NOTE: This contest is now closed! Thanks to everyone who participated! 

We're planning something special for National Poetry Month in April and we need your help! Do you write or dabble in poetry? We are looking for poems to put on display in the Meredith Library in April.

If interested, please submit your poem via this link! We will choose our favorites from the submissions and display them this year during National Poetry Month. The top three poems will be published in our monthly newsletter and the poet will receive a gift certificate to Once Read Books! Keep in mind that by submitting your work you agree to let the Meredith Library display your poem publicly without financial compensation.

We look forward to reading your submissions!

DEADLINE is March 31, 2018. The winners will be announced during National Library Week (April 8-14, 2018).

Take a look at some of our yearly stats from 2017. Did you know? 75% of Meredith residents have a library card?

How many books or movies did you check out this year from the MPL?

This month's art exhibit is courtesy the Lakes Region Art Association and Richard Hartman. 

Participating artists in this month's display: Robert P. Emory, Jackie H. Ray, Phyllis Meinke, Christa J. Faller, Joanne Reynolds, Marie Kelly, Rob Caron, and Bev Shanley.

From the LRAA:

"Come join us & share your love for art!

The LRAA is 501(c)3 educational & cultural corporation whose mission is to enhance the ability of its members to create art and to further the appreciation of art in the Lakes Region. All local artists are eligible to join the association, whether you are a professional or emerging artist, a photographer, sculptor, or just appreciate art. 

LRAA Membership benefits include: 

• Monthly meetings (Mar-Nov) with speakers and/or demonstrations (i.e. framing, matting, marketing art, photography, art demos, and more.
• Participation in Artists of the Month selection including the display of your art at a local venue.
• Networking with fellow Lakes Region Artists.
• Electronic newsletter & web information page.
• A webpage Showcase listing, including bios.
• Eligibility to participate in approx. 5 shows a year.
• Eligibility to participate in the LRAA Annual Show with prizes and ribbons awarded. 
• Opportunity to display and sell artwork at the LRAA Gallery at Tanger Outlets. 
• Opportunity to attended classes/workshops at the Gallery."

There was a lot going on this year, but that didn't stop our patrons from enjoying the various offerings from our collection! Lets take a look at the most popular titles this year at the Meredith Public Library.

The Dewey Decimal System. Taught to most of us sometime in elementary school, is a numeric way of finding non-fiction books on the shelves of libraries. There is an organizational method to those numbers, seemingly cryptic except to those in the library-know, but not very user friendly to those wishing to browse our shelves of non-fiction.

Some public libraries have decided to switch to the bookstore model of organizing books, where words such as TRAVEL replace the Dewey number 910, HISTORY replace 930-940 & GARDENING replace 630 to make their shelves more user friendly.

After some debate, we at the Meredith Public Library decided to experiment with switching some of our popular non-fiction collections to the bookstore model (called BISAC) to see what our faithful library patrons think of it. Joyce has been working tirelessly researching BISAC and making the switch and so far has completed Travel, History, Cooking and Gardening.

So for example in our Cooking section, all cookbooks will have the main heading of COOKING on their spine label. Then there are subheadings. So if you are looking for Italian cookbooks, the spine will look like:

Taking a trip across the pond? The spine label would look like this:

Need to learn about Germany's past? The spine label would look like this:

We are still working on the best way to organize the shelves since most of our books are still in Dewey and it makes it confusing to see both systems being used. We are still working out some kinks. New non-fiction books, regardless of their spine label, are still shelved with new non-fiction on the main floor.

So, we welcome your feedback. What are your thoughts on using the bookstore model over Dewey? Would you like to see us switch all of our non-fiction books over to the bookstore model of change back to Dewey?

We are looking for ways to make our collection more accessible to everyone, so your input would be most appreciated. While checking out your books, please give your opinion at the front desk and this information will be forwarded to me.

-- Erin Apostolos, Library Director.

The Inter-Lakes Christmas Fund is "a non-profit organization that accommodates families who need assistance during the holiday season". You can help these children in need by buying gifts from them! Just take an Angel card from the tree and return with your donation (and the card) by December 2, 2017.

The Angel Tree will be on display in our main lobby, right in front of the circulation desk. 

For more information about the Inter-Lakes Christmas Fund, please visit their website: http://www.interlakeschristmasfund.com

Our newest exhibit features a group of female artists who have formed the “Lakes Region Pod” group of artists. All members of the pod are also members of the Women’s Caucus for Art, New Hampshire and live in relative proximity to one another. The pod meets regularly to share ideas and techniques, critique works, and keep a dialogue going about art. They work using a variety of mediums: oils, monoprints, quilts, and mixed media.  The “Lakes Region Narrative” exhibit will be on display at the Meredith Public Library for the months of November and December.
 
Participating Artists:

Lynn Elkinton, Contemporary quilts and Textiles
Anne McMillan, Acrylic monoprints, Rust and Indigo dyed paper
Betty Flournay Brown, Oil painting on location
Carole Groenke, Oil stick over acrylic
Kimberly J. B. Smith, Altered books and mixed-media with natural elements
Lauren Hammond, Oil
Robin Cornwell, Tempera paint block prints on bark paper

Ed Rushbrook is an artist from Gilford, NH. Ed works in pastels and graphite, and occasionally oils. He is a member of the Lakes Region Art Association, the New Hampshire Art Association, and the Pastel Society of New Hampshire.

His portraits of people and pets have received awards in a number of art shows, the most recent being a pastel portrait for which he was awarded First Place in the recent LRAA Annual Art Show.

In addition to commissioned work, Ed donates his artwork to several charitable causes by providing personalized art to the winning bidder of their fund raising auctions, and donates custom pastel portraits of service dogs to retired and active military men and women in various locations in the country.

Ed can be reached at erushbrook (at) aol.com

For the month of August, the art wall will be exhibiting the work of abuse survivors through the New Hampshire Clothesline Project.

The t-shirts bear witness to domestic and sexual violence in our communities and help raise awareness on the extent of domestic and sexual violence.

This exhibit is presented by New Beginnings which is "dedicated to ending sexual, domestic, and stalking violence through the provision of safe and effective services."

On July 13th, author Toby Ball visited the Meredith Library and shared some of his writing experiences with the audience.  Toby Ball has written a trilogy of books, The Vaults, Scorch City and Invisible Streets.  His family has had a home on Bear Island since 1938, and he has been a frequent visitor to the Meredith Library in the past.  He spoke primarily about the process of writing and ultimately publishing his series.

The Vaults is the second manuscript Toby has completed.  Most authors tend to not publish their first novel, though some will revisit them once they have had a major blockbuster.  He began work on his first manuscript, a thriller with two main characters, having just moved to New Hampshire from Washington D.C., working on his graduate degree, with a six-week-old child.  At this time, he viewed it mostly as a hobby.  In spite of this, he had mostly followed the formula for what was generally considered a successful means of being published.  However, after sending the manuscript to sixty agents, there were no offers.  Several agents did express a positive opinion of his writing, but were not interested in the particular work.  Agents tend to be very selective and particularly at this time, self-publishing was not as prominent as it is now. 

Toby’s second effort was more about a story that he wanted to write and less what was generally successfully received.  The genesis of the book was as a couple of short story ideas that were merged and expanded upon.  The first built on the idea of an archivist similar to the one ultimately used in The Vaults, and the second on the Navajo Project (a key feature of the finished book). 

Again, however, he was unable to secure an agent with his initial offering, but was given enough positive encouragement that he did not wholly abandon the effort.  He sent the work to Amazon’s Breakthrough Author Contest and was one of several thousand entries.  His work made it to the final fifty.  After another set of revisions, he again submitted it to about fifty agents.  He noted how agents tend to wait until the last minute of their six week deadline before getting back to people they might represent.  His experience was no different, but in the end, Rob McQuillen offered to represent him.  McQuillen had just started a new firm and had a background in editing.  While there was interest in The Vaults, it was determined that the ending was not dramatic enough and that a central character should probably die at the end.  This change was made, and the manuscript was sent out to various publishers, and was eventually picked up by St Martin’s Press along with a second title to be written.  Scorch City followed, while Overlook Press published the third of the City trilogy, Invisible Streets.  When asked if he intended to continue this series, he said that he felt the trilogy had a fairly successful arch.   

Toby viewed the editing process as a learning experience and felt the book was far smoother as it went to press.  In general, he thinks that about 95% of the suggestions he received from editors and publishers were worthwhile and never felt that these individuals were making demands of him, though he admits some suggestions were made more strongly than others.  The forms edits would take varied from both the editor and the publisher and later, from one publication to the next.  Some would be very brief suggestions while others would be full-length memos, and some edits would consists of in-text edits throughout the entire manuscript.  Good copy editors also do a great deal of fact checking. 

A question was raised about cover art in books.  Toby noted that in the case of his work and with the exception of a few very well known, best-selling authors who might select their own artists, the publisher generally determines the cover art.  The author is allowed to give feedback, and in the case of Toby’s second novel, Scorch City, the initial artwork was deemed to be attractive, but not particularly true to the story, so two other options were provided and one ultimately chosen to be on the cover. 

An attendee also asked when in the process, Toby came up with a title, or if one was assigned by the publisher after the completed work.  In each case Toby determined his own title, though when in the writing process this was determined varied.   Only in the case of The Vaults was the title considered at the beginning.  The others came to him part way through the writing process.  He never had an experience where the publishers asked for him to change the title to make it more marketable, as other authors have noted.    

Toby generally wrote from 8-10 at night after his children had gone to bed.  He is not particularly good at outlining and for many of his works, he has only come to the first chapter after completing a good deal of the first draft.  Toby’s writing process involved first establishing a theme he wanted to write about, then forming a plot and finally populating the work with believable characters.  One challenge in writing good characters, is trying to create sympathetic characters that have values that are not shared by the author. 

In writing historic fiction, he noted there being two primary schools of thought.  Some authors focus heavily on research and have a tendency to want to show off this research by accurately establishing details including some things that the general reader might view as minutia.  The second school, which Toby adhered to in his novels, seeks to grasp the tone of the time without dwelling on specific facts, but also not getting any key historic aspects wrong.

When Toby was writing The Vaults self-publishing did not hold the position it now does in the market, and was generally considered vanity publishing.  His major concern with publishing one of his own works would be the lack of editorial oversight that he has experienced with a publishing house.  In one novel, an editor felt the pacing was all wrong, and the work greatly benefited from a rewrite.     

While most of the conversation was about the writing process, a few questions were asked specifically about the book.  One person asked if the City was meant to be representative of Washington D.C. where he had recently moved from (at the time of its writing).  Toby said that he decided to create a completely fictional city rather than use an existing city where the reader would constantly be coming up against their suspension of disbelief if something in the fictional account did not fit with the real city.  This choice also allowed for more freedom.  He did mention in some ways it was built off the model of Syracuse, New York, if it were expanded to the size of Chicago.  For the atmosphere of the City, Toby drew upon the works of Raymond Chandler and film noir. 

Toby was asked if he would have any interest in having his works turned into a film or series.  He said he would absolutely be interested, but many factors of his book would make it challenging to put on the screen.  He noted that period pieces can often be very expensive.  Also, the two lead characters are not together in the same scene until the very end of the novel, which would make it difficult to bring in any major actors.  Also, the sheer number of characters makes it expensive to produce.    

Toby is currently working on a book set two years in the future.  He estimates he is at about the midway point of the first draft.  He also contributes to two podcasts.  Crime Writers On has between 60,000 and 100,000 followers.  He has also recently started a new podcast, Radio Free Dystopia.  He mentioned how it took some time to adopt the best pacing for podcasts and author talks.  

The Meredith Library is grateful for Toby’s visit and wish him continued success in his writing and other endeavors.