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"I
honestly believe that of all the 'artistic'
fields, the Tampa Bay area might be richest in
the area of writers."
"It gives local writers something to shoot for.
At least you know if you finish and publish,
someone definitely will read your book. Or at
least the first 10 to 20 pages, at which point a
decision will be made whether to continue."
Let's hear it for the
Tampa Tribune:
A metropolitan newspaper that's friendly to local
self-published authors...
The Tampa Writers Alliance applauds (and
loudly!!) Tampa Tribune book editor Kevin Walker for
his insistence that Tampa Bay has some good local
writers and that independently published books
(which most metropolitan newspaper book editors
totally disdain) can yield nourishing wheat amid
what admittedly may be a lot of chaff. On Sunday,
January 1, 2006, Walker wrote:
AUTHOR, AUTHOR
People have asked, many times over, whether I had
temporarily lost my mind when I asked local authors
to send me their books.
Yes, my mailbox has been flooded. But I anticipate a
solid percentage of these books will be worth
reading. So far, I have had amazing good luck
reading local authors, and I’m fairly hard to
please.
So, thanks to everyone who sent their books. For
those who sent manuscripts, that wasn’t what I had
in mind. I mean published books, not unpublished
works.
The first was last week, with Charlotte Douglas’
“Holidays Are Murder.
I’m actually doing this for two reasons, beyond a
chance to read some good books by local writers:
1.
It gives local writers something to
shoot for. At least you know if you finish and
publish, someone definitely will read your book. Or
at least the first 10 to 20 pages, at which point a
decision will be made whether to continue.
2.
I honestly believe that of all the
“artistic” fields, the Tampa Bay area might be
richest in the area of writers. There are not only
big published authors, including Reed Arvin and Tim
Dorsey, but also quite a few gifted beginners.
So
what am I going to do with these books? At this
point, because there are so many, I will probably
run an occasional review on the reviews page
(usually opposite this one, although today it is not
there).
If
you don't eventually see a review of the book you
sent, well, you know what that means. Obviously,
we're not going to praise a book because it's local,
but we want to take extra effort to focus on
worthwhile local books.
I
ask for patience. I have some 30 books, and they
keep coming.
-- Kevin Walker, Tampa Tribune Book Editor, January
1, 2006
