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Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

cdeemer@yahoo.com.

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• What Is Hypertext?
  
• The New Hyperdrama

Publisher's Marketplace is correct. Hooray them! I am indeed repped by Barbara, and have been since I first started. Without going into a long ode, I can say that Barbara has been a fantastic agent throughout the nearly 7 years we've been working together. She's a bulldog when it comes to repping a project -- if she believes in it, she'll never give up.

[Deering] wasn't in the literary business because she liked books. She was in it because she liked money.
...
Dorothy was not in the business of selling manuscripts; she was in the business of selling clients on the idea she was selling manuscripts. She had a problem because she was so good at the latter and so bad at the former. Eventually, clients had to catch on, and when they did, they became liabilities. Dorothy had to find some way to kiss off clients she could no longer milk.

Who would have believed it was easier getting money out of people this way than by selling cars? You sent them a letter, and they sent you money. Thank God for writers.

The deal was this: Jim Van Treese would become a silent partner in the Deering Literary Agency. NPI would be pitched to every Deering client -- past, present, and future. As a clandestine representative of Northwest Publishing, Dorothy would receive from Van Treese an annual salary of ninety thousand, her office rent paid, new computers, and money to hire more personnel to handle the additional paperwork. Dorothy nearly fell out ofher chair at that offer, but there was more: Van Treese would pay Dorothy a 10-percent finder's fee on every Joint venre deal that came through her agency. And for every ten deals she brokered, he would allow her to give one of her clients a standard, nonvanity contract. This would allow her to claim that not all of her published clients had signed joint venture deals. From his experience with his other agent partners, Van Treese expected Dorothy to take this offer for books she and her friends had written, which is exactly what she would do.

The Deering Literary Agency and Sovereign Publications, a pair of companies that produced nothing in the way of services or products, firms supported entirely by Dorothy's client base, provided good-paying jobs for Dorothy, Chuck, Chuck's three sons, and Dorothy's son Michael to the tune of about $250,000 per year.
...
Being accepted by Sovereign was like getting into drunk driving school. Congratulations. Richardsons statement that "no accepted manuscript will languish on the desk of some obscure editor" was true. Sovereign's own obscure editor, Stephanie Baker, was buried under a mountain of the unread books "accepted" by the "editorial department." Instead of languishing on her desk, they were stacked against the walls of her office. Millions and millions of words, each carefully considered, were lying on top of each other in an office in Nicholasville, Kentucky, while their authors waited anxiously for them to be read and commented on by Sovereign's unobscure editors. They might as well have been waiting for a bus to Mars.
...
BY JANUARY 1998, WRITERS WHO HAD BEEN WAITING months for some evidence -- edited manuscripts, galleys, cover art -- that their books were being published, were screaming bloody murder. The telephones at Sovereign and the literary agency were constantly ringing, and no one wanted to pick up the phone and catch hell from another crazed author.

[A writer] could purchase six months of Web-site exposure for $375 or pay $575 for a year's worth. He bought the $575 package, bringing his total investment in the Deering Agency to $1,250. To determine what his $575 had bought him, [he] kept checking the Deering Web site. Not only wasn't his or any other manuscript featured, the Web site itself was a mishmash of misspellings and bad grammar.

In November 1997, Kimberly Reese, an unpublished writer from west Texas who had dealt with a series of fee agents she believed were bogus, created a Web site called the Write Connection. Reese wanted to protect writers like herself from unscrupulous agents, book doctors, and publishers. In addition to providing general information and advice, she hoped to compile a list of literary enterprises aspiring writers should avoid. To help her with this roster of bad apples, she turned to published novelists Ann C. Crispin and Victoria Strauss, members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Through SFWA, Strauss and Crispin had been collecting and cataloguing written complaints about a growing group of fee agents, book doctors, and joint venture publishers such as Northwest, Commonwealth, and Sovereign. Using this . The Write Connection quickly became a safe harbor for aspiring writers.
...
In November [1998], two months after Sovereign bit the dust, Kimberly Reese, under a blistering attack from dozens of agents on her Web site's disapproval list, shut down the Write Connection. She couldn't afford to hire a lawyer to fend off the threatened lawsuits. That she held on so long under such hostile conditions revealed her commitment to helping writers spot the charlatans. She was a pioneer and, in the world of the aspiring writer, a hero.

Dorothy informed the agent that over the past ten years, she had learned a lot about writers. As creative people, they had big imaginations. They also tended to be self-centered and, when they didn't get what they wanted, could be unreasonable and even cruel.

Dorothy Deering was not your ordinary swindler. She was a con artist, an impostor. That she had taken so much money from so many writers for so long, without changing her name, moving great distances, or altering the identity of her enterprise, shows how good she was at selling herself and the dream of being published. Her own dream of leading the life of a literary agent and publisher collapsed when she could no longer maintain the illusion of legitimacy. One can only speculate how much longer Dorothy could have sustained her fantasy life had she not decided to impersonate a publisher. Unlike her literary clients, her Sovereign victims had purchased more than just an illusion. Books are tangible objects. They either exist or do not exist. Dorothy could manufacture the dream but not the book. She crept into her victims' lives and took more than their money. She stole their dreams, their confidence, and their self-respect. She was worse than the ordinary thief; she was every writer's nightmare.
...
In December 2001, when this writer visited Dorothy at the federal prison camp at Lexington, she walked without a limp, spoke softly, and made it clear that being in prison was a living hell. According to Dorothy, her fellow inmates were having sex, fighting with each other, or getting drunk on readily available booze. She had been threatened many times and called a racist. The only bright spots in her life were the letters she regularly received from Chuck and the periodic writing workshops she held at the prison. Her writing seminars had been so popular, she was thinking about starting a correspondence school for aspiring writers once she got out.

Your website is phenomenal. I greatly admire your work and would like to be your literary agent. I am an ambitious young literary agent who has recently launched my own agency.

What wonderful timing. I handle both fiction and non-fiction. I would be delighted to work with you on this mystery series.

"Dead Body in a Small Room: A Dallas Norgood Mystery" is incredible. You have created a highly original plot that is laced with drama, suspense and intrigue. I would be proud to be the literary agent for this wonderful novel.

"A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing."
– Eugene Ionesco

Sonnet

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.
— from Sailing Alone Around the Room (Random House, 2001)

A night for the history books
By Jeremy Stone, Yahoo! Sports
April 3, 2005

INDIANAPOLIS – Women's basketball never has seen a night like this.

This is just the 24th NCAA Final Four for the women, so it's easy enough to research the earlier ones that I don't remember. No previous pair of national semis compares favorably to the drama here on Sunday.

As the title game draws nearer, the focus can shift to Baylor – Baylor! – playing Michigan State, a matchup of first-time Final Four teams. But Sunday should be about the way both teams got there.

Previous Final Fours have had great comebacks. Perhaps the only thing keeping Connecticut from five straight national titles was Notre Dame's rally from 16 points down against the Huskies in 2001. The record books will say that Michigan State's comeback against Tennessee on Sunday night merely tied that one, and Baylor's rally past LSU was a point less impressive.

But Sunday's two comebacks happened on the same night. They knocked out the two teams that many had penciled for the championship game. And while the Irish's turnaround was remarkable for its completeness – Notre Dame went on to beat UConn by 15 – the Spartans' rally came later in the game and will be remembered for its sheer unexpectedness.

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Tennessee's Shana Zolman said the Lady Vols "knew they were going to make a run." MSU coach Joanne P. McCallie said she was "not the least bit surprised given what our team has done all year long."

Nobody outside the court saw it coming.

The RCA Dome felt like an oversized library (as opposed to an oversized basketball venue) as Tennessee rolled to a 47-31 lead in the second half.

LSU's fans were left stunned by the Lady Tigers' loss in the opener. Michigan State's contingent seemed to be reflecting on the leap their program had taken just to get here. Veteran Tennessee fans sat smugly, seemingly assured that the Lady Vols were headed to a 12th title game.

But Michigan State didn't panic. The Spartans didn't make a ton of adjustments. They didn't worry that they were a step slower or didn't jump as high.

They looked the Tennessee mystique in the face – and punched it.

Michigan State began running its offense – and efficiently. The Spartans fed Kelli Roehrig for easy layups and didn't panic when she missed a couple.

Tennessee controlled the boards, but 5-foot-9 Spartans guard Victoria Lucas-Perry swooped in for the biggest rebound of the game with 1:22 left. When she converted the ensuing one-and-one, it created the first tie of the game, 60-60.

That set up Kristin Haynie's brilliant steal and breakaway layup – the signature play of the night and maybe the entire tournament.

"That was one of the greatest steals I've ever seen," McCallie said.

But not until Tennessee missed three Perry-Lucas' breakaway basket put an exclamation point on the comeback.

The Spartans' heroics overshadowed Baylor's turnaround in the opener. The Lady Bears trailed 24-9 against LSU and had the deer-in-headlights look of a first-time Final Four team.

"I'm looking at my coaches going, 'We're getting embarrassed on national television,' " Baylor coach Kim Mulkey-Robertson said. " I challenged my players and once again [they proved] what warriors they are."

By halftime, the Lady Bears had forced a tie.

But when LSU pushed the lead back up to six midway through the second half, the Lady Tigers seemed to be in good shape. They had been here last year; they would have the experience to handle anything the Lady Bears had left.

Then Baylor ended the game with a 27-10 run.

A new champion will be crowned Tuesday night. But a new standard was set Sunday.

---

Veteran women's basketball journalist Jeremy Stone is an editor at Yahoo! Sports.

Only a few minor things made this production less than perfect. The singer playing Rose had too delicate and weak voice to rise above the music to the occasion at moments but all other roles were strong, the mother, husband and young man in love with Rose all excellent. The set was brilliant, both realistic in its detail and technically sophisticated to rotate into special backdrops for a few scenes, especially dancing moments.

It's unfortunate that a standard work like Butterfly, the previous opera, sells so well they must add a performance, and yet this fine work by Weill can't draw or hold the Portland audience. Maybe the "mushroom minds" of which Portland was accused in the sixties haven't entirely left the city ha ha. At any rate, I feel fortunate indeed to have been able to see this.