Interview with Linda Rader Overman by Tyler R. Tichelaar at AUTHORS DEN

Thirty-nine-year-old Laura is not having an easy time in her life. Her mother is suffering from dementia and her once happy marriage is on the rocks. Then, she is devastated to learn her childhood best friend, Katharine, has been found dead in a trash bin following a picnic with fellow hospitalized psychiatric patients. After attending the funeral, Laura begins to explore a collection of diaries and letters from Katharine's life. Deciding to read their correspondence to each other, Laura takes refuge in a hotel room where she will not be disturbed. "Letters Between Us" by author Linda Rader Overman will leave readers contemplative and appreciative of their own friendships. The story is realistic and moving without being sentimental. The use of letters and diaries brings the characters' voices to life so readers feel as if they are listening to real people revealing their experiences. Overman says of her novel, "Reading should help us to transcend our peripatetic lives and in the process guide us to learn something more about our world and ourselves. I trust reading ‘Letters Between Us' will do the same for the reader."

I had forgotten about this interview regarding the publication of my epistolary novel LETTERS BETWEEN US (PVP 2008) and have not seen it in years but am glad it is still available online!

 

https://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=31977&id=42835

 My colleague Professor Mary Marca, MFA (from CSUN) publishes much of her wonderful work --short stories that she publishes quite often--enough to make me jealous on her website Mary McCann Marca, Writer

along with her blog musings the link is on her website.  I am recommending this as a wonderful read!

Linda Rader Overman is still proud of that poem from 1991 that expresses much of what was and what is

I published this poem back in 1991---how little I knew that much of it would remain so relevant in my life-still.  

Thank you Bombshelter Press and Jack Grapes for your classes and your wisdom so long ago.

I don’t want to go on living

Linda Rader Overman is thankful that CSUN honored her novel LETTERS BETWEEN US with a review ...

 Linda Rader Overman is thankful CSUN's newspaper THE  SUNDIAL  honored her novel LETTERS BETWEEN US with a  review even so many years after its initial publication.

CSUN Published Authors 

 “Letters Between Us”

English Professor Linda Rader Overman, the author of “Letters Between Us”, wrote a story based in the 1960s about writer Laura Wells’s search for self-identity and lost friendship while being exposed to sex and drugs. Wells attends the memorial service for her best friend, Katharine Taylor, from childhood who was discovered in a garbage dump near Santa Barbara. When Wells obtains Katharine’s diaries, it starts a 26-year-old journey back to reveal unimaginable secrets leading to doubts of her knowing Katharine.

 

 

Check out--O MAN OF CLAY by Eliza Mood -- A debut climate change novel set in near future Hartlepool, UK

“O Man of Clay’ by Eliza Mood  is published by Stairwell Books. It's founder, Rose Drew, is from Connecticut

O Man of Clay is a CLI-Fi novel
 (Climate Fiction or Cli-Fi, is a growing branch of science-fiction literature that deals with the effects of climate change on human society.)

In a fable about climate change set in Hartlepool, most of the world’s major cities have been inundated by rising seas, with a tsunami wiping out the houses, shops and school along Hartlepool shoreline. Seventeen-year-old Zoe, knocked unconscious during the sudden flood, cannot recall her actual name and can only summon flashes of her immediate past. She meets Alma, another young female with a mysterious link to global entrepreneur and opportunist Volk Volkov, himself a refugee: from his past and from a Soviet prison colony. The story, set over only a handful of days, flashes between Volk and Alma’s past and the near-future present. A clever, lighting-fast read about past actions coming back to haunt, and humanity’s imperative to listen to those closest to the earth and the ancestors. (Words by Rose Drew of Stairwell Books)

Info:

 A debut climate change novel set in near future Hartlepool, UK. Available from Stairwell Books. An accessible and quirky literary/speculative read on the issue impacting all of us.

Dr. Eliza Mood was my PhD supervisor at University of Cumbria-Lancaster and a wonderful writer in her own right. Congratulations Eliza. Well done!!
Read her interview on Mundos Em Chamas, Worlds on Fire CLI_Fi blog 

Linda Rader Oveman is so proud of James Overman who started at NBC as a page 50 years ago

Memoirs of a Page
James "Jim" Overman, Page Staff 1966-1967
By Rob Zappulla

HIS OFFICE IS a time capsule of an era too soon forgotten. The walls are plastered with maps of NBC’s original wire network across the United States and vintage posters of classic NBC programs. He sits proudly at the helm of his desk, a certificate commemorating fifty years of service to NBC hangs behind him. I fidget in hisSCRUBS director’s chair and flip to an empty page in my notebook.

“Let me take you back to the beginning. How much time do you have?” he asks. Already, I know I’m going to need some more paper. And maybe a couple backup pens.

click to read the rest!!

 The Page Post

Linda Rader Overman finds Publisher & Agent Scams too often!

I can't believe how many scams are still out there for unsuspecting authors like myself who should know better.

But the predatory beat continues. 

I received a stellar review of my novel after submitting it to

Faye Swetky Agency

But then I get this email telling me how an agency client of this agent's can help edit my book even better to a guaranteed "Publishable" state & get this part:

"As for pricing, my normal rate for doctoring a full-length book such as this is $15 thousand down and $5 thousand a month for as long as it takes to complete, with a cap at six months. That means a total of between $35 thousand and no more than $45 thousand. For that I’ll guarantee the quality of my work. (I’d better!) If any additional work needs to be done on the book after its completion and prior to publication, I’ll do whatever is asked for by the publisher at no additional charge.

 

I’ll also make your life a little easier by enabling you to go after that multiple-publisher offer and a bidding war by providing my own closest editorial contacts with monthly progress reports as the book doctoring unfolds, whetting their appetites for a look at (and a chance to grab) the finished project the moment the doctoring is complete.

 

Finally, I’ll put the author’s mind at rest with a money-back guarantee: either this book sells to a major conventional advance-paying publisher, or I’ll refund the vast majority of my fees. That’s how strongly I feel about this property’s future.

 

But I’m flexible on payment. I want to do whatever works for the author without stressing her out financially and without running the risk of this book failing to see its major publishing debut. So if it takes a creative payment plan—or even a percentage of the profits from the book once it’s published in lieu of some up-front fees—I’ll work with her.  I feel a strong affinity toward this book and the author, and that always works out for the best in the end."

The interesting thing about this scam of a letter is that this agency client is basically the husband of the agent (something she did not bother to disclose)

So as other blogs/forums have suggested STAY AWAY! 

Really sad.....beware beware!!!!

Absolute Write Forums Author Beware

Another Author Warns

Then some weeks later I received  an email from this publisher regarding publishing my PhD thesis --apparently another scam.  See below as to Lambert Publishing Spamming recent graduates to publish their academic works from which they claim to pay you a whole 12% of the royalties....REALLY, wow, I could get more self publishing it. 
 

Lambert Publishing Scam
A Publishing Scam to Avoid
Lambert Publishing continues to spam 

And the scam/spam beat goes on......jeesh!!!

Hint Fiction - Take 2 - Art Alone Endures

Art Alone Endures

The Art League had a competition for artists to depict the future. By accident Bogden included a blank canvas among his submissions.  It won.

--william j. brazill

Hint Fiction - Take 1-The Return

They buried him deep.
Again.
--joe r. landsdale

Linda Rader Overman is grateful to be a member of Algonquin West

Grateful to be a member of Algonquin West
Thank you to my writing workshop members and our fearless leader the brilliant
Eve Caram, who guides our pens with insight, poeticism, and patience, patience, patience.
Couldn't do it without you all.
Thank you to our illustrious member Cecilia Manguerra Brainard for publicizing our uniqueness on her blog, Travels (and more) WITH Cecilia Brainard!

TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Back to Novel Writing with Eve La Salle Caram and her group!

Everyone needs a community, especially writers slaving away in isolation trying to get blood to flow out of cement. So I am honored to have my community of writers for support!

TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Back to Novel Writing with Eve La Salle Caram and her group!

Thank you to Ron and Susan Scolastico for adding my book as a link on their wondrous site The Inspired Works of Dr. Ron Scolastico

Spiritual Counselor , Transpersonal Psychologist, author of a flurry of insightful books! I am deeply honored. 

They honor my novel Letters Between Us and I thank you!

Nahid Rachlin giving a workshop in Assissi, Italy

She is a great friend, wonderful teacher, and wonderful writer!!

Linda Rader Overman's Letters Between Us on Nook

Letters Between Us is available on Nook!!

Linda Rader Overman and Pictures on the Wall of My Life needs to be more obvious

So I am marketing my latest novel, Pictures on the Wall of My Life, and my query letter gets the usual thanks, but no thanks on the first round.  Then there are those agents/publishers who are interested in taking a look at more, 5 pages, a chapter, 25 pages, 50 pages, the entire manuscript.  And I dutifully send out one at a time and wait for a response so as not to have multiple submissions.  But then, I think, well at least they are willing to check it out.  And I have gotten over that first hurdle with an agent here or there.  But then I get this kind of rejection:

"I think you’re a talented and original writer.  That makes it all the harder to say that I’m not confident that I can find a publisher for you in the current difficult market for literary fiction.  Editors seem exceedingly cautious right now about acquiring anything but the most obvious fiction."

Hmmmpffff...so perhaps I should follow Quentin Rowan's plagiarizing approach, when he wrote what Little Brown promoted as the new classic spy novel, just steal from about 13 other classic spy novels as Jeremy Duns discovered and revealed in his blog, The Debrief. 

This was not the first time Little Brown boasted of an amazing new brilliant work...anyone remember Harvard undergraduate Kaavya Viswanathan ’08, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” that contained several passages strikingly similar to two books by Megan F. McCafferty—the 2001 novel “Sloppy Firsts” and the 2003 novel “Second Helpings.” ?????

I suppose I should be "that original" rather than write from a place of my own original thought as my fictional memoir Pictures on the Wall of My Life is.  Maybe I should have just "borrowed" everything like Quentin Rowan (aka QR Markham) has. 

It seems that since my talented and original idea is just not that obvious I need to appropriate work from others...to even get noticed.  There should be a special place in hell for writers who plagiarize.

Why does this make me so damn mad? 

Linda Rader Overman thanks Kindle purchasers of Letters Between Us

Many thanks to those Kindle purchasers of Letters Between Us for pushing my novel's standing in Kindle to Amazon Bestsellers Rank Kindle Edition #61,389 out of 750,000. I am humbled and grateful!

Letters Between Us by Linda Rader Overman on Kindle

Finally the wait is over and my novel is on
KINDLE

Linda Rader Overman at author gathering at Lyon Books & Shasta College

 
Heather Lyon owner of Lyon Books in Chico, CA. and Linda Rader Overman holding Letters Between Us celebrating an author event night on Nov. 19, 2009!
 
A wonderful gathering of readers, authors, and those who honor the spoken word at Lyon Books. Many thanks to Heather Lyon and her wonderful staff who supported us and provided great snacks.

Thanks Jay & Jody!!
 
Prof. Kiara Koenig's Shasta College classroom with creative writing and literature students arriving for an author talk by Linda Rader Overman, author of the novel Letters Between Us, and Zu Vincent, author of A Lucky Place.

Linda Rader Overman appearing @ CSUN

Tuesday 12/1/09 1130AM
Prof. Eve Caram's Contemporary Literature
English 300
CSUN
Education Bldg 1127
18111 Nordhoff Street,
Northridge, CA 91330


Tuesday 12/1/09 2PM
Prof. Tina Love's Writing About Literature
English 355
CSUN
Sierra Hall 207
18111 Nordhoff Street,
Northridge, CA 91330

Linda Rader Overman appearing Lyon Books & Shasta College

I will be signing copies of Letters Between Us at
11/19, Thursday from 6-8 P
Lyon Books
121 W. 5th Street
Chico, CA 95928
(530) 891-33381


Classroom Visit
Pro. Kiara Koenig's English 31: Intro Creative Writing
11/20, Friday from 12-3 P, Room 811
Shasta College
11555 Old Oregon Trail
Redding, CA 96003
(530) 242-7500