fi teach us about climate change? It can take numbing debates over pollution PPM and acre-feet of water and put them into gripping, visceral context. Consider how different today’s policy disputes over California’s drought are from Paolo Bacigalupi’s description of life in a near-future Phoenix in ''The Water Knife'':
''Here, close to the relief pump, here was life: bonfires burning two-by-fours hacked from the husked-out corpses of five-bedroom houses. The tents of the Red Cross, swaybacked with the recent storm’s accumulated dust. Doctors and volunteers wearing filter masks against the dusk and valley fever fungus, tending to refugees lying on cots, and crouching over infants with cracked sandy lips as they took saline drips into their hollowed bodies.''
OK, so it’s not exactly a blueprint for a better tomorrow. But it beats endless discussion about lawn-watering, rate hikes, lawsuits, and the threat posed by the California almond industry. Bacigalupi puts you there, in one possible world spinning forward from our own like fragments of a bomb that is, we can now see, just going off in the present. It is a window into a place that might be, that can be logically extrapolated from our own. As you read, the initial shock of strangeness gives way to the creeping recognition that this hellscape is not so distant from our own lives. Not distant at all: separated from the life my family lives in Phoenix only by the turn of a tap that brings us water in the desert, whenever we want. Cli-fi drops us into worlds that are both familiar and ominous, an experience that some scholars call ''cognitive estrangement.'' The power of cli-fi is not to terrify us about the future, but to show us what it might look like to literally inhabit our ideas. We read stories where human characters grapple with our shared, eternal problems  —  survival, love, identity, purpose, etc. —  but they do so in the constraints of structures that are just outlines for us. Cli-fi is not a crystal ball; it’s a mirror, showing us the world we live in projected into a fresh, imaginary space. This is especially important in the context of climate change and novels in the cli-fi genre, where environmental changes that are inevitable and social adaptations that seem impossible are headed for spectacular collision. Cli-fi allows us to kill our darlings, as the writers say, and road-test our assumptions. Using the imagination laboratory between our ears, we can hypothesize about ditching political sacred cows and cultural mores that otherwise seem as inescapable as gravity. Margaret Atwood’s ''MaddAddam'' trilogy gleefully pokes capitalism and religion in the eye along the way to her true target: the facile lullabies we sing to ourselves as we ignore our lives crumbling around us. The power of cli-fi to turn abstractions into hard-edged objects and place them in the paths of real, complicated, contradictory humans is more than just good entertainment or a writer’s parlor trick. It is a practice of imagination, asking readers to do the heavy lifting of bringing these futures to life in our own minds. Because we take on that labor, we practice imagination as much as the writers do  —  so so cli-fi is a contagious form of imaginative thinking. That kind of thinking is exactly what we need to solve the wicked problems of climate change. The standard models of progress have failed us, and we desperately need more creative and inclusive ideas. As long as climate change is the exclusive domain of technical expertise, policy discussions, and political grandstanding, it will fail to mobilize the kind of broad, deep engagement you need to change the world. As a colleague at the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative at Arizona State University has shown, the diplomats and political leaders debating responses to climate change are suffering from a serious imagination deficit. Imagination is what cli-fi has to offer in the conversation about climate change. It’s not that climate change is a figment of a possible future, but that its deep infiltration of the present is so vast and slow that we need to see it through fiction. Bruce Sterling called it “a melancholy and tiresome reality,” and when Atwood inaugurated the Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative in November of 2014 she called it “the Everything Change.” Perhaps the single best tool we have to combat wicked problems and complex systems is narrative — the ambiguity, complexity, and specificity of stories that can capture an entire era through the eye, and the heart, of a single character or a group of characters. And, yes, I’ll say it: we also need more optimism. Cli-fi should not only be about the things that can’t and shouldn’t happen. We have to imagine better tomorrows in order to change our reality today. We need stories that make sense of climate change and chart a path to action, helping us to see the challenges clearly but also begin envisioning our answers to those challenges. We need infectious, thrilling, scientifically grounded stories about what might be — stories that invite all of us to see the world as it is and make it a better place than we found it.

Monday, July 27, 2015

Margaret Atwood leads #clifi charge at MEDIUM.com's new 'cli-fi' package

Margaret Atwood leads charge at 's new 'cli-fi' package with over 12 writers on view

Thursday, July 23, 2015

A Living Hybrid Cli-fi Drama - and you're in it.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/www-mermology-com/x/11057322#/story

A Living Hybrid 'Cli-fi' Drama - and you're in it.
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Dear Dan,
We're heading towards what could be called a hybrid perhaps, drama that is integrated with authentic news and science. For example, we create characters and their fictional life journeys but connect them to real world events and issues around climate change - so we're somewhere between cli-fi and docu drama at this early stage. The aim is to prototype how this could start to work and as a video on demand / mobile production rather than traditional TV. It's this 'innovation' that won us selection at Sheffield Documentary Festival / Crossover Interactive. The purpose is to get into mainstream spaces via drama / popular genre but actually carry authentic content and discovery bout climate change on personal and global levels. The power of discovery and learning through story. This is a strategic response to the problem of pure documentary suffering from small audiences and the critical need for mass engagement and loss of political dis-empowerment. The campaign page gives readers an overview of the characters but the real impact of the drama will be factual discovery.

Hope that helps position the approach and strategy.

PAULA

RE:



You Found Us! Welcome to mermology - I'm Paula the producer in the pitch video and we're making the first cli-fi docu-drama series integrated with authentic news and science and we want you to participate - why?


Climate Change is destroying us but disengagement and news desensitization is dis-empowering us. We can change all three of those risks.
This is about great drama, your life, your mind, your health and putting climate change back into all of our hands, no-one and no nation is immune.
It's great to meet you here and build a whole new community! We have the most loyal followers on twitter and other platforms and we really want to do our best by our pals and of course new friends!

So What's the Story?
This campaign is to fund a prototype for a video on demand, docu-drama series that makes climate change personal and not just political. This will be optimised for mobile so YOU can participate easily, be it watching, influencing, discovering or sharing. Authentic news and science will be integrated into the story as an equal part of the drama. You'll discover what's real and what isn't; you can influence the characters and you'll decide what you want to do.
It's a bit like asking Mulder and Scully to negotiate Hollywoods climate change series 'Years of Living Dangerously'. Instead meet Thalassa and Levant; in deep conflict with each other they depend on each other too . This is a world about survival, but you don't know who is really who and survival depends on people you can't trust.

When Dominic Levant's beloved brother is mysteriously murdered and all access is denied; he doesn't know that he isn't on a personal journey to avenge his brother's death but that he is already the destination for far greater global revenge.
Everything around Levant is about revenge and survival; the planet is fighting back and his brother's murder is only the first clue to a far, far, greater attack against man made destruction and disruption of the global eco system.
Dominic Levant, 28, becomes sole heir to a global corporation, more interested in surfing and his life of luxury, the world is suddenly on his shoulders.
Sophia Thalassa, 32, is the lead investigator, socially odd and very ambiguous. She's a high flyer but lives alone in a sleazy, dirty, part of town.


How is the planet fighting back? All revealed in the drama but we mix popular drama genres with news, science and even turn some mythology upside down.
Will any of us survive? You decide.



In Selection - we were picked from 100s Worldwide!
The reason we're doing this now is we've been picked from 100s Worldwide and invited to prestigious labs, we were recently in selection at Sheffield Documentary Festival / Crossover Interactive . The votes of confidence have led to this campaign. We're innovating how story is told by marrying popular genre with news and science and using mobile to address the big problem of climate change disengagement and dis-empowerment. Its meant we've met great producers and creative technologists from New York, LA and the UK, who understand story and positive impact. Now it's time to launch this world with you. After so many votes of confidence we're ready to make our first prototype and then really start opening doors. This can happen if we achieve the first £10,000 and then unlock real backing, the more we raise the better we can do. We hope you can be part of this, help us make the best prototype and put climate change back into all of our hands.

What We Need & What You Get

10k will include important development producing, content creation and a prototype of how this drama plays out online and using mobile. We want to start designing how you can participate, discover, influence and act. The prototype will be made by award winning pioneers of transmedia content based in New York, www.murmurco.com and we spent some great time with co-founder Mike Knowlton recently. Here's Mike, a recognised leader in the global transmedia world:

http://www.murmurco.com/about.htm and you can see that the investment you make will be in the best hands.
We will also get to work with amazing world leading scientists who have expressed interest. Meet Dr. Wallace "J." Nichols who is on board. J is a New York Times bestselling author of ‘Blue Mind’, creator of the worldwide Blue Marbles project, a TED speaker, broadcast on NPR, BBC, PBS, National Geographic, Animal Planet; featured in Time, Newsweek, GQ, Outside, Scientific American and the New Scientist.



Oh, and he's a Gap model too! http://www.wallacejnichols.org/
Our promo features great footage from multi award winning photographer and film maker Berta Tilmantaite. Recognition includes 1st place in the Sony World Photography Awards plus features in National Geographic and Al Jazeera News www.godoberta.com


With smart, artistic, multi-media journalists like this plus a great drama director - we'll soon be in business!
We've already spoken to news brands like AlJazeera and campaigners like Greenpeace who get the power of story and want to share what they know in a new way. This is a drama with double impact, you discover what's real and what isn't.
If we don't reach the full 10k we will review what's feasible to illustrate the sign up and entry point into this world and / or use this to attract the remaining funding we need. Our priorities are purpose, quality and value for money.
Me, now (just seeing if you're still reading)


I'm Paula Moore and I've been a producer/interviewer in TV for several years (NBC, 'Music Legends, Jazz, Blues', Head of Production, BSkyB Movies, indies) and then diversified into screenwriting, digital content, mentoring, university consultancy across creative courses and I also co-direct The Homeless Film Festival. My interests are in the arts and positive social impact. I love this project because it responds to the challenge of re-igniting our relationship with climate change on a personal level to drive positive change on a global scale. It's also about removing political dis-empowerment. When you want something done... This campaign is being launched after two years of my own investment in time, web build, shoots, numerous meetings, labs and trips to LA. I hope my investment and commitment has created a project worthy of your investment too.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jumpingastronaut


Risks & Challenges

As a producer I know to look ahead for risk and to make things work. I've managed production teams of 20 or more, produced multiple programmes across multiple channels on a weekly basis. We'll only start the prototype process if its funded properly, all the right things are in place and we can work to an achievable timeline. We'll review, test, respond and refine to get it right within that agreed period - we want a prototype that's smart and builds confidence to attract major producing partners and get ready to launch a great cli-fi drama with real purpose.


Perks

We've kept the perks simple so you can take part easily and we'll be reviewing and looking at what we can add throughout our campaign. We'll be adding updates! Should we exceed the prototype target we can make an even smarter investment in creative, technical development and refinement - plus we've set up investment perks for on going drama development.


Other Ways You Can Help

We know projects always need money but they also need friends, please use the Indiegogo share tools, tell your friends about this project and make a noise! Our motivation for this project is to put the all important realities about our lives and climate change back into our hands and into the mainstream so we can take ownership of climate change survival for all. There's already been far too little too late politically but personally and collectively we can change that.

Thank You we can only do this together.




Paula

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Why there will never be a Climate Museum in the USA run by Miranda Massie

 
There will never be a Climate Museum in the USA run by Miranda Massie and here's why: she's a well-intentioned, good-hearted progressive liberal who graduated from Hotkiss in 1984 and is really concerned about the fate of humankind and in a Eureka Moment a few years she had a vision: build a climate change museum in America and change the world. Influence world leaders with the museum. Influence UN people. Influence future IPCC reports. As if. As if her museum will even get off the ground!

It won't get off the ground because... it's a dumb idea and there's too much controversy in the USA over the way to tackle climate change and AGW and if if climate change is real. So this museum project, just the project, not the museum itself  which will of course never be built, the project will just in the crosshairs of all all the people who believe AGW is real and all the people who are skeptics and denialists. As a result, the museum will never get built, and the very news of such a hairbrained idea that was really well thought out beforehand will attract the skeptics and denialists to attack the museum and the "science" inside it BEFORE it even gets built. Massie is a dreamer, but her dream is destined to fail. Here's why: there are no happy solutions and fixes, Miranda. The human species is doomed, doomed, in the next 30 generations and your museum project is barking up the wrong true. Do-gooders cannot tackle climate change and AGW. We are past that poitn now. Your museum, despite having great PR press contacts via your friends at the New York Times and the New York magazine, VIP pals in the PR world and VIP pals in the money world, do make the museum a reality. It's a pipeline. You'd be better off writing a cli fi novel. Or make a cli fi movie.

A museum aint gonna change a thing.

Sure, there is an exhibit at the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change in Hong Kong highlighting the threat of climate change to polar regions. But it does even even prod or push Hong Kong's master the Chinese Communist Party thugs and the PRC Communist China, which is huge emitter of CO2, to stop its emissions and face up to the reality of climate change. So the musem in Hong Kong accomplishes little except give kids on school field trips a fun time.

 
 
While
Miranda Massie came to Hong Kong to visit what she told a New York Times blogger is ''the world’s only museum specifically devoted to an issue that many people, including herself, view as the most pressing one facing humankind.'' She’s the executive director of the Climate Museum Launch Project, a group based in New York that is seeking in a kind of Don Quixote tilting at windmilss kind of way with no real hope of ever getting the thing off the ground, because it just won't take in the USA, for reasons every reader knows and understand, but yes, she wants to build a similar, but far bigger and more ambitious, museum in Manhattan. As if. It will never happen.
Photo
Miranda Massie, executive director of the Climate Museum Launch Project.
PR Photo Credit: Courtesy of Miranda Massie

 
“There’s allegedly some research somewhere but I cannot give you the link right now which currently shows the more people learn about climate, the more they tend to emotionally shut down and disengage,” Massie told the NYT. “Not everybody, but most people. Because it’s distressing and because it’s very clear that just changing the light bulbs in your own home doesn’t matter. So you have to make it clear that you’re part of a broader set of efforts and those broader efforts can succeed.”
 
The Hong Kong museum occupies one floor of a high-rise building on a university campus. The museum’s goal, according to its program director, Dr. Cecilia Lam, is to raise awareness of climate change in Hong Kong, especially among children. It's for kids. Doesn't really tackle the big issues.
 
“The major difference between our project and Miranda’s — it seems to me that they focus on the whole world,” Lam said. “Our main group of targets is people in Hong Kong.”
 
Massie, in her late 40s, who worked for years as a public-interest lawyer, is looking for donors. Money. From rich donors. She hopes to set up an interim museum, bigger than the one in Hong Kong, in an office building or even on a barge in New York in the next two years, with a permanent site in Manhattan (or possibly Brooklyn) by 2020. As if.
 
Massie’s goal is ambitious. The New York museum would aim to attract at least a million visitors a year and seek to influence the world, including political leaders in the United States. At the end of the tour, visitors would be encouraged to volunteer their time to help groups that are trying to address climate change: doing anything from making calls on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council to volunteering to help elect a candidate who is determined to reduce carbon emissions.
 
“We want to be a hub for the world for climate solutions,” Massie said. “We want to be a beacon for the world.”
 
 
“I came to see climate change specifically is going to determine our fate as a species in a way that none of these other things is capable of doing,” she said.
 
Poppycock, Miranda. All the fawning New Yorker pieces by Carolyn Kormann -- which read more like paid PR pieces than real journalism -- and equally fawning Sinoblogs by Michael Forsythe of the New York Times -- which also read like paid PR pieces rather than real journalism -- will not make the poppycock any more meaningful.
 
Sure you'll get a lot of press. Sure, some rich liberals will give you money. Sure you will get some blueprints done up. But you will never break ground on this dream project. Pursuing this silly pipedream will only break you.
 
Think about it.

Read Before Buring or contact – For more information contact jennifer at earlwood farm dot com ASAP in Australia

Book+Burning+Day+After+Tomorrow

Earlwood Farm in Australia Presents ''Read before Burning''

 
Do you remember the scene in cli-fi movie of 2004 titled -- Yes! THAT one! -- The Day After Tomorrow in which Jake Gyllenhaal is burning all the books in the New York Public Library in order to survive the apocalypse? This event pools our collective knowledge to think about stories, poems, fantasies and fictions that might have been in those books and briefly reflect on how they imply an alternative future or, at the very least, equip us with some imaginative tools to think about climate change in a different way. The story might not even be about the climate or weather or freezing tidal waves or science. At this event we ask participants to bring forward texts that explore less obvious, but nevertheless important aspects of the environmental crisis as represented in printed text.*
It is the second event in the series “Earlwood Farm presents…” at Verge Gallery exploring different art forms and their capacity to represent environmental issues and mobilise political thought and action.
The Details:
WHERE: Verge Gallery – University of Sydney
WHEN: Saturday 15th August, 2015 from 11.00am-12.30pm
PERKS: Mini-brunch! Croissants and coffee will be provided.

More background:
The term “cli-fi” coined by a climate activist from Boston has started gaining traction in publishing and academic circles. “Cli-fi” is genre fiction about climate change. Recently, Professor Stephanie LeMenager from the University of Oregon, provoked us to trouble genre and think about all writing as a form of “cli-fi”.

But it made me think of this question: if everything is “cli-fi”, what writing (fiction or non-) represents some of the more important contours of the environmental crisis?

This event hopes to crack open the question by inviting participants to offer up something they think represents an important aspect of the environmental crisis. What have you read that has triggered a thought about climate change or some related issue, but might not be an obvious candidate for a Nature writing award? We will collect the stories shared at this event and bring them together in an online archive. If it goes well, we might do it again and make that archive bigger.

We have invited some people to respond formally, so come and listen to what they have to say. That said, anyone is free to take on the challenge.

– Bring a story, poem, novel, film or work of creative non-fiction (or less “formal” creative publications such as online blog posts, articles, creative non-fictions) – *obviously film is not printed text, but it is an important part of the mix!
– Share the work by reading (if it is less than five minutes) or describing/summarising if it is a longer piece
– Explain why you think we should read this before burning
– Provide us with a link to the text or scan of the book cover to collect in an archive (if this inaugural event goes well we might have more).
You will have the floor for a maximum of 10 minutes. Less is more.