Mixed Notes
Before you run over to the Texas Center for Writers or call Random House thinking you might be able to obtain a $50,000 scholarship in the James A. Michener Memorial Prize, let me make a slight clarification to what I wrote last week about the establishment of that fund by Random House in conjunction with TCW. Every year, RH and TCW will award $10,000 to a new writer who has published a first book, fiction or non-fiction, at age 40 or later, not $10,000 a year for five years to the same writer. As if any competent organization would offer a writer $50,000 for free! Ha!…
But how about six figures for a first novel? That’s what Texas Monthly contributing editor and GQ writer-at-large Robert Draper has been offered and has accepted from Sonny Mehta at Knopf. When word got out in the publishing world about the offer, it seems everyone wanted to make Draper an offer, some higher than what Knopf had offered, but Draper chose Knopf, and for good reason. It’s fair to say that it’s most any writer’s dream to have a first novel published by Knopf. Draper, whose first book was an “uncensored history” of Rolling Stone magazine, is represented by Sloan Harrison of ICM…
Another (former) Texas Monthly editor turned writer and editor-in-chief of Newsweek from 1982-84, William Broyles, Jr., author of Brothers in Arms: A Journey From War to Peace from the Southwestern Writers Collection Series, has involved his son Dave, a UT student, in writing for the Internet at Mungo Park (http://mungopark.com/) in a dialogue of sorts between father and son about their visit to Costa Rica…
Our get-well wishes go out to Chronicle books writer and film documentarian Jesse Sublett and his family in his recovery from throat cancer. He is now thankfully at home getting well.
Passion for Purple Sage
Since books chief Margaret is expounding this week in her demonic fashion [Ed. note: Demonic? Demonic?!?] on the books she thinks will make good Christmas gifts, allow me to do the same. St. Martin’s Press has just published local mystery writer Barbara Burnett Smith‘s fourth installment in the Jolie Wyatt mystery series, Mistletoe From Purple Sage ($22.95 hard), which begins, “On the day before Thanksgiving I decided that what I wanted for Christmas was a little holiday chaos.” Set in Austin’s advertising community during the holiday season, the tale proceeds from that fine opening as Jolie Wyatt finds herself back at the advertising firm where she used to work with a murdered Desi Baker, young, beautiful copy writer extraordinaire, and must face again the ad man with whom she had an adulterous affair and whose heart still aches for that sly, glamorous Jolie. Concerned about Austin’s population explosion? Consider sending this book to friends to fill them in on Austin rather than exhorting them to move here…
In early November Random House published The Djinn in the Nightale’s Eye ($20 hard), A.S. Byatt‘s collection of five fairy stories, two of which have appeared in Byatt’s previous works Angels & Insects and Possession. For those on your list who believe or want to believe, this is the book. These are elegant, measured tales, modern in that the protagonists are aware that they occupy space in a fairy tale and that their decisions influence the tale’s outcome, though Byatt doesn’t neglect the “once upon a time” motif so crucial to successful fairy stories. I couldn’t recommend Djinn more highly.
Book news for “Postscripts” must be received at least one week prior to issue date. Mail to: The Austin Chronicle, PO Box 49066, Austin, TX, 78765; fax 458-6910; or e-mail clay@ausch
This article appears in December 12 • 1997 and December 12 • 1997 (Cover).