Spears getting $15-million deal to write (?) at least three books (!)

The books are scheduled to appear over the next decade and will be based on her diaries.

Last year Britney's mother Lynne wrote a book with ex-Winnipegger Lorilee Craker. In Through the Storm, she detailed the early life, and scandals, of Britney and sister Jaimie Lynn.

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HarperCollins Canada will publish a controversial German novel on March 7.

Wetlands, by Charlotte Roche, has been treated as both feminist literature and pornography in Germany. Listeners have been known to faint during readings by Roche, a television personality.

The story details the uninhibited sex life and body functions of an 18-year-old female narrator. Roche has said she wrote it, in part, as a reaction against modern Western hygiene attitudes.

Advanced copies of the book are being sent to booksellers and media outlets with a black cover and combination lock.

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Former Winnipegger David Keck has been nominated for the new David Gemmel Legend Award for Fantasy.

His In Time of Treason is among 69 novels vying for the award.

The public is invited to vote online and the poll will close on March 31. The top five novels will then be selected for a second round of voting and the winner will be announced on June 19.

Gemmel, a U.K. author perhaps best known for Legend, died in 2006. Keck lives in New York, where his wife is a fantasy and sci-fi book editor.

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Mark C. Henderson, a graduate of the University of Winnipeg, has just published The 21st Century Environmental Revolution: A Comprehensive Strategy for Conservation, Global Warming, and the Environment.

Henderson proposes large-scale strategies for fixing the environment in his book. It is available online from the publisher, Waves of the Future.

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Ontario sci-fi star Robert J. Sawyer is the host of the new VisionTV anthology, Supernatural Investigator, premiering Tuesday.

The series follows investigators as they search for the truth behind paranormal phenomena.

Sawyer's new novel, Wake, is due April 14.

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Random House of Canada and the Globe and Mail have announced the Globe and Mail Open House Festival, a new literary festival in Toronto May 8-10.

Authors scheduled include Canadian Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) and American David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

Money raised by the festival will go to PEN Canada, which supports the freedom of expression of writers worldwide, and the Frontier College literacy organization.

vanrooy1@hotmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 25, 2009 A1