New Works Festival Playwright Joe Camhi

One of my fellow playwrights in the College of the Canyons New Works Festival is Joe Camhi, who is also an accomplished poet and short story writer.

You can find samples of his published work online.

Check it out.

Poetry:
A Comic Tragedy
The Ballad of Joe Bell
And Anyone Can Play

Short story:
Busting Holes

Congratulations, Emily Charouhas!

One of my fellow students in the College of the Canyons New Works Festival class is 12-year-old Emily Charouhas. Her stage play, Mr. Furnettle and the Christmas Debacle, will be staged in March along with the other plays written by adults.

The submission process was blind, so Emily was accepted because of her talent and not her age. We're all very proud of her, and excited to share the class with such a gifted prodigy.

Emily is also an accomplished actress, with several television credits. I was not surprised to learn that Emily had a background in acting. Many of our greatest playwrights were also actors.

William Shakespeare, for example.

Now Emily's story has appeared in our local newspaper, The Signal:

"While most junior high school students probably prefer to spend their free time listening to music, watching their favorite movies and TV shows, and hanging out with friends, Emily Charouhas likes to sing, act and write award-winning plays - a passion that has landed the 12-year-old student at College of the Canyons for the winter session."

You can read the article here.

Congratulations, Emily!

Valentino Now Available at Lulu.com

My book is available for purchase here.

The price is $14.95.

You can read an online preview, but for some reason the typeface is difficult to read in the preview file. The font is Garamond, and I can assure you it looks gorgeous in the book.

For a more readable sample, check out Act One, Scene 1 on my website.

Google Book Search

I've approve my book, Valentino, for Google Book Search.

Here's what Lulu.com has to say about the service:

"Google Book Search is a free marketing tool that displays your book's content in Google search results. Lulu allows only 20% of your book to be viewed. You will retain all of your content rights if you choose to participate in Google Book Search."

After approving this, I received the following message from Lulu.com:

"Thank you for choosing Google Book Search distribution. A copy of your book will be sent to Google for indexing and will be available at books.google.com in about 8 weeks."

When I see it online, I'll let you know.

Book Approved

Today I approved my book, Valentino: a play in verse, for publication and distribution by Lulu.com.

After reviewing the proof copy of the book, and double-checking the online information, I hit the "approve" button and received the following message:

"You have approved your book 'Valentino: a play in verse' for distribution, and it is being entered into the database of the largest US book wholesaler. Your book will be available to order from leading online and retail book outlets within the next six weeks."

Sweet.

The entire process has been very easy, and I've been extremely happy with both the quality of the printed book and the ease of publication. I'll have more to say about the print-on-demand process in a future post, but for now I'll just say I've been very satisfied.

Of course, the big unknown is whether anyone will buy the book, outside of my circle of friends and family. Valentino is a verse drama, and therefore not a book that would appeal to a traditional publisher unless the play had already received the Pulitzer Prize or been staged on Broadway.

My primary goal in publishing it, aside from pure ego gratification, is to expose the work to a wider theater audience in the hopes of seeing it staged.

The play has already been selected for the College of the Canyons New Works Festival, and that's a great start, but I'm hoping to see a full mainstage production in the near future.

In any case, I am now a published playwright.

I'm looking forward to whatever the new year brings.