Friends,
While I was sitting for at a virtual table for three days at the Twin Cities Book Festival, waiting for someone to wander by on the "interwebs," I had plenty of time to think about my Book Festival specials which I will extend through November Third’s election for one and through the end of the year for the other.
The first is that my new limited-edition poetry chapbook, Vote Coyote! is available. Twenty-four pages of political humor from the electoral campaign of that old whiskered rascal, Coyote. From his motivation to run through campaign financing and his inevitable “Me too” problem, this one works about as well as any ACME product and is cheaper that the usual price Coyote pays for a whiz-bang something - just $20 for an author signed and postage paid copy with a significant portion of the price going to the Minnesota “Get out the Vote” campaign.
Here’s a sample: Coyote’s Election Morning
Need it be said
Someone's future, their happiness --
Depends on the right party
Winning. Then the correct policies
Will hold sway, the promises we want fulfilled
Can come to fruition --
If we vote today.
But more than that, someone's
Life hangs by the thread
Of circumstance. The time of
Undecided is over,
The time of consequences is here.
This vote, your vote or mine,
Tips the scale.
In the name of the Founders,
The Abolitionists, the Suffragettes,
Freedom Summer, all who died
To make this vote holy
Let us each do what we must
Or abdicate the blood and toil
That bought this right.
If you’re interested in a copy of this one, email me at niemistory@gmail.com or text me at 651-271-6349 and I’ll give the particulars for paying by cash or check (mail) or by the magic of Square.
It will probably (still) be available after Nov 3rd but the donation to “Get Out the Vote” will be null.
The other deal I am offering is the pairing of The New Book of Plots which has been around for a while with the hot off the August presses, Point of View and the Emotional Arc of Stories as a companion set. Between the two of them, they pretty much distill what was the core of my teaching about the craft of Storytelling at Metro State University for 25 years and with my co-author, Nancy Donoval for 17 of them.
They should be seen as companions – Plot on the narrative how we get from start to finish and Point of View on who is telling the story. In Plot, I repeatedly use “Jack and the Beanstalk” as an example to illustrate how each of the 10 plot forms it offers, change the story. In Point of View, the examples are drawn from “Little Red Riding Hood” and in a similar fashion illustrate how each character’s telling of the tale from their own perspective shifts how we understand it.
I would point out that in each book there are time tested and proven exercises so those who “want to play along at home” can develop their own material whether it is revising traditional material or crafting their personal stories.
The pairing of them makes sense and so the option through me (again email or text) is either of them for $15 or the pair for $25. This one will not end with the election but will continue indefinitely. I’ll also make a second offer, that for any high school, college of arts organization writing class and for storytelling guilds, if you buy 10 copies of either or the both of them, I am willing to do a free 30 - 45 minute Zoom call to do a Q&A or talk about the concepts. Anyone wanting to take me up on this should also email, text or call me and we can work out the details.
Until then, good luck with your making the old live and the new walk with confident steps.