June 20, 2008

For Immediate Release: not time sensitive

A quirky Washington newspaper novel with time warps--and timeliness

Kingsport, TN -- June 20, 2008 -- Twilight Times Books will publish David Rothman's debut novel this fall. The Solomon Scandals might be the only Washington newspaper novel that ends in the late twenty-first century with Thackeray II, a lovable talking Afghan Hound, doing a Truman send-up at the Cosmos Club.

Scandals starts out about three decades ago with illegal spying on American citizens, an IRS/CIA building collapse, Washington-weird sex scandals, blackmail from the Oval Office, a gossip columnist's suicide at the Watergate and a car bombing. And in fact Rothman began tapping out his book on an electric typewriter in the late 1970s.

But just as we’re writing this news release, the New York Times Web site is carrying some headlines in the same general territory--for example, House Passes Bill on Federal Wiretapping Powers and Prosecutors Question Tests of Concrete in City Buildings.

In The Solomon Scandals, we meet Seymour Solomon, the biggest of Uncle Sam's landlords. His ugly buildings house thousands of workers--tax collectors, military people, every species of bureaucrat. Payback for Sy's massive political donations?

Only with mixed feelings does George McWilliams--editor of The Telegram and a friend of Sy--let reporter Jonathan Stone investigate Solomon. Delving into Solomon's past, Jon calls up Peter Fenton, an African-American union man who tangled with Sy in a wage dispute. Fenton warns of an impending collapse at Vulture's Point, a complex on the Potomac housing 1,500 Internal Revenue workers and, we eventually learn, a CIA domestic spying operation. But the Telegram won't let Stone follow through, and in this pre-Web, pre-blog era, the story stays out of the headlines.

At the government's business agency, which leased Vulture's Point, Stone befriends Margo Danielson, an eccentric young medievalist and Kafka student. But why go on, when we can quote the rave that Jon Stone’s memoirs received in New York VR, the successor to the old Times?

"Stone is uncomfortable with the ethos of both Washington and the newspaper that reflects the metropolis around it, and worse, he finds he cannot separate Work from Life, as much as he would like. Can he avoid testimony to a grand jury when Donna Stackelbaum, his lover and old family friend, is about to be caught up in a nuclear-energy scandal? And just how should Stone write up the suicide of Wendy Blevin, a much-feared, much-loved gossip columnist and colleague whose reputation foundered ‘in a sea of toxic black ink’?

"From historians to sociologists and sexologists, academics will revel in Stone’s memoir-cum-confession from the dark heart of the fourth estate. Along with lay people, they will find themselves drawn into a powerful allegory in the collapse of Vulture’s Point, a shoddily built complex where hundreds of tax and intelligence bureaucrats perish. Is not Vulture’s the ultimate stand-in for putrid government programs that just don’t work out, ill-conceived wars included?"

How many Washington novels come with such playfulness?

In a memorable way, Rothman has mixed humor, general fiction, suspense, political suspense, science fiction and maybe even capital-L Literature.

Significantly Jon Stone’s fictive memoirs will appear in a medium that Rothman himself has influenced as one of the publishing world’s best-known advocates of the ePub standard for e-books. In addition, Twilight Times will publish a reasonably priced trade paperback edition. "David and I love both E and P," says Lida Quillen, Twilight Times publisher. "We’ll happily ‘Scandalize’ you in any medium you want us to."
 

Author info:

David Rothman lives in Northern Virginia, with his wife Carly and some feisty stuffed animals who always take her side when the two disagree. He is author of six nonfiction books, including The Silicon Jungle (Ballantine) and The Complete Laptop Computer Guide (St. Martin's).

In addition, David is also editor-publisher of TeleRead site, which advocates well-stocked national digital libraries in the United States and elsewhere. TeleRead draws hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a year and is blogrolled in such places as the Wired Campus blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education.
 

Media Contact:

Beth Olsen, Marketing Director
Twilight Times Books
P O Box 3340
Kingsport TN 37664
Ph/Fax: 423-323-0183
http://twilighttimesbooks.com

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