NEW PODCAST -- LES AND JACK ON WRITING--UNCENSORED

Hi folks,

 

I’ve teamed up with fellow writer Jack Holland and we’ve created a podcast on writing I hope you’ll tune into and give a listen. It’s called “Les and Jack on Writing.” (Catchy title, eh?)

 

Here’s the setup: Jack is a student in my online writing class, “Les Edgerton’s Bootcamp for Writers.” For the past 29 years, Jack has worked as a screenwriter and playwright in L.A. Last year he decided to write his first novel and joined my class. While possessing a vast knowledge in the film business, he found out quickly that writing fiction is a much different enterprise. He moved to Ft. Wayne for two reasons. His lovely wife Kim is from here originally and contacted some health problems that necessitated leaving California and he had two options—his home in NYC and Kim’s home in Ft. Wayne. The deciding factor, he told me was that he’d been reading my craft book HOOKED for several years and discovered this was where I lived so they decided to become Hoosiers so he could study directly with me and Kim could be close to her own family. Very flattering! This week will be his third session with the class and he’s come a long, long way!

 

We decided to come up with a different format for the podcast. What we’re doing is chatting as friend to friend and as student to mentor and work each week on his novel. Already, Jack has made several dramatic breakthroughs and his novel improves by leaps and bounds each week. We’re both very excited about the direction it’s taking. And, we both immediately saw the value our conversations could have for other writers, both those relatively newcomers to writing fiction as well as seasoned professionals. Also, because of Jack’s background in the movie and theatre business, each week I learn a lot about how that business works and others will find his insights both entertaining and valuable.

 

In short, we feel we’re creating a product that will prove valuable to both tyros and seasoned vets. We’ve already picked up some listeners and subscribers whose names many of you will recognize.

 

From time to time, we plan to have folks from both the current class as well as former members joining in our conversations. As more than three dozen past attendees have published their novels written in class—in several cases, multiple novels—you’ll be treated to some downright talented folks.

 

It is with great expectations we welcome you to tune in and also contribute in the comments each week. It will sometimes get raucous—our class is called a “bootcamp” for a reason. We simply tell it like it is and strive to always be honest and at times that hurts people’s feelings. Sorry… but not sorry. If a teacher isn’t honest in evaluating a writer’s work, it’s the cruelest thing he can do. We tell folks what’s wrong but we also tell them why and how to fix it. There’s a lot of pure-d bullshit floating around out there… We aim to keep the smell down…

Hope we see you!

 

Places to hear Jack’s and my podcast.

 

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/338-les-and-jack-on-writing-un-114254064/

 

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/843db388-51cd-4a2a-b1d0-de9efa0b094a/les-and-jack-on-writing---uncensored

 

https://lesandjack.podbean.com/

 

We’ve got about half a dozen shows out there and aim to post at least one new one per week.

Blue skies,

Les and Jack

My son, Mikie Bud Edgerton passed away.

 

Hi folks,

 

I’ve spent the last several days trying to write this and kept failing. I’m just too overcome with grief to say this, but I have to. Our precious son, Michael Bud Edgerton passed away unexpectedly Thursday morning with a massive heart attack. I’m a writer and I just don’t have the words at this time for more than this announcement. His beloved wife Victoria is struggling with the final arrangements and hopefully soon we can announce when and where the services will be for those who wish to attend. Both Mike’s mother and I are simply overcome with grief as is the love of Mike’s life, Vick. His beautiful son Lewis Bud is thankfully too young to know what’s going on and it breaks our hearts to know he’ll never have his dad to watch him grow up. Sorry, but I can’t write any more at this time.

 

Les Edgerton

I'm giving a presentation via Zoom and you're invited.

 Hi folks,

They're opening this up to the public. Just send an email to the address  (dvwritersguild@gmail.com) and they'll send you the link. Hope to see some friends there!

Great email

 Hi folks,

I recently received a great email from a writer who's presently auditing my online novel-writing class and will join us as an active classmate in a few weeks when our next session begins. Here's what Ken had to say after watching us work for the past couple of months:

Hi Les,

Thank you for the way you handle critiques in your bootcamp. I love that you’re blunt and direct, and don’t feel the need to give participants a handjob for work that misses the mark. I won’t change my tune when it’s my butt in the hot seat. Yep, honest criticism is painful at the time, but it’s a heckuva lot better than thinking you’ve written a literary masterpiece, then learning the brutal truth when nobody will publish it. Maybe I successfully publish, maybe I don’t. I’m convinced I’m in the right place to maximize my chances. And that’s worth the price of admission.

Thank you, Les!

Best,

Ken Speegle

We'll be starting a new 10-week session in three weeks and it looks like we may have a couple of openings. If interested, shoot me an email at butchedgerton@comcast.net for more info.

Blue skies,

Les

Some former students who successfully wrote and had their novels published from our class.

Teaching from home's da bomb!

Blue skies,

Les

Pistol Pete - the Life and Times of Pete Maravich HD

SECOND ITALIAN REVIEW OF THE DEATH THE SILVER KING (Retitled from THE DEATH OF TARPONS)

 Hi Folks,

Just received the second Italian review of  THE DEATH OF THE SILVER KING

REVIEWS

Les Edgerton / An American history of violence and fishing

Les Edgerson, The Death of the Silver King , tr. Marco Piva, Elliott , pp. 224, 17.50 euros printed

The bildungsroman is a genre widely used in literature, starting from the

 end of the eighteenth century

 Term originally coined in Germany, Bildungsroman , the first text

 defined as such is Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre  , published in

 1797. Over time the genre has evolved, adapting to the various social

 and technological transformations of the short century and the first

 twenty years of the new millennium by changing the settings and 

psychologies of the characters. There are many masterpieces of this

 literary genre, the first two that come to mind are Salinger's Young 

Holden and Someday this pain will be useful to you, by Cameron, and 

this novel too, while not reaching such high peaks, is an excellent example of it.

ROBERT STURMPULP - books daily

PULP - books daily

REVIEWS

Les Edgerton / An American history of violence and fishing

Les Edgerson, The Death of the Silver King , tr. Marco Piva, Elliott , pp. 224, 17.50 euros printed

ROBERT STURM

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Corey John returns to the town where he grew up thirty years after leaving it, in 1955. His family (only his sister is still alive) emigrates to Texas from Indiana where his maternal grandparents live. The father, Robert, begins working for the grandmother, Lucille, who runs a restaurant bar and various other businesses. He almost immediately regrets having moved - Lucille's promise to make him a partner is rejected -, the dream of becoming an airline pilot turns into an obsession and suddenly becomes violent with Corey, giving improbable excuses to punish him violently. Her mother is incapable of reacting and she seeks solace in religion by reading the Bible and attending a community of fanatical believers: she distances herself from her husband and withdraws more and more into herself. The teenager has a friend, Destin, with whom he shares the experience of domestic violence and spends much of his time dreaming of fishing trips with his father, an occasion that for one reason or another almost never materialises. The boy's lifeline is his grandfather, Toast, who introduced him to reading. “It was he who gave me my first book by Mark Twain, and with it also novels by Dos Passos, by Steinbeck, even by Kafka and Camus. […] I was probably the only fourteen-year-old in town who read Céline, and only because I was lucky enough to have a grandfather who was passionate about literature”. “It was he who gave me my first book by Mark Twain, and with it also novels by Dos Passos, by Steinbeck, even by Kafka and Camus. […] I was probably the only fourteen-year-old in town who read Céline, and only because I was lucky enough to have a grandfather who was passionate about literature”. “It was he who gave me my first book by Mark Twain, and with it also novels by Dos Passos, by Steinbeck, even by Kafka and Camus. […] I was probably the only fourteen-year-old in town who read Céline, and only because I was lucky enough to have a grandfather who was passionate about literature”.

But Corey's real goal is to be well liked and loved by his father, who always accuses him of only knowing how to read, a passion that will prevent him from finding a real job and extricating himself in life and for this reason he decides to secretly build a boat to give him. on your birthday: study all the techniques, raise money by collecting glass bottles throughout the city and mowing the gardens of the houses. But things in life don't always go as they should or as we hope, and the mother's fall into severe depression, her grandfather's illness, yet another misunderstanding with her father and a murder, bring down the castles in the air she was chasing. . The Death of the Silver King –proof of debut of Les Edgerton -, originally published in America in 1996, is a novel narrated with a smooth and dry style (apart from perhaps a couple of passages), capable of entering in a precise and profound way into the psychology of all the characters . Period, the one in which the story unfolds, in which domestic violence was considered an evil to bear, in which society still lived in the most sinister racism, in which the balance of power (as still today, to tell the truth) was dictated by the oppression of the weakest: unresolved problems but which, after long and terrible struggles, perhaps we have begun to partially mitigate. Corey makes peace with himself by returning to the places of his adolescence and untying the knot of his last fishing trip with his grandfather in the beautiful and teeming Gulf of Texas: episode that he had hidden in his mind for thirty years but which resurfaces forcefully. And his life, in spite of everything, seems a little more acceptable.

Les EdgertonAmerican fiction

Italian Review of THE DEATH OF TARPONS (retitled THE DEATH OF THE SILVER KING)

Hi Folks,

Great first review!

https://contornidinoir.it/2022/12/les-edgerton-la-morte-del-re-dargento/