Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots. A book for both the recreational and the occasional plotter!

 A few months ago, Tin House, to great success, released their reprinting of The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto by Bernard DeVoto, originally published in the 1950’s. The book became a cult classic among cocktail enthusiasts, but became increasingly rare to find over the decades. In 2010, Tin House brought new life into a book that would have been lost to obscurity and time. It seems the publishing company has found another gem from the past: Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, by the prolific pulp writer William Wallace Cook.  Cook himself banged out countless stories to the tune of 66,000 words a week back in the height of pulp writing. The man clearly had a knack for creating plots and in 1928 he published his methods in a book called Plotto. While Cook passed  away in 1933 in the town in Marshall, Michigan, I am sure he would have been happy knowing that his masterpiece how-to story writing book has made it through the decades.

Plotto is a guide designed for writing that operates on Cook’s theory that: Purpose, opposed by obstacle, yields conflict. The book is set up into sections: The Master plot, The Conflict Situations, and Character Combinations. The book is a little too complex in its set up to fully explain here,  but choosing options from each of the three sections will help the writer to create a full-fledged story—almost like a choose-your-own-adventure book that instead makes you write what happens when you flip to page 46 instead of 12.

Tin House is due to release Plotto in November of this year with an introduction by the writer Paul Collins. This book arrives just in time for all of you out there participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This book would surely be an asset to marathon novelists everywhere. To those of you not writing until your brains melt out of your ears this November— this book is still a unique book to have in your collection. If you suffer from writer’s block, I can assure that this book will offer a cure. 

Equity Insurance: The Way out of the Housing Crisis?

For the last few years, people have been searching for ways to fix the U.S.’s major economic problems. In a recent article in the Wilmington News Journal, Delaware’s former chief deputy attorney general Charles Brandt proposes a new plan to reinvigorate the struggling housing market.

The housing crisis began when large numbers of buyers defaulted on their loans, which led to banks foreclosing and the market filling with cheap houses. The prices kept falling, so no one wanted to risk buying a house if the price might immediately drop again.  Lack of consumer confidence became a major issue. Brandt’s idea for a solution is the creation of Government Equity Insurance to encourage qualified buyers to purchase new homes. This program would need to be run by the government, either implemented by Congress or any state legislature, since these days private equity insurance doesn’t inspire as much consumer confidence after recent failures like AIG. Brandt likens GEI to the FDIC, which allows bank depositors to feel confident that their money is safe.

Under this plan, houses would still be appraised for fair market value at the time of purchase, and the buyer would pay that amount and own the house for five years. Then for the next twenty years, the buyer would receive a tax credit or refund to cover the difference in price if he sells the house for a lower fair market value than what he originally paid for it, minus the estimated cost of any necessary repairs. The program would be a temporary measure, probably lasting for no more than two years, though it could easily be extended or even repealed after a year if for some reason it doesn’t work out.

As Brandt sees it, GEI is a win-win program. Eventually, home prices will go up as demand matches supply, employment will rise, and the states that provide GEI will benefit if homebuyers from nearby states decide to take advantage of the insurance and move there. And as Brandt says, the most important factor is that “no GEI policy will ever have to pay out one thin dime in claims, because GEI's existence will put wind in the sails of the housing market.”

Charles Brandt is the author of I Heard You Paint Houses (Steerforth Press), which is set to be made into a Martin Scorsese movie starring Robert DeNiro.

Granta’s The Sisters Brothers Makes Booker Prize Longlist

Congratulations to Patrick deWitt and Granta! DeWitt’s second novel, The Sisters Brothers, is one of thirteen books on the longlist for the Man Booker Prize. Set during the California Gold Rush, The Sisters Brothers puts a new spin on traditional Westerns while paying tribute to the classics that came before. In this darkly humorous novel, Eli and Charlie Sisters are a pair of hit-men brothers tracking down a prospector they’ve been hired to kill, until Eli starts to have some serious doubts about his murderous lifestyle.

The shortlist for this prestigious British award will be announced on September 6, when the contenders will be narrowed down to six books.

Now in English from Soho Crime: The First in a Thrilling Danish Series

Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis’s crime fiction novels about Red Cross nurse Nina Borg are already quite popular in Denmark, but this November the first in the series, The Boy in the Suitcase, will finally be published in English by Soho Crime. Scandinavian Books included The Boy in the Suitcase in an article on some of the region’s best new crime fiction, calling it “outstanding” and “a great mystery by two interesting writers.”

The book deals with the repercussions of an alarming discovery. An old friend of Nina’s reenters her life with instructions on how to find a particular suitcase and a plea for her to protect its contents, but inside the suitcase is a nearly dead three-year-old boy. Nina’s attempts to unravel the mysteries surrounding the child lead her down a dangerous path. Cara Black, bestselling author of Murder in the Marais, says the novel is "…stunning. Hooked me from the beginning. Immigrants, the Danish bourgeoisie, and the criminal underworld collide in a moving, fast-paced thriller with psychological depth." Now that an English translation is being published, a whole new international audience can enjoy this exciting story.

From Meme to Movie Theaters, Disinfo's Latest Documentary

Jimmy McMillan is best known for representing the Rent is Too Damn High party.  His outbursts (mainly bellowing reiterations of his party’s name) have featured in hundreds of videos online, reaching viral status on sites like Youtube and Funny or Die.  There remains more to Mr. McMillan’s story than a profane tagline, however, and two film makers have recently finished a documentary that peers into McMillian’s life, his history leading up to the net-famous 2010 gubernatorial debate, and how the overnight popularity has affected his life.

Director Aaron Fisher-Cohen, other film-makers on the project, and McMillan himself will be in attendance tomorrow night at the Rerun Theater in Brooklyn for the film’s sneak preview.  The movie, aptly titled Damn!, will be available August 16^th as a DVD or download from The Disinformation Company.  Between McMillian’s current escapades and his eclectic history as a stripping, soul-singing black belt Vietnam veteran, Damn! promises not to disappoint.

Coming Up From Soho: The Funny Man

John Warner’s debut novel, The Funny Man (Soho Press), is a satire of modern celebrity culture. The titular “funny man” starts out as an ordinary comic, but when he comes up with a ridiculous gimmick—performing with his entire fist inside his mouth—he suddenly finds his life transformed by newfound popularity and the hazards of fame that ensue. His descent into the pitfalls of celebrity even goes as far as him shooting an unarmed man. As a Publisher's Weekly review puts it, "America's favorite comedian is on trial for manslaughter, and "the funny man" 's lawyer, Barry, has a unique defense: not guilty by way of celebrity.... [An] equally sickening and humorous portrait of the celebrity as a delusional man."

Warner’s book is getting praise from fellow writers as well: Jessica Francis Kane, author of The Report, says "I'm not at all surprised that John Warner would invent the perfect Everyman for our age: a comic whose meteoric rise to fame is based on a stupid gimmick. Half first-person tell-all, half third-person takedown -- a brilliant structure -- The Funny Man is a whip-smart satire of celebrity culture. It is hysterical, and sad, and ultimately indicts us all. An excellent novel." The Funny Man will be available this September.

Moby Dick With an Artful Twist

If you love books— or even if you don’t, you at least have one book that you love—a book that lodged itself in your heart or brain or some other part of your insides at some point in time and refused to get out. There is always one. For Matt Kish, that book is Moby Dick. Kish read the book for the first time at a young age and quickly it became his passion.  In a recent article in the Huffington Post about Kish’s new book, Kish says, "['Moby Dick'] has been such a companion for me my whole life… I've read it a bunch of times, I saw the TV movie, various comic book adaptations -- it's been such a part of me." There must be something so surreal about seeing and appreciating all those other interpretations of the American classic and then being inducted into that long legacy that Moby Dick has inspired.

 In August 2009 Kish, armed with a Signet classic copy of the book and various art supplies, set out to illustrate Moby Dick one page at a time—posting his artwork on his blog. Kish says he prefers to be referred to as an illustrator rather than an artist, but his illustrations really are works of art. The images he creates are multilayered—stacking images on top of one another. As the base for many of the pictures he uses pages gathered from a variety of discarded books. He uses various mediums, implementing everything from ballpoint pen to marker, paint, crayon, ink, and watercolor. His unique artwork got him noticed quickly, and it did not take long for Kish to make a deal with Tin House to turn his art into a book. Kish finished his project on June 29^th, 2011. He reflects on the project on Tin House’s website, “I see now that the project was an attempt to fully understand this magnificent novel, to walk through every sun-drenched word, to lift up all the hatches and open all the barrels, to smell, taste, hear, and see every seabird, every shark, every sailor, every harpooner, and every whale,” he says. “It was a hard thing, a very painful thing, but the novel now lives inside me in a way it never could have before.”

Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page is due for release by Tin House in October 2011.

If you want to see some of Matt’s fabulous illustrations because you just can’t wait until October,  the Huffington Post has a slide show accompanying their article about Matt and his book. Tin House also has a few illustrations posted on their page. Matt also has his original blog that started all this in the first place: http://everypageofmobydick.blogspot.com/