“Like Truman Capote, Allison Burnett knows how to pull up a chair and whisper a juicy story into his lucky reader’s ear. Death By Sunshine is a quickly-paced tale inhabited by fascinating and funny creatures.” — Nell Scovell, Vanity Fair "In this age when the genuine comic novel seems to be an extinct species, Allison Burnett gives us reason to rejoice. Death By Sunshine is a return trip to the world of B.K. Troop, one of the most appealing characters ever put on a page." - Charles Busch, author of The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Die, Mommie, Die! “Death by Sunshine is classic Burnett: hilarious, gut-wrenching, and entirely entertaining. He takes us on a journey across the country into the darkest recesses of the human psyche – with a few detours into the excesses of the human flesh along the way. A terrific read!” - Claire LaZebnik, author of Epic Fail and Families and Other Non-Returnable Gifts "B.K. Troop is that rarest find: an unexpected and entirely engaging new character." - Seduced by a Literary Original by Robin Russin, Los Angeles Times B.K. Troop is an aging, erudite, chemically imbalanced, gay, alcoholic novelist living in Manhattan. His life is turned upside down when he is invited to Los Angeles to adapt one of his novels into a screenplay. Soon after his arrival, B.K. is thrust into the heart of a mystery that only he can solve. With the help of his trusty Mexican chauffeur, B.K. penetrates the lower depths of Hollywood with hilarious and surprisingly poignant results.

Death by Sunshine

Literature & Fiction

Burnett, Allison

Humor & Satire

Writers Tribe Books

Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children is a brilliantly written story of Dan Charles, a writing professor who teaches at a small college outside of Pittsburgh. It is about the daily struggle to survive while raising two children with his wife. Funny and heartbreakingly real, author Dave Newman captures the humanity and heartbreak of one man's struggle to navigate the vicissitudes of life as a working writer in America.

Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children

Newman, Dave

Literary

East Bay Grease, Eric Miles Williamson’s now classic first novel, has received worldwide acclaim as one of the great depictions of working-class America in the latter half of the 20th century. The story of T-Bird Murphy, born in the tumultuous 1960’s and raised in the ghettoes of Oakland, California variously by his mother, who rides with the Hell’s Angels, his father, who is an ex-convict, and the father figures who range from musicians to construction workers, East Bay Grease is a novel of dignity, honor, and courage that has been compared to the works of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Upton Sinclair.

East Bay Grease

Williamson, Eric Miles

Star quarterback Neil Garvin is the envy of other students in his Nevada high school – and is almost as cruel to them as his abusive father is to him. Then one night on a dark, isolated road outside of town, a random act of violence claims a life. Nothing, Neil swears, could be worse...until his father, the local sheriff, masterminds a cover-up. Emotionally deadened and wrestling with the mystery of his mother's disappearance years ago, Neil must find his way out of his prison of fear and discover the one thing that can set him free.

Diamond Dogs

Watt, Alan

Contemporary

Have you ever wondered how your favorite authors got their start? How did they make the leap from closet scribe to published author? In My First Novel: Tales of Woe and Glory, twenty-five authors recount the variety of hurdles, both internal and external that they had to overcome on their journey. Alan Watt, editor of My First Novel and founder of L.A. Writers’ Lab’s 90-Day Novel Workshops, states, “The goal of this book was to demystify the creative experience, to level the playing field, to say to the writer who was struggling with his novel late at the night in the garage of his parent’s house in Walla Walla, that you are no different than any of these other writers, and to keep going, and yes, at times it really is that difficult and scary, but that you are not alone, and you are up to the challenge, and here are twenty-five separate road maps to the same destination.” Cheryl Strayed (author of the international bestseller, Wild) recounts her experience of writing her first novel, Torch. “I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true: I thought that Torch would write itself. Or rather, that something magical would happen that would make it be written, a force that would take me into its grips and enable me to write a book without too much suffering.” Rick Moody (award-winning author of The Ice Storm) writes, “For Garden State, it only mattered what I believed was true…Music taught me a lot of whatever I know about prose, about the way that prose should sound…after I finished Garden State, it was rejected by every publisher in New York.” Aimee Bender, whose first book was the celebrated short story collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, tells us, “The moral for me, is something like: work with what you have, not what you might have, or what the market wants. If there’s a book that’s done, that feels to you like a ready book, like a book tugging to leave the booknest, then push for that book, or at least try.” My First Novel: Tales and Woe and Glory, is not a book about how to write; it is a book about why we write, and what makes us persist, and the reasons are as personal as they are universal.” 100% of the proceeds from My First Novel are being donated to PEN Center USA’s Emerging Voices Fellowship.

My First Novel

Fitch, Janet

HOLMAN, SHERI

MOODY, RICK

Markoe, Merrill

Stahl, Jerry

Strayed, Cheryl

Fante, Dan

BENDER, AIMEE

Ulin, David

Essays & Correspondence

For the past ten years, Malcolm Poe has dreamt of escape. His plan is simple: The day his youngest child starts college, Malcolm will leave his devoted wife to resume the creative life he abandoned for marriage. As the hour of his departure nears, Malcolm buys a blank notebook to chronicle the riot of his memories, passions, regrets, and aspirations. The Escape of Malcolm Poe is a hilarious ascent into the deluded imagination of a middle-aged man who believes it is never too late to start over.~NOVELIST RICHARD KRAMER WRITES: "Meet Malcolm Poe. He has decided, at a turning point in his life, to keep a journal in which he intends to confront his present, his past, his choices, and -- most of all -- his ghosts, which have all come back to haunt him, in a way that anyone who's reached fifty will identify with all too well. He tells us, as the book opens on New Year's Eve, that "this year my only resolution is to escape." Whether he does or doesn't is the tension of Allison Burnett's marvelous new novel, The Escape of Malcolm Poe. Malcolm is soon to be fifty. He hates his job. He is or isn't very ill. And he's been married for twenty-five years to a gracious and loving woman with whom he feels hopelessly trapped.  The book opens with the announcement to his readers that he's gone off his anti-depressants, and now, all that he's been numb to for so long breaks through -- his fears, his ideas about himself and the choices he's made, and his alternately scabrous and loving feelings toward those who love him. He can no longer hide from the truth and no longer wants to, and we accompany him as he tumbles back and forth through time, to those moments half a life earlier when he believes it all could have gone differently. Malcolm is mean-spirited, self-deceiving, hurtful to others, and foolish. He is also hilarious and deeply sympathetic, despite his considerable efforts not to be. He infuriated me, and he broke my heart, and I was with him every step of the way.   The Escape of Malcolm Poe is haunting, elegant, and wise. Burnett knows Malcolm well and clearly loves him, and because of this, I felt for his prickly hero from the first pages and realized how he'd gotten to me when, in the course of my day, I found myself seeing things as he might. I read it straight through, as I didn't want to leave his company. He has much to say, and a reason to say it all right now, as authentically as he can. He knows that time is running out, because that's what time does, and not much more. Sometimes we're lucky enough to see this.  When we do, we realize we have to try to know ourselves and let others know us; that it is now or never.  Malcolm Poe chooses now. We choose it with him. The way he faces it is a triumph, as is this book."- Richard Kramer is the author of the novel These Things Happen, as well as the Emmy and multiple Peabody award winning writer, director and producer of numerous TV series, including Thirtysomething, My So-called Life, Tales of the City, and Once and Again.

The Escape of Malcolm Poe

Dan Charles reads Whitman the way some people read the Bible. He works three jobs. He attends college. Dan’s older brother sells industrial parts and wants out. Dan wants something. In Two Small Birds, the brothers take flight in the worst possible way. This is the story of what it means to be family, to be working class, and to dream of being a poet in a world that refuses books. Set in tiny apartments and roadside diners, truckstops and warehouses, dive bars and worse hotels, Two Small Birds is a story of misdemeanors and perseverance, the jobs we take and the lives we lose. It’s the story of love, and whoever is in charge of that.

Two Small Birds

Days Are Gone

Alice just walked out of her marriage to aging rock star, Chick Wolfson, leaving behind her San Francisco penthouse and all the trappings this union conferred. She drives north to Seattle to stay with her folks, but never makes it. Chick cancels her credit cards – her parents disapprove of her choice mainly because she’s spent her marriage lying to everyone including herself about the nature of their relationship. With her tank on empty, she crawls into Waiden, a small Oregon town off the coast, and checks into the crumbling Frontier Inn where she lands a minimum wage job. While there, she finds herself attracted to Webb Cooley, grocery clerk, and recent parolee of Oregon State Correctional Facility. Webb is quiet and withdrawn, with secrets of his own. Soon they are pulled into a relationship that they are each using to exercise their own particular form of escape. As they grow closer, their desire to be known by each other threatens to reveal the secrets from the past. Exquisitely written with a propulsive narrative, Days Are Gone explores the nature of regret, and how faith and forgiveness are the surest path to freedom.

Get the first draft of your NOVEL or MEMOIR down quickly! The 90-Day Novel is Alan Watt's day-by-day guide through the process of getting the first draft of your novel or memoir onto the page. The 90-Day Novel was workshopped at L.A. Writers' Lab over the course of ten years and has helped thousands of writers complete their work. A number of Watt's students have gone on to become bestselling authors and win major literary awards. Many writers credit The 90-Day Novel as their guide, from YA author Allen Zadoff (The Unknown Assassin Series, Little Brown) "Al Watt is a master teacher with a brilliant, intuitive understanding of story," to Ottessa Moshfegh (Man Booker Prize Finalist for Eileen, Penguin, Random House) "I went out and bought a book called The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt. It's ridiculous, claiming that anybody can write a great book, and quickly too, but it ended up as a Oulipian thing...it was actually interesting to conform to the rules." The method was inspired by Watt's own experience. He wrote the first draft of his novel Diamond Dogs in just under 90 days and sold the North American rights to Little, Brown in a bidding war. The book became a national bestseller, won a slew of awards including France's 2004 Prix Printemps (best foreign novel). The 90-Day Novel is structured into three parts. Part One describes the process of getting your story from your imagination to the page and prepares you, through a few simple, powerful writing exercises to access the story within. Part Two is The 90-Day Novel, a series of 90 daily letters that will guide you through the hero's journey. Writers often tend to get stuck halfway through, mired somewhere in their "idea" of the story. The 90-Day Novel will show you how and why you got stuck, and how to get to the end of your first draft. Part Three is a compendium of stream-of-consciousness writing exercises designed to help you access the primal forces in your story, as well as the Structure Questions that will invite up images at key stages in your hero's journey. The 90-Day Novel teaches you how to distill your plot to its nature, and clarifies the mysterious process of assembling vague disparate ideas and images into a coherent narrative. Working in this way, story structure (which is often taught as a formula) becomes a springboard, setting you free to explore the far reaches of your imagination. "There are no rules," Watt tells us. "Stay out of your left brain, and let your unconscious do the heavy lifting." The 90-Day Novel clearly articulates the process of marrying the rigor of story structure to the wildness of the imagination, and in the process reminds us of something we so often forget...that writing is actually fun. ~ "For years I have been fascinated by the industry legend of how Alan Watt wrote his masterful novel, Diamond Dogs, in 90 days. Now, at last, he shares his secrets. The 90-Day Novel is smart, insightful, thorough and wise. It's also one of the best books on novel-writing I have ever seen. I feel confident that anyone who takes this program seriously will have a solid manuscript to show for the effort." - David Liss (national bestselling author and Edgar Award winner of A Conspiracy of Paper) "The idea of bringing a first draft of a novel to fruition seemed too daunting and overwhelming to even consider until I was introduced to The 90-Day Novel. Al's methodology is deep and precise and helps unearth subconscious themes and characters in you that let the story almost tell itself." - Rebecca de Mornay (actress/writer)

The 90-Day Novel: Unlock the Story Within

Reference

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