If you visit the Web site for local not-for-profit-organizer-turned-author Jane Wagoner (http://www.janewagoner.com), you'll be able to read passages from her recent historical fiction, Bells of May, which follows five generations of women rooted in the Harz Mountains of Germany. Here's what you'll find on the site's first page:

Jane Wagoner"The kiss, begun in sorrow, ignited into passion, a passion born of desperation and loss, wild and unstoppable ... . They came together desperately, without nuance or soft caress. But Katherine, still virgin, was no stranger to orgasm and responded wildly to Christoph's thrusts ... ."

And trust me, things just get racier from there.

Issue 583 Cover We've tortured you with tiny word limits before, but this year we were in a really foul mood. So we decided to have some fun at your expense and see how many suckers would try to put "llama" and "ramekin" in a 200-word story dealing with an odoriferous canine abode and lumpy breakfast food.

Super Granny

For a current Virginian, Beverly van Hook knows her Quad Cities. The author was selected by the Midwest Writing Center to be the guest speaker at the organization's Silver Anniversary Awards Banquet - at the Outing Club on Saturday, March 11 - and the decision makes sense.
Local author and Davenport native Michael McCarty, who will be a guest lecturer at Rock Island's Midwest Writing Center this Saturday, has spent more than a decade conducting interviews with some of the biggest names in fantasy and horror.
Thanks to the dozens of area writers who continue to flood us with their really short stories. We received roughly 120 pieces in this year's contest, and here present a dozen of the very best. Before we begin, though, an apology: To anybody who was confused about the contest rules, we screwed up.
Quad City Arts has issued the second volume of the literary journal Buffalo Carp. This publication makes a nice gift for the literature-lover on your holiday shopping list, with some wonderful pieces of poetry and prose.
There's no getting around it. Shades of Noir, the new film by Max Allan Collins and Phil Dingeldein, is a patchwork. "It's a bit of a Frankenstein monster," Collins conceded last week, "but the Frankenstein monster gets its job done.
Edited by Curtis C. Roseman and Elizabeth M. Roseman 252 pages 2004, University of Iowa Press The new book Grand Excursions on the Upper Mississippi River should not be considered a lightweight souvenir for people wanting to remember the upcoming Grand Excursion celebration.
The number of entries in this year's River Cities' Reader short-fiction contest jumped to over 120, up more than 25 percent from last year. There was one significant rule change - the word limit was cut from 250 to 200 - but that didn't seem to affect the quality of entries.
Sean Leary, entertainment editor of the Rock Island Argus and Dispatch, has just released the second issue of the humor publication The Dingo. In the spirit of the work at hand, I offer my own Top 10 list (for the counting impaired), and some constructive criticism.

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