Need a speaker for your book club, garden club, or civic organization?

COVID-19 has put a damper on typical live author events like signings, readings, and workshops, but in a sense, it has also opened up opportunities for “garage band” authors like myself to expand their reach beyond a “reasonable driving distance.” Where doing a virtual event would have seemed weird six months ago, today even A-list writers are participating in Zoom readings, mail-in signings, and Facebook workshops. Some authors are even resorting to guerrilla marketing tactics to bring readers to theIr virtual events. Outdoor mystery writer Keith McCafferty, for instance, offered one of his exclusive hand-tied trout flies to the first 10 people to join the virtual launch party for his new book, The Bangtail Ghost.

While I’m not nearly as good a fly tier (or writer) as Keith, I would be pleased to speak virtually at your bookseller, garden club, book club, or civic organization event, and, yes, I will have promotional items as giveaways. Drop me a line at johnbmarek@gmail.com and let me know what date and time you have in mind. The usual caveat is “within 3 hours of Charlotte,” but in a virtual world, I can speak to groups from Bangor to Hilo, Anchorage to Key West. As a member of Rotary International and the current president of the Wadesboro Rotary Club, I am especially excited about speaking at Rotary events.

I can tailor a presentation to your specific interests and time constraints, but I typically offer three different topics:

Book Reading and Discussion - I read 2-3 of my short stories and/or essays, discuss the writing process, relate an anecdote or two, and take audience questions.

Introduction to Square Foot Gardening - I discuss the basics of the Square Foot Gardening technique, and how I came to embrace it after several failed attempts at "traditional" gardening.

Faith-based Community Gardening - I discuss the challenges and rewards of community gardens as a ministry based on my own experience and referencing the book Soil and Sacrament by Fred Bahnsen.

Comments

FRIDAY MATINEE: Midnight Mass (🍺🍺🍺🍺)

I held off writing this review until I had seen all seven episodes of the new Netflix limited series “Midnight Mass.” I’ve been burned in the past by shows that start out well and then devolve into silliness as they progress. While “Mass" doesn’t completely stick the landing, I think even the East German judge would give it a solid 9. Taken as a whole, I think it is as effective a piece of horror as the combined “It” movies from a few years ago, and right on par with “Hereditary” and “Midsommar.” The story revolves around a man returning to his childhood island home after a prison stay for a drunk driving accident that killed a teen girl. Coincidentally, it is the same day the island’s beloved elderly priest, Monsignor Pruitt is supposed to return from a trip to the Holy Land. Unfortunately, the priest has taken ill and is being treated on the mainland. A temporary priest arrives to take his place. The story takes a little while to get going, and anyone who’s familiar with t...

You Label Me, I'll Label You

Sometime around 1970, my parents acquired a "high tech" device known as a Label-It. Manufactured by the DYMO Corporation, the Label-It was an embossing tape printing system that produced a sticky-backed plastic strip onto which the user could custom-print words or short phrases; or for that matter I suppose all the great works of literature, given enough patience and an unlimited supply of tape. The Label-It was gun-shaped with a horizontal alpha-numeric wheel on top. You loaded a spool of plastic tape into the back and fed it through the embossing head. By arranging the wheel so that the desired number or letter was over the tape and pulling the "trigger," the head forced the tape against the raised character and, due the physical properties of the plastic, a white image of the character was transferred to the tape. When the entire word was finished, you hit the "cut" button and removed the label. It was fairly primitive by modern standards, but it was ...

FIELD NOTES: All corn is Indian corn

There's a good chance that when your family gathers (or gathered, depending on when you read this) around the table this Thanksgiving, one of the dishes set in front of you will be corn. Corn is arguably the most traditional Thanksgiving food, as it is one that we are sure was served at the original Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. But the corn that the Wampanoag shared with the Pilgrims that day was very different from what you will put on your table. Corn was cultivated by the indigenous peoples of North America for more than a thousand years by the time the Pilgrims arrived. Originally a type of tall grass called teosinte with a dozen kernels no larger than the ball of a ballpoint pen, it was selectively bred over hundreds of generations until a handful of varieties resembling what we today call "Indian corn" were created. Technically, all corn is Indian corn since all of the varieties we grow today trace their roots back to those developed by Native Americans. The...

John B. Marek

Search This Blog