It’s very kind of you to invite me on to your blog. From London your list of names seems very “Daisy and Tom” and a long way away. I was a student here with Bill Clinton and Robert Reich, so there is something of home about what you wrote.

In the UK we have a really serious problem with our public library service and I need moral and any other kind of support from anyone who knows the value of a good library. Please get your friends to visit http://www.goodlibraryguide.com/blog/

Love from London, Tim

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Tim was the first bookseller in the UK to open an all-night bookstore, complete with cafe and sofas. In England he was managing director first of Sherratt & Hughes and then of Waterstone’s bookshops and of the English book chain WHSmith in Europe. Since 1999 Tim has pursued library improvement at the local and countrywide level by urging improved book ranges, longer hours, and more welcoming buildings. He is the author of “Who’s in Charge? Responsibility for the Public Library Service,” a report which is used now in many countries to assess public-library services. Tim is also a writer, published by Bloomsbury.

By the way, those aren’t your short stories over at http://www.skintwriter.com are they? In the contest? They sound like your fiction.

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing ™: I’ll go over to skintwriter and take a look! Maybe I’ll take credit for them!

Be Gone Already!

All you once pale and pasty,

who, at once, come to fouleth ocean and bay

with the oils of sunblock.

Be Gone! All you who drive slow

in the large cars without blinkers,

your heads spinning and craning

about at these once placid landscapes,

pointing at our vistas and wildlife,

our fauna and quaint dew-kissed cottages.

Sure, thy children are loud and clamoring,

especially in restaurants, willing us

your many headaches and your indigestions.

Lo! Now, the days of August are hot and rainless.

Even so thy mowers lie silent, tho’ the hush

too soon falls defeated before thy leaf blowers.

Oh Now, Be Gone! Lazy summer days,

when our people know not repose, but

only the many names of toiling and

of suffering and of the constant

giving of directions to the lost.

Be Gone!, Taking thy motorcycles which destroy

like avenging armies in back roads wars,

making our windows and our ribcages rattle.

And Be Gone! You upon your velocipedes,

in silly outfits, bright and hard on the eyes,

which bear thy anatomies with horrid definition.

Lo!, Thy flats are too few and thy manners as well,

thou clottest our passages like a constipation, unrelieved.

Oh Be Gone! from the ATMs and

the recycling center chutes and bins and

so especially the IGA where thou cuttest our lines,

and insisteth on running over and over for

just one more thing for thy lunch upon our beach,

or for thy morning breakfast.

Lo! We longeth wearily, for afternoons when our

aisles will be wide, our shelves in plenitude.

Oh! dare not query of us the days of Winter,

For thou can never knowest truly that

these be the days we bless so devoutly,

when thy umbrellas hath folded and

thy dinghy’s and such disturb not the waters.

Be Gone! Thy shrill and silly pastel outfits,

thy friends and thy relatives too numerous.

Thou takest calls too often and photos too many,

especially upon our ferries which groan and list

with the great weight and ballast of you.

Be Gone! U-Turns and abrupt maneuvers,

we are weary of the waits and parallel parkings,

and the chalk lines which marketh our tires.

Yea, the cool winds lie patient over The Great Lakes,

our airs to be soon cleared of the summer stifle,

Lo, Though our kitchens are soon stilled,

our bars will ever beckon and assuage us truly.

Yea, there are glasses to be hoisted in thy absence,

and lifted and lifted whence Spring emerges once more.

For now we will sleep the slumbers so craved for,

thy cities and thy vast suburbs are once more filled and

the gentle balance of our worlds, restored.

2006 Daniel Thomas Moran

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Just in time for Labor Day and the great exodus of summer people. Bye, bye.

I came across your blog and was left cliff hanging. You said, “I was looking through the list of authors and saw the poet Daniel Thomas Moran, but….” I could not locate the rest of it and I have been quietly terrified ever since. Where did the rest of it go and do I want to read it? You know how poets can be.

By the way, you look much taller in person.

Cheers—Dan

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Dan is the Suffolk County Poet Laureate. He is the author of five collections of poetry, including From HiLo to Willow Road, In Praise of August, and Sheltered by Islands. (Thanks for coming by, Dan!)

It’s all those admonitions to trust the learned publishing business people to recognize the genius in your writing–or not–just write from your heart and talent will, sooner or later, out. Just remember, no typos and keep those queries going out–one at a time, of course, waiting the requisite year or so for a rejection before mailing the next–and forGodsake don’t forget your bluidy SASE.

How does all that jibe with martini chatter in muggy summer library backyards? “Hey, wanna read my script, Alex, uh, Alec? it’s kinda like DaVinci meets Snakes on a Plane!” I guess you gotta find what works for you.

PS: I noticed a lot of those extra-long non-fiction book titles in your report on “Novel Night,” Lynne. Do they know what a “novel” is, out there in that place with the funny white wooden easy chairs?

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Hum… James Brady’s The Marines of Autumn is a novel. Jay Mcinerney’s The Good Life is a novel. Yikes! Dave, you are right! Where are the novels? “An invented prose narrative that is usually long and complex and deals especially with human experience through a usually connected sequence of events.” I’m looking at the list of authors and I see the poet Daniel Thomas Moran, but… Maybe The East Hampton Library has to change the event to “Book Night.”

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): I should have taken the train. It’s about a 3 hr trip with a “change in Jamaica.” (Not THAT Jamaica!) From NYC I kept up an easy 70 mph on RT 495 East to RT 27 East, flogging my near-, but not quite, classic ’89 Jeep Cherokee all the way. Once I hit “the wall”—Southampton—it took me about 10 hours to inch my way between Southampton and East Hampton–normally a 30 minute drive, but NOT in the summer.

Seriously, I am jealous—because I DID meet Phyillis McGorry, the wife of Bill McGorry (publisher of Publisher’s Weekly) at Book Expo this year. She loved my beach themed, table dancing booth. As I signed a book for her, and gave her a “Will Dance For Margaritas” tank top, she told me that I would have to come throw a beach party at their home the Hamptons. Alas, the summer is nearly over and the invitation must have been lost in the mail. Instead I will be signing books at the Kroger in Anderson Ohio next Saturday. You go girl!

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): From DC’s hilarious Web site: DC Stanfa’s abilities in salesmanship led to speaking before both social and professional events where her topics include “From Bold To Sold: Getting What You Want By Being A Shameless Opportunist.” Her engagements—built around humor and the importance of self-esteem—draw from her own experiences at surviving high school, the Catholic church, datelessness, and the “Jerry Springer Show.” She is the author of the memoir The Art of Table Dancing: Escapades of an Irreverent Woman. Fabulous write-ups in Citizen-Times and The Enquirer. YOU go girl!

I don’t doubt your sincerity or your spirit of charity in attending this event. It’s a little after midnight here in North Hollywood, California (you’ll see why I mention my location in a moment).

I don’t want to seem ungenerous or sour, so I won’t even go into a rant (I could unleash a good one, though) on what I think of celebrity fund raisers and many charities, so I’ll leave it alone. Best not to make enemies.

My opportunities to meet (I loathe the term networking) anyone in publishing is nil, first because of my location, which is rather far from the hub of publishing and its participants, and second, because I am disabled.

However, without the benefit of networking I have had little difficulty in getting reputable agents and even several editors (such as Victoria Wilson at Knopf) to read my last book proposal. Alas, they failed to share my enthusiasm for it, something I’m afraid no amount of networking would change.

Quite frankly, the idea of attending some charity fundraising event in the hope of exchanging a few words with someone in the bookbiz who won’t remember, know or care who I am the next day is one of my conceptions of Hell.

Note from the Wicked Witch of Publishing (TM): Well, it does help to be positively disposed toward these events in order to have a good time! I’d say you use your very smart and articulate Web site to advantage. We’re networking right now, are we not?