BOOK BEAT EVENING with CATHIE BECK
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| 18 Aug 2009 |
6:00 PM |
8:00 PM |
Denver Press Club
1330 Glenarm Place
Denver, CO 80204
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Wednesday, Aug. 18, 6 p.m., BOOK BEAT EVENING with CATHIE BECK, author of "Cheap Cabernet." Cathie Beck is a Denver-based journalist and
creative writer who has been, at various times, a baton-twirling
teacher, a cocktail waitress, a secretary, and a writing teacher. Her memoir of her hard-won success in life and
family, and a very special friendship. “Cathie Beck’s Cheap Cabernet is a bracing story of a woman who took the
crappy hand life had dealt her and turned it into a big win. With an
awe-inspiring stamina, she kept going long past the point other
people—like me—would’ve quit. I devoured this empowering and very funny
memoir from the first page.
Cathie Beck
"Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship" came to be a "Hyperion Books" book the way many a book comes to hit selves: after years of its author being bitter-pissed and unpublished. There. I said it. "Cheap Cabernet" was first drafted - all 90 pages of it - back in 1999. Those 90 pages were enough fodder to expand and build and in a year or so I had 250 pages. A couple editors and a few years later, I ran to New York, got some agents to let me interview them for a magazine article I was writing - and also got them to agree to read my manuscript. One of those agents worked hard to sell "Cheap Cabernet." There were a few rewrites, another round of submissions, and then next thing you know, it's the mid-2000's or something - and no one's bought the book. I threw it on a closet self, disgusted, disappointed and defeated. Then I learned of another author who'd written several books, books that won regional awards - and I read how she'd gone through several literary agents - yet none of her books sold either. She, too, was fed up and decided to an online book launch party for her most recent novel. From that party she scored a top-shelf agent and a book deal. She generously let me interview her for a story I was writing.
I went to the 2009 New Orleans Jazz Fest, then, and mulled over all that. Head-cleared and back from the Jazz Fest, I decided to take the summer and fall of 2009 and launch the biggest, most expensive, online "Cheap Cabernet Vino for Every Vixen ParTAY" - with the goal of selling a bunch of books and getting an agent and a book deal. If it didn't work, I was going to shelve "Cheap Cabernet" for good. On October 6, 2009, "Cheap Cabernet" reached Amazon.com's No. 1 "Movers & Shakers" spot. I scored a dream agent - and that's no exaggeration - and a wonderful publisher - perfect for "Cheap Cabernet" - a publisher I'd always imagined an ideal fit for the book. I'd type "The End" here, but I don't think it is. I think it is Just The Beginning.
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