Summer Treasures, Summer Pleasures

Summer is here and the temps are climbing—yesterday here in San Diego's beautiful East County the mercury reached 100 degrees...We denizens of America's Finest Ciudad are awfully spoiled by the near-perfect weather here, and probably takes hitting triple digits to remind us how great it usually is!

Being part of the local writing community is important to us at Sunbelt—we are always interested in partnering with local businesses and agencies and groups. Our long collaboration of monthly author appearances at Upstart Crow Trading Co. (in Seaport Village), is a perfect example, and now we’ve added a monthly series with Borders Books & Music in El Cajon, too. John Woods (Return to Treasure Island) will be appearing at both stores in July and Gary Winters of The Deer Dancer will be at borders in July, with Daniel Reveles making a rare appearance in August. See our events page for these and other Sunbelt author appearances.

You'll be seeing a lot of John Woods and his new book, Return to Treasure Island in the next few months—there is a book trailer, a "breaking news" video to whet your appetite, along with free downloads at: www.treasureislandbook.com We'll be teaming up with the Maritime Museum for their Festival of Sail in September too—to showcase John Woods and Return to Treasure Island!

Another new book—not quite here yet—is about the charismatic Mojave desert tortoise...The few advance copies of the book we've had here at our offices have been winning over desert buffs by the dozens! If you like tortoises, click here to check them out. Don't forget to pre-order before August 1 & get free shipping...

We have some other great new titles coming this fall—including a completely new version (not a new edition!) of our mountain bike book, called "Cycling the Trails of San Diego County," a gorgeous new book about the collectible State Quarters. Later in the year we have a new book about Las Vegas due out, called "Las Vegas Legends: What Happened in Vegas." I'm reading it (among other things) right now, and it's just fascinating! A PDF of our new and upcoming titles is here.

Speaking of having too many things on my plate—I won't be writing the Sunbelt blog here anymore, but I am blogging weekly (in my spare time!) at my own blog: www.jennyredbug.com. We at Sunbelt are posting updates on our Facebook page and tweeting about our events and new books on Twitter, so it seems redundant to be waiting between blog posts to rehash it all here...

So "find" us, "friend" us, and "follow" us—and please keep in touch!

Jennifer Redmond,
Editor-in-Chief

 

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Book Expo, and Book Award Finalists

America’s biggest book trade show, Book Expo America or BEA, happens in New York later this month and our president Diana Lindsay is out there to take part. There are a few Sunbelt books up for book awards and we also have new titles to highlight for summer and fall.

“Flying Pans” is a finalist for a Foreword Book-of-the-Year Award in the cookbook category, and that award will be presented in NYC at BEA—check out the chefs’ website for more on this book, and some recipes!

The exciting sequel to “Treasure Island”, “Return to Treasure Island” has already won a Silver medal in the Independent Publisher’s Awards, and it’s not even officially out until June!

The San Diego Book Awards will be presented June 5th, and there are quite a few finalists in our line up:

Our published titles that are finalists: “Cycling the Palm Springs Region”; “Chasing a Dream in the Galapagos: A Personal Evolution”; “The Cuyamacas”; and “This Day in San Diego History”.

Our distributed titles that are finalists: “Surf Angel”; “The Power Curve,” “Life as a Sandwich”; “Santa Claus and the Molokai Mules”; “Encinitas Insight”; “Flying Pans: Two Chefs, One World; “Cicciotti’s Kitchen”; “Delivering Hope” and “Lavanderia” (the anthology from City Works Press).

And our Young Adult novel “The Deer Dancer” is also short-listed for a big award—more on that very soon!

New books coming soon: “Return to Treasure Island” in June and “Tortoises Through the Lens” due in August. Click here to see more on these upcoming books—preorder and get free shipping .

 

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Wildflowers, Earth Day, and National Poetry Month

With the sun shining brightly up and down the southern California coast, and the nearby desert abloom with flowers, it certainly feels and looks like Spring around here, finally. We’ve had some cool weather, a little rain (and an earthquake) to start the month off…This year it’s more like “March showers” bringing “April flowers”!

The report from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park this week was: “The blossom has gone on longer than expected. The valley bloom is passing, but the show now starts moving higher up. The cholla are starting to bloom.” Check out more first-hand reports of the State Park’s flora at Desert USA’s Wildflower Report. That’s just some of the recent commentary about our favorite desert—check out these recent KPBS story and videoabout the park and its famous flowers.

April is also National Poetry Month and we have some great poetry books by established poetic voices—like Jimmy Santiago Baca and Steve Kowit—but also from the writers and poets behind Lavanderia, “a collection of women, wash and word.” To visit the site for excerpts, reviews and history, or to buy the book, click here. Don’t forget Marisela Norte, who, in spite of having been a major spoken word poet for over two decades in Los Angeles, is still looked at as an “emerging voice.” Her first EVER collection of poems, Peeping Tom-Tom Girl, will make you weep, laugh, and relate.

April is not only Poetry Month but is also Earth Month (Earth Day is April 22nd and April 24th is Arbor Day) so a book about gardening would be perfect—and a book about lo-water, sustainable gardening would be even better…Well, then, Maureen Gilmer’s book, “Palm Springs-Style Gardening” is just the ticket! See her amazing blog for lots of great spring gardening tips for southland gardeners, and her upcoming events.

Also busy on the event circuit is Bette Blaydes Pegas, author of the travel memoir Chasing a Dream in the Galapagos: A Personal Evolution. This book is a perfect Earth Day read, along with The Cuyamacas: The Story of San Diego’s High Country, an informal history of our local mountains, and Fire Chaparral and Survival in Southern California  (a must-have book by Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute), which includes a full-color field guide to California’s local chaparral ecosystem.

So, happy Spring—it’s time to shed our winter woolens and get out and about! Check out our events page for cool outdoor events like a desert tour with author Diana Lindsay.

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"California Missions and Spring Break"

This month we’ve had plenty of rain, for a change. Spent a wet weekend at Mission San Luis Rey de Francia in Oceanside, site of the annual conference of the California Mission Studies Association. Luckily, the many presentations and the displays of books and art were inside the fine old stone structure; as with many missions the walkways are covered, so the rain was merely a picturesque backdrop. Unfortunately, it did limit the amount of time we could spend wandering the extensive grounds--seeing the progress of the preservation and restoration of the lavanderia, for instance.
          Though many of the CMSA lectures can be a bit academic, the subjects (from mission architecture to the era's liturgical music) are always intriguing, especially to those of us who have spent a great deal of time reading about California's colorful past. The CMSA website contains many treasures, including articles and book reviews--and this illustrated glossary of mission terms.
Speaking of local history, Richard Carrico, author of Strangers in a Stolen Land: Indians of San Diego County from Prehistory to the New Deal was at CMSA to do a talk on Kumeyaay Legends. (You can read about Richard and his book in The Ramona Sentinel)
          On Friday night we were greeted by a tribal member of the San Luis Rey band of the Luiseno Indian tribe ; his "blessing" was in the form of a reminder of the tribe's connection to the land (as well as the mission itself) and it was a poignant reminder of all that was lost in the well-meaning zeal of "missionizing" those lands and their people.
          Another recent event was the annual meeting of the San Diego Congress of History. Sunbelt had a booth featuring our classic and some of our newer San Diego History books, like Leland Fetzer’s history of the Cuyamacas, and Linda Pequegnat’s This Day in San Diego History.
          We just celebrated the launch of The Deer Dancer a new novel by Gary Winters, local journalist and award-winning author and poet. Set in present-day Mexico, and tells the story of a Yaqui Indian youth who searches for his own personal identity in a country with a strict caste system. Written for a mature young adult audience, the book is full of contemporary Mexican events—of the government's indifference to and abuse of Indians, and of the Zapatista struggle—and never fails to grip the reader. For those who like background, here's a link to a page about the Yaqui Indians' Deer Dance. Click here to see a video of a Yaqui Deer Dancer in Sonora, Mexico.

          Gary Winters will be appearing at Upstart Crow & Co. in San Diego’s Seaport Village on March 18th to read from and discuss his new book. Visit our Events page for more on these and all of our other upcoming events.

         

So we’re all looking forward to April’s Flowers (we’ve had the showers, after all!) and to Spring Break and Easter, time for the annual reemergence of Benji the Bunny, star of Bunny’s Busy Day. Cute little guy, isn’t he? Happy Spring!