books

Local author Thomas Talbot, whose new novel "The Craft" is based on the disappearance of William Morgan, was at Present Tense today signing copies of his book.

Tom Talbot loves local history.

And he loves to write.

And he loves fiction.

Over a 30-year period, he worked hard to bring these interests together in a project that would ultimately become the historical fiction novel, "The Craft: Freemasons, Secret Agents, and William Morgan."

Originally from Elba, Talbot has lived in Batavia for more than 40 years. While some people may say that Batavia is a boring place to live, he has always been fascinated by the stories it has to tell.

"We live in an area with a rich history," he said.

His book, which was published in August, is set in 1826 and follows two government agents who are assigned by President John Quincy Adams to investigate the disappearance of William Morgan.

Morgan, as area history buffs know, was a Batavia resident famous for having mysteriously vanished after threatening to write a book exposing the secrets of Freemasonry.

"[The Morgan incident] put Batavia on the map for a while," Talbot said. "In a bad way, but still..."

The book's plot goes beyond William Morgan, placing his disappearance in the context of a larger web of intrigue that involves "rogue British Masons" (as the back cover synopsis puts it) and a presidential assassination plot.

"I didn't want the book to be just about Morgan himself," Talbot said. "That's been done by a lot of people. I wanted to include him, but also have a broader scope."

Agents Matthew Prescott and Zeb Cardwell are the story's protagonists. In Talbot's fast-paced thriller, they travel all over the Eastern Seaboard searching for the truth behind Morgan's disappearance, going from Washington, D.C., to New York City, Albany, Canada, Rochester and, you guessed it, Batavia.

Locals may recognize certain locations mentioned in the Batavia segment, including the Holland Land Office Museum, the Eagle Tavern, and the Mix Mansion (which is over on Mix Place).

Research into what life was like in 18th Century New York State -- including the difficulties of travelling in the pre-railroad days, bedbug infestations at inns, and the dangerous malfunctions of primitive steamboats -- helped Talbot craft some very interesting dramatic situations for his characters.

"A lot of it you have to imagine (as an author), but you do need some basis (in period details)."

"The Craft" is Talbot's first novel and second book. His first book, "Illustrated Black History," was a curriculum guide for social studies teachers (he himself taught history at Batavia Middle School for three years). It is available as a reference text in the Richmond Memorial Library's local history section.

He started working on "The Craft" while attending graduate school at SUNY Brockport and raising a family in Batavia. The busyness of his life required him to set the book aside for long periods of time; but over the years, his wife, Vicki, kept pestering him to finish it.

He credits the completion and publication of the novel to her persistence.

Looking back on this 30-year endeavor, Talbot likes to joke about how he started writing the book on yellow legal pads before graduating to the use of a typewriter, then transferring it onto his Apple computer, eventually putting it on his IBM computer, and, finally, finishing it on his laptop.

Writing is something in which he "dabbled" quite a bit before starting on "The Craft."

"Writing was always one of my major interests," he said. "I played around with poetry and short stories in college. I also did curricular writing for the Batavia City School District and for the Buffalo schools."

Since retiring from his position as an administrator at GCC in 2000, he has worked part-time as a grant writer and data evaluator for the Genesee/Orleans Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse (GCASA).

"I like to kid people by saying that I've written a lot of grants, but that's not all I do -- I've also written a book."

His jobs in the Buffalo schools, GCC and GCASA have involved extensive research and data evaluation as well as writing. Between this and a history degree from Georgetown University, his credentials for a research-intensive project like "The Craft" aren't too shabby.

As for whether other Tom Talbot novels are on the horizon, he definitely hopes that "The Craft" is "not a one-shot deal."

"I have some ideas for other books, including a sequel to 'The Craft.' Possibly something in a different genre, too."

Talbot himself is an avid reader and enjoys authors as diverse as John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva, J.R.R. Tolkien and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He has a blog, Tom's Book Pages, where he writes book reviews.

As for "The Craft," you can purchase it locally at Present Tense or at the Holland Land Office Museum; you can also order it online.

For more information or to order a copy, visit www.thecraftthebook.com. Talbot says he encourages people to comment on the book on the site as well.

"I would appreciate any feedback," he said.

Photo courtesy of Jen Zambito

Dozens and dozens of people turned out to Go Art tonight for the release of Jim Nigro's first novel, "Tapestry: A Life Walk Among Friends."

When Nigro was at best about half way through signing copies of his book, he said his hand was getting tired. When I arrived, the line out the door was at least 20-people deep. When I left, it was still at least 20-people deep.

For more about the book and Jim, click here.

Jim Nigro didn't set out to be a writer. In fact, when he was a kid, he didn't even really like stringing words together.

But with his love of nature and a life path that put him in a position to try some new things, Nigro just sort of fell into telling stories about hunting, fishing and observing what he found around him out in the wild. As for writing, it turns out, he really loves it.

The Batavian's outdoor columnist, in fact, has just published his second book -- a novel called "Tapestry: A Life Walk Among Friends."

The story revolves around two friends growing up in a small town much like Batavia, starting in the 1950s and going through the 1970s.

Nigro said though it's fiction and most characters are at best composites, about 90 percent of events in the book are drawn from his experiences or those of friends.

"Anybody who grew up here in the '50s, '60s or '70s will recognize their hometown," Nigro said.

Nigro's love of nature began when he was a small child visiting his aunt and uncle's house on Old Creek Road.

"I was knee-deep in mother nature at a very early age," Nigro said.

That love of nature and the friendships that grow from enjoying the outdoors together is the backdrop for Nigro's story.

Regular readers are aware of Nigro's outdoor adventures, which has taken him to various parts of the United States, including Alaska and such exotic locales as the Bahamas and the Sea of Abaco.

Along the way, the 60-year-old Nigro said, he's made some good friends and like anyone in life, had some rough patches.

In 1968, Nigro was about to embark on a military career -- all he needed to do was sign the contract -- but one afternoon, just after he had bought a sausage at the St. Joe's Lawn Fete, Nigro spotted a young woman walking by. Nigro dropped the sandwich right in the trash and walked home. He told his mother he was abandoning his military plans and going back to school.

That young lady was Claudia. They married in 1971 and have been together ever since.

After getting married, Jim got a chance to get a good-paying job in construction, so he wound up in that trade for about 20 years. Then he was offered a job -- through a connection of his father's -- at the Meadowlands, so he moved his family to New Jersey.

While Jim said he made some good friends there, it wasn't necessarily a good time.

"Ten years of staring at the New York City skyline, I grew to appreciate where I came from," Nigro said. "I was really homesick. I missed the little simple things like a ride from here to Elba or from here to Oakfield and all of those wide-open spaces."

The Nigros came home and Jim went to work at the Trojan factory and was there until it was sold to foreign investors and closed.

After that, Nigro decided to take advantage of a government program for retraining and returned to Genesee Community College to get a degree in commercial art.

After graduating, he had some scholarship offers, but not enough to pay for him to get a higher degree, so he had to go back to work and wound up in the landscape business, which he really enjoyed for about eight years.

Nigro started his writing career almost by accident. During his first year at Trojan, the Batavia Daily News was advertising for a part-time sportswriter and Jim applied. He didn't get the job because he didn't yet have a degree. The sports editor at the time figured maybe the job should go to somebody with a degree who didn't have a job.

A couple of years later, that editor was in JC Penney buying an engagement ring and Claudia mentioned that he knew her husband. They struck up a conversation and that led to Jim and the editor getting back in touch.

The editor wanted somebody to write a series of five outdoors articles.

That series became eight years of outdoors writing for the Daily. It also became fodder for Nigro's first book, "Dear Sam: Remembrances for My Grandson," a collection of true outdoor adventures and lessons Nigro wanted to share with his first grandson.

Ater the eight-year writing stint, Nigro and the Daily parted company and he came to really miss writing those columns. When The Batavian came along, Claudia contacted the online-only news site to see if there would be space for an outdoor column. Of course there would.

About this time, Jim decided that he really needed to write this novel, but he couldn't get it done while working full time. He and Claudia talked it over and decided they could get by if he quit his landscaping job to write.

"We decided to trust God," Nigro said, who with Claudia had by this time raised a son and a daughter (they now have four grandchildren).

And it's worked out fine, Jim said. And he got his book done.

Besides writing the book, Jim also drew many of the illustrations (there's also two photographs and one drawing by Claudia).

The book release party will be at 6:30 p.m., Thursday, at GoArt!, located at Seymour Place, 201 E. Main St., Batavia. The first copies of the book will be available and Jim will be there to sign personalized copies.

Janet and June Lee had things just about ready by late this afternoon for the annual Order of the Eastern Star book sale at the Masonic Temple, 200 E. Main St., Batavia.

The sale opens Thursday at 9 a.m., rain or shine, and runs through noon, Saturday.

Proceeds benefit the VA Nursing Home and other charities.

Book donations are still welcome, but the Lee sisters request no professional or college books, National Geographics or encyclopedias.

Available are a wide variety of books, both paperback and hardback, from all types of fiction to books on cooking, crafts, sports and politics.

It appears that when Mother Nature heard that "Make a Splash at Your Library" was going to be the theme of the Haxton Memorial Library's upcoming summer reading program, she took it a bit too literally.

Interim Library Director and Children's Librarian Kimberly Gibson met with a surprise when she came into work on Monday morning. She went downstairs to the children's room, followed by a group of youngsters eager for story hour...only to find the place flooded up to her ankles.

She called in Warren's Carpet Cleaning Service to take care of the problem -- which was no easy task.

"It took two full days to to dry the place out," Gibson said. "And they had to use 10 huge blowers and two humungous dehumidifiers."

The water extended from it's point of origin (which is inside the room slightly right of center, behind the table) all the way to the carpet used for story hours and also sideways to where the stairs are located.

The Warren's employees on the job told Gibson it was lucky she contacted them when she did, because the humidity was already at a very dangerous level.

"We probably would have lost all of our carpeting and everything if we'd waited much longer," Gibson said.

Things could have been a lot worse, and the place is steadily drying out. The saddest part of this whole ordeal for Gibson, though, is that she had just purchased 22 ocean-related books for the summer reading program, and 13 of them were completely ruined.

"I don't think we're going to be able to salvage them," she said. "It's crushing, because I worked so hard to plan these programs, and I bought these books because I thought the kids would really like them. In fact I was just getting ready to put them on display."

The flooding resulted from this past weekend's continual torrential rain -- which, according to Library Trustee Ann Engel, Oakfield residents are saying amounted to about two and a half inches.

Gibson said the same thing happened six years ago.

"We've been lucky not to have anything happen in six years," she said. "But this time it was worse than before."

In spite of this misfortune, Gibson has tried to remain upbeat and to keep her leadership mentality all along. After the initial shock of discovery on Monday morning, she immediately resolved to "just stay focused and get things taken care of as soon as possible." 

"She's a trooper," another library trustee said of Gibson.

Still, Gibson, the library's two other staff members, and the board of trustees would gladly accept any assistance the community would be willing to provide. Gibson said that monetary donations would be especially helpful.

"We have a small budget here at Haxton, and this is obviously going to cost more money than we had planned on spending. With the cost of the books [that were ruined] and the bill for Warren's services, we would certainly welcome any monetary assistance."

The Haxton Library has basic insurance, but they are hoping that they will not need to turn to that to pay for the damages.

"We have a $2,500 deductible," Gibson said, "so we don't want to go to our insurance unless we have to. We don't know what the overall cost will be yet, but hopefully it won't exceed that. Plus, I'm not sure if flood damage is covered, since that kind of thing is fairly unusual in this area of the country."

Gibson arranged for all children's activities to be held upstairs this week, but she hopes to have the children's room open to patrons again on Monday.

How often does this happen? Batavia got a visit from two acclaimed authors last week -- two days in a row!

The first was Garth Stein, author of the 2010 Tale for Three Counties committee pick, "The Art of Racing in the Rain." At the committee's invitation, Stein came to speak to readers and sign autographs at the Richmond Memorial Library on Thursday night.

This latest work is Stein's third novel and it's about a Seattle family as told by none other than -- Enzo, the family dog.

Stein's book had the honor of a 38-week streak on the New York Times bestseller list, won several awards and honors, and has been translated into 31 languages. Stein recently signed a film deal with Universal Studios and hopes to see the book made into a movie in the near future.

The second author was award-winning children's writer Robert D. San Souci, who came to speak to the children and sign autographs at John Kennedy Elementary School Friday afternoon.

San Souci's works include "The Talking Eggs," "Cendrillon: A Caribbean Cinderella," the "Dare to be Scared" series and "The Legend of Scarface." He also wrote the story for the 1998 Disney film "Mulan." His visit to JK was arranged by Donna Katter, program assistant for Genesee Valley BOCES' School Library System.

Whether you were in the almost-over-crowded reading room at RML or sitting in the school cafeteria as hand after hand after hand shot up from the crowd of fifth-graders during the Q&A session, you would have gotten a good idea of just how much people still appreciate their writers.

Both authors read portions of their books and shared funny anecdotes from their lives and careers, including the setbacks they have faced while trying to get their work published.

Stein, for example, talked about having gone from one agent to another before he finally found someone who wanted to take a chance on a book narrated by a dog.

San Souci -- who realized he was destined to become a writer in second grade -- said that he wrote persistently for many years, facing a long string of what he called "thanks, but no thanks" letters from publishers.

Both men were kind enough to share some of their thoughts, insights and comments with The Batavian after signing autographs -- at RML and the JK Media Center, respectively.

Why do a small town's best and brightest young people relocate to big cities?

The common assumption is that they leave to seek better opportunities or more excitement.

Bill Kauffman has a different theory -- our teachers, civic leaders, parents and American culture try to convince rural young people that to be an achiever, you have to go elsewhere. There's little thought to the notion that you can achieve right where you're rooted.

Kauffman discusses this idea in a book review for the Wall Street Journal:

The sharpest insight in "Hollowing Out the Middle" is that "small towns play an unwitting role in their own decline" by inculcating, in school and too often at home, the belief that fulfilling one's promise means leaving for the city lights or the manicured suburbs. The purpose of education today, as Kentucky poet-farmer Wendell Berry argues, is to train young people to leave home. And so, the authors note, "the investment the community has made in them becomes a boon for someplace else."

Batavia is full of bright, young people who have decided to stay, or who have come back. I've met them. Batavia's future would be even brighter if we could convince more of them to stay and help build new businesses and invest in the community that nurtured them.

Read the whole thing.

Once in a while, a reader stumbles across a morning post by Joesph Langen which he titles "Conversations with Calliope" and asks us what they're about.

Langen is a writer and he uses The Batavian as a morning writing exercise to connect with his muse.

We've never put these posts on the home page. They're just a writer's journal about his writing.

But Langen has been doing it daily since almost the first day The Batavian started publishing. Now he's made a collection of his writings available for free in PDF form. Click here for home info.

He lists these 10 reasons to download the book:

1. Find out where writers get their ideas.
2. Hear what a writer does all day.
3. Listen to what writers say about being a writer.
4. I want my muse to be more helpful.
5. See how to get unstuck when you write.
6. Learn how to talk with a muse.
7. Explore what else writers need to know besides how to write.
8. Discover what keeps a writer going page after page.
9. Determine who supports a writer’s efforts.
10. Unearth the sources of writers’ inspiration.

Langen says he's now a full-time writer after 35 years as a psychologist. He recently published his first novel, "The Pastor's Inferno." His other books include on one life's lessons, "Commonsense Wisdom for Everyday Life," and a memoir about his nine years in a seminary, "Young Man of the Cloth."

C.M. Barons is a frequent commenter on The Batavian. Baron's published a novel last year, "In the Midst of."

Last month, Penguin Multimedia, a joint venture of Loren Penman of Batavia and her son, Brant, as well as Brian Gardner, shot a video promo for the novel at vintage clothing store Calista Miakoda on Ellicott Street.

The novel is available at Present Tense Books.