BEST FROM THE NORTHWEST.

Byline: Scott Maben The Register-Guard

Maybe it's the rain. Maybe it's way too much coffee. But Northwest authors have been hunched over their keyboards banging out a lot of new books - among the most offerings in recent memory.

"I think in the Northwest, we have as many people wanting to publish as there has been," said Thom Chambliss, executive director of the Eugene-based Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. "People are definitely writing. The hard part is getting a publisher to publish them."

The PNBA, an association of retail booksellers in five states, is hosting its fall trade show in Portland this weekend, and the lineup of writers is one of the best in years, he said.

"The celebration of authors, which we do to introduce new Northwest authors, is the best group we've had in a long time," he said.

Literary Arts, the Portland-based organization that gives out the Oregon Book Awards, received 195 submissions for the honor this year, nearly double last year's count. It's a record high for the 18th annual awards, to be presented Nov. 18.

Part of the increase may be that more authors are self-publishing their work, said Kristy Athens, the program coordinator. "The Northwest is full of pioneers and people who want to take charge of their lives," she said. "In publishing, it's really hard to get people's attention."

The state of publishing and writing in Oregon is very healthy and growing, said Eugene poet Ingrid Wendt, whose new book of poems, "The Angle of Sharpest Ascending," is now off the press.

"We have many people coming into the Northwest, into Eugene, just because our cultural climate as well as our natural environment is very conducive to creative work," Wendt said. "This is a welcoming community that offers writers good networking, but also a wholesome and harmonious cultural environment in which to create."

If there is one distinctive feature of the Northwest writing community, it may be mutual support, said Elmira author John Daniel, a two-time winner of the Oregon Book Award for Literary Nonfiction.

"Northwest writers have all the foibles and vanities of writers anywhere, but vanishingly few are outright jerks," said Daniel, who has written the memoir "Looking After," a collection of nature essays titled "The Trail Home" and two books of poems. "We tend to like our cohorts and cheer them on."

Then there's the allure of the region's natural environment, including its soggy winters, that helps keep writers inside and focused. There's truth in the joke about Oregon's good writing weather, Daniel said.

"If you tend to turn inward, as writers must, you get plenty of affirmation from the elements here," he said. "I don't see how Southern Californian writers get anything done in winter."

Also, it's easy to live out in the country without being culturally stranded, said Daniel, whose seventh book, an account of 4 1/2 months he spent isolated from human news and company in a remote cabin in the Rogue River Canyon, comes out in May.

"From our acre of Douglas firs north of Noti, it's half an hour to Eugene and two hours to Portland. I get trees, stars and quiet nights, and I also get brewpubs and good music and the Knight Library when I want them," he said.

Here's a taste of what Northwest writers - inspired, perhaps, by tall trees, cold microbrews and good tunes - have cooked up for the final months of 2004:

Pyro 

By Earl Emerson 

(Ballantine Books, $25)

fiction

This North Bend, Wash., writer draws on his own life as a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department for this story, set in Emerson's own firehouse, of a duel between a Seattle firefighter and the arsonist who wants to burn him down.

The pyromaniac is loosely based on two arsonists whose paths crossed Emerson's over the years, including John Orr, a Los Angeles fire captain and respected arson investigator who became the most prolific arsonist in the country.

How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater

By Marc Acito

(Random House, $23)

humorous fiction

A coming-of-age story about an overly theatrical (and sexually confused) New Jersey teenager's larcenous quest for his acting school tuition.

Set in 1983 in Wallingford, N.J., 17-year-old Edward Zanni is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. The fun comes to a halt when Edward's father remarries and refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Juilliard.

He turns to his loyal, immoral misfit friends to help him steal the tuition money from his father, all the while practicing for his high school performance of Grease.

Acito is a Portland-based syndicated humorist whose column, "The Gospel According to Marc," appears in 19 newspapers.

Cruise Control

by Terry Trueman

(HarperTempest, $16)

young-adult novel

The Spokane author's third U.S. novel is a companion to his first, "Stuck in Neutral," the story of 14-year-old Shawn McDaniel, a bright young man trapped inside a body disabled by cerebral palsy.

The father of a special needs boy, Trueman's sequel chronicles a family torn apart by disability and divorce and is told from the point of view of Paul, the brother of wheelchair-bound Shawn.

Paul contrasts his life with Shawn's in the book's opening: "My only brother is a veg. Yep, a full-fledged, drooling, fourteen-year-old idiot. But if you were to call him that, you'd have a big problem on your hands - namely, me! It's funny though. I sometimes kind of envy Shawn. He doesn't worry about the stuff that makes my life crazy, like what college might take him or whether he's going to get an athletic scholarship or anything at all."

The Unbidden Truth

By Kate Wilhelm

(MIRA Books, $24)

legal thriller

The popular Eugene novelist is back with another Barbara Holloway thriller. A wealthy client - part of a group that sponsors worthy causes involving women - hires the tough Oregon attorney to defend a young pianist accused of murdering the manager of a piano bar.

The accused woman's seemingly honest version of events clashes with strong evidence against her, and Barbara begins to untangle her client's strange and mysterious past.

Thirteen Ways to Water

By Bruce Holland Rogers 

(Wheatland Press/Panisphere Books, $16)

fantasy

A collection of 13 fantasy stories by the Eugene writer, who wrote two previous story collections. This time, the stories all are fantasy, ranging from the mostly realistic to tales involving magical powers. Some stories are funny, some are dark and some are both. Rogers ushers readers from the heart of the Tulgey Wood to the forests of the Highland People to the Seattle stomping grounds of an anarchist monkey-wrench gang.

The Angle of Sharpest Ascending

By Ingrid Wendt

(Wordtech Communications, $16)

poetry

The Eugene poet's fourth book of poems is billed as "a haunting suite of poetic sequences about the German dimension of World War II and the ways it touches our modern experience."

The poems touch on essential questions of memory, responsibility and healing. Wendt writes in the book's preface, "I also believe in the importance - for the future safety of our country, our world - of trying to understand how perpetrators of violence can do violence to themselves, can be victims of wrong teaching, of mass hysteria, of propaganda. To recognize that evil can be taught."

Wendt's parents each were raised in German-speaking families, in Chile and Michigan, and she spent a year as a senior Fulbright professor in Germany.

Her most recent books are essays in the form of poetic sequences that she says "speak of what it is to be German American, born in this country, and of the still unresolved grief and shame inherited by an entire generation of Germans born during and shortly after the Second World War."

No Time Like Show Time

By Michael Hoeye

(Putnam Publishing Group, $15)

children's fiction (ages 8-12)

The third adventure for watchmaker Hermux Tantamoq, who enters the exciting and somewhat shady world of show business to investigate a mysterious blackmailer at the Varmint Theater.

The protagonist mouse not only is hired to track down the blackmailer, he also gets roped into designing the set for an upcoming show.

Hoeye, who lives in a stone cottage in Oregon's Coast Range, also wrote "Time Stops for No Mouse: A Hermux Tantamoq Adventure" and "The Sands of Time: A Hermux Tantamoq Adventure."

The Secret of Castle Cant

By K.P. Bath (with artistic embellishments by David Christiana)

(Little Brown and Co., $17)

children's fiction (ages 8-12)

First-time novelist K.P. Bath of Portland enjoys playing with the English language in his adventurous tale of Lucy Wickwright.

She is an obedient maidservant who tends to the Baron of Cant's mischievous daughter, The Adored and Honorable Pauline Esmerelda Simone-Thierry von Cant, in the faraway Barony of Cant.

Lucy's eagerness to please her charge, as well as her elders, unwittingly leads her to become a key player in a mysterious rebellion that is brewing not only throughout the barony but within the castle grounds. Soon, she finds herself not only a spy, but also risking her life for a cause that is pitted against her own mistress.