A Coach's Book (re)View
Tuesday, July 25, 7-8 pm
Rasmussen North
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff @ Work, by Richard Carlson. Are coworkers, customers and cubicle life driving you crazy? The wisdom in this book is straightforward yet unique. Join us as we explore how to not sweat on the job! THEN...bring the title of a book that made an impact on you. Share why and what you learned. A resource exchange we all can profit from!

First-Time Authors -- Is it REALLY Happily Every After?
Wednesday, August 16 - 7:30-9pm
Adult Classroom
New authors are thrilled when they get “the call,” but the work is just beginning. A panel of local, newly published authors will discuss what it's like to sell and market their first book. This same program, with another panel of authors, was offered in July.

Novelist Bootcamp (re-scheduled and expanded from an earlier date)
Part 1 – Tuesday, September 19, 7:30-9pm
Part 2 – Thursday, September 21, 7:30-9pm
Adult Classroom
Author T.A. Stone provides a two-day workshop on of the 101 hard-core ways to take your fiction from boring to bestseller. Kick your writing into high gear. It is recommended patrons sign up individually for both parts, but they may sign up for only one. Registration is required; enrollment limited to 40 people on each night.

A Coach's Book (re)View
Tuesday, September 26, 7-8 pm
Rasmussen South
Navigating the Journey of Aging Parents: What Care Receivers Want by Cheryl Kuba. Of all of life’s transitions, the move from adult child to caregiver to our parents is one of the toughest—both for the caregiver and the person for whom they are caring. This insightful book comes at the situation from the viewpoint of those under care. What are their concerns? What can we do to respect their dignity while addressing their needs? Career Strategies Coach Jerilyn Willin partners with author Cheryl Kuba in this “book review and seminar” program.

Lee Child was born in 1954 in Coventry, England, but spent his formative years in nearby Birmingham. By coincidence he won a scholarship to the same high school attended by J. R. R. Tolkein. Child went to law school in Sheffield, England, and after part-time work in the theater he joined Granada Television for what turned out to be an 18-year career as a presentation director during British TV's "golden age." During his tenure, the company produced Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Prime Suspect and Cracker. But, as a result of corporate restructuring in 1995, Child was fired at the age of 40. Always a voracious reader, he decided to see an opportunity where others might have seen a crisis and bought six dollars' worth of paper and pencils and sat down to write a book, maintaining a pragmatic approach. According to Child, "I was broke and out of work, so it was definitely about making a living. It wasn't a hobby of mine, or a compulsion."

The result of that decision was Killing Floor (1997), the first book in the Jack Reacher series. The book became an immediate success and launched a series which has grown both in sales and in impact with each new installment. The tenth book in the series, The Hard Way, was released this past May.

Protagonist Jack Reacher is often described as the "new American hero for our time" - he's tough, taciturn, yet vulnerable. Reacher is ex-military, a "loner knight errant" who travels the United States on his own terms. After years of traveling the world on numerous military assignments, Reacher relishes the opportunity to stay in one place for as long (or as little) a time as he chooses. Wherever he goes, however, he finds himself embroiled in adventure. Child describes him by saying, “He's not a mercenary. He doesn't want to get involved. He tries to stay out of trouble. But trouble finds him. He can't resist helping out. He's like the guy in the westerns ... the guy who rides into town, he disappears into the sunset. He's like Robin Hood. He will stand up for the little guy.”

As with any author who writes a popular series, readers often want to know whether it is necessary to read the books in order. According to Child, that's not necessary with his books. He wrote the Reacher novels so you could start the series with any one of them. "Really. No fooling," as it states on his web site. But, for the die-hards who want to read the books in order, here is a listing of his works in order of publication:
Killing Floor (1997)
Die Trying (1998)
Tripwire (1999)
Running Blind (2000); release in the UK as The Visitor
Echo Burning (2001)
Without Fail (2002)
Persuader (2003)
The Enemy (2004), a prequel that takes place before the events in Killing Floor
One Shot (2005)
The Hard Way (2006)

Child spends his spare time reading, listening to music, and watching the Yankees, Aston Villa, or Marseilles soccer. He is married with a grown-up daughter. He is tall and slim, despite an appalling diet and a refusal to exercise. Child is one of the founding members and on the Board of Directors of International Thriller Writers, Inc. (ITW). ITW was founded in 2004 to celebrate the thriller, to enhance the prestige and raise the profile of thrillers, and to create opportunities for collegiality within the thriller community. Their first annual conference, ThrillerFest, is being held the last weekend in June in Phoenix, Arizona.

Child has three homes -- a Manhattan apartment, a country home in the south of France, and whatever airplane cabin he happens to be in while traveling between the two. In the U. S., he drives a supercharged Jaguar, which was built in Jaguar's Browns Lane plant, thirty yards from the hospital in which he was born. Visit the author's website at: www.leechild.com

So many of our readers are, themselves, also fledgling writers. Just as the Readers' Advisory Department offers programs geared to writers so, too, we have decided to add this new special section of our electronic newsletter designed to keep writers informed of tools available at our library, web sites of interest to writers or other topics of interest.

Have a Core Reference Collection Handy

Naturally, the library is most helpful tool any writer can have, but many writers work early in the morning or late at night when the library isn't open. Each writers has their own preferences and comfort levels, so we won't mention specific titles, but here are some suggestions for core reference materials available within arm's reach (your reference materials can also either a print version or online):

1. A good, comprehensive dictionary -- something bigger than a condensed dictionary but not as large as the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary.
2. A thesaurus
3. A general encyclopedia or an almanac - good for looking up quick information
4. An atlas -- nothing worse than telling your reader Montana is south of Utah!

Some writers will have more specific volumes at the ready, especially if they're writing about a specific time period, e.g., books on costuming of a particular period, historical atlases, etc.

GRAMMAR TIP: The dangling participle

A present participle is a verb ending in -ing and is called "dangling" when the subject of the -ing verb and the subject of the sentence do not agree. An example of this would be: "Rushing to finish the paper, Bob's printer broke." The subject of the sentence is Bob's printer, but the printer isn't doing the rushing. A better way to write this sentence would be: "While Bob was rushing to finish the paper, his printer broke.

One way to tell if your participle is dangling is to put the phrase with the participle right after the subject of the sentence: "Bob's printer, rushing to finish the paper, broke." Doesn't sound right, does it?

But, remember, not all words ending in -ing are participles. In the sentence "Answering the questions in chapter four is your next assignment," the word answering functions as a noun, not as a verb. For those of you who like trivia, these nouns ending in -ing are called gerunds.

BEST ADVICE I'VE EVER GOTTEN ABOUT WRITING: BICHOK!

Having the ideas in your head doesn't make you a writer. And thinking about your book doesn't get the book written. BICHOK stands for "Butt in chair, hands on keyboard!"

Happy writing!