This is the second major deal for Top Cow in less than a month—a few weeks back, they cut a deal with Union Entertainment that could eventually lead to video games starring established characters like Witchblade along with new properties. Looks like Top Cow’s editor-in-chief, Renae Geerlings, will have plenty to keep her busy when she moves into her new office tomorrow.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

More details about the awards — given in various self-help, memoir and other non-fiction categories — and the night itself, after the jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Says Regan: “James Pinocchio wakes up in the back of a New York City taxi with a combination lock piercing his left ear and no idea how it got there, or what the combination is. The following day, his wealthy parents decide to put an end to his drinking and dancing, and they send him off to Sleepy Hollow, the famous rehab facility in Upstate New York, where he meets all sorts of Fascinating Characters, one more Unbelievable and Amazing than the next.”

“Mr. Pinocchio’s story, which he co-wrote with bestselling ghostwriter, screenwriter and studmuffin Pablo F. Fenjves, stretches credibility to the breaking point, but the unbelievable pain, the dirty sex, and the endless amounts of girlish crying make it all worthwhile – and eventually lead to Redemption and Healing (though not for Mr. Pinocchio).”

Doing a little digging, there’s already an Amazon entry, but it claims the book’s pub date isn’t until April 30 and Fenjves — who’s already co-written one memoir and one inspirational story for ReganBooks as well as a bunch of crappy TV movies — is listed as sole author, natch.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Yes, it is true that Nelle Lee is publishing a book,” Capote wrote in the letter’s final paragraphs, according to the newspaper. “I did not see Nelle last winter, but the previous year, she showed me as much of the book as she’d written, and I liked it very much. She has real talent.”

The story further reports that the letter became public after Jennings Carter, Capote’s cousin, gave it to the Monroe County Heritage Museums in Monroeville as a result of the release of the film CAPOTE, based on the events leading up to the publication of IN COLD BLOOD.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Mr. Brown does not deny that he consulted The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail [as the book is known in England] before publishing The Da Vinci Code. In fact, one of his characters—Sir Leigh Teabing, a partial anagram of the authors’ surnames—actually has the book on his bookshelf. In one passage in The Da Vinci Code Mr. Brown summarizes the Jesus-Mary Magdalene theory, saying that The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is the most important book in the area.”

While Lyall acknowledges the defense’s counterargument that Holy Blood is “just one of many sources” Brown consulted, it’s in the British accounts that we learn of Random’s more specific claim that he’d already figured out most of the mystery on his own before discovering Baigent and Leigh’s book. (Which makes me wonder if he’s ever read Foucault’s Pendulum, which makes an explicit joke of its debt to Holy Blood…) In that English coverage, the legal editor for the Guardian considers the millions at stake in the trial, but elicits quotes from a solicitor specializing in copyright to illustrate just how hard it may be for the Holy Blood crew to prove their claim: “If somebody picks up your idea and says that’s a great idea and works on it themselves, that’s not breach of copyright. That’s how creative things work.” The Independent, The Times of London, and Financial Times are among those adding their own perspective to the trial.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Many editors were over the moon about the concept and the writing,” said Artist Literary Group’s Joe Veltre, Stivers’s agent. “We turned down pre-emptive offers and had six bidders in the auction, which lasted three days.”

One of the more unusual aspects of the deal report is that it mentions the contributions of Farrin Jacobs (former editor with Red Dress Ink and also known for co-authoring a how-to chicklit guide with Sarah Mlynowski) who helped to develop the book. “She and I originally brainstormed this idea together over lunch and developed it in the next few weeks,” said Veltre. “Farrin then smartly thought of Valerie to write it. Valerie got the concept right away and wrote some seriously good chapters, adding flesh to our concept with some sharp, witty pages.”

So what does Stivers bring to the table? She’s a freelancer who’s written for Elle, Stim Magazine, Time Out New York, Blender and other NYC-based fashion magazines. Which definitely puts a different spin on the vampire book, a trend that shows no sign of abating just yet.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Like other successful scribes in today’s publishing world, Mr. Carter has learned how to play the game. Book retailers love him, in part because he works so hard at book signings and understands the ‘retail politics’ of the publishing business. Disdainful of ‘handlers,’ the former president is all business and insists on sticking to a tight schedule. Once, he almost left a late-running publicist behind in a store.”

President Carter is so dedicated to getting everything just right that he posed with a muzzle-loading rifle and then painted a portrait based on the photograph for the cover of his first novel, 2003′s The Hornet’s Nest. But his industriousness appears to have paid off, as an anonymous source pegs the windfall for his latest book, Our Endagered Values, at over $5 million.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Good short stories are “vertical novels, sort of layered,” she said, “ephemeral, mysterious, condensed in the way of poetry,” further adding that she likes “the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories…The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.”

But of course, short story collections don’t exactly sell well, as B&N’s fiction buyer Sesalee Hensley is quick to point out. “I’m not thinking this will recharge the form,” Hensley said, “but I’m hoping this will bring Deborah Eisenberg to a wider audience because I think she is a great writer.”

But one who is slow; it took her eight years to finish the collection, and she hasn’t written anything in over 12 months — sighing that she is “completely sailing under false colors.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Then Greg Lindsay ran a piece on Nick Antosca, the young Yale alum who tried to schmooze a fellow Eli into giving him a Rush & Malloy mention for selling his first book.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Up to this point, we’ve provided with you very basic guidelines for posting,” the message goes on. “We would like to take the opportunity now to give you some constructive feedback on posting practices that we feel do not contribute to a good customer experience.” Among the sloppy habits they’d like authors to abandon: “re-purposing or serializing material from your books,” “posting reviews in place of writing posts,” and “filling your post with multiple links to other sites.” They also recommend taking customer feedback from voting and comments into account “as a way to craft future messages.”

“Yeah, I got it,” said AmazonConnect participant John Scalzi when I asked him if the message was authentic, “and was mildly amused by it, since it has the tone of a harried kindergarten teacher trying to convince the children that the crayons are not for eating. Interestingly, several of the suggestions are antithetical to what blogging is (don’t link to stuff on other sites? come on), which suggests Amazon might not have been entirely clear on what blogging is.” He added that the problems with the program are more Amazon’s fault than the authors’: “Jamming the blogs right into people’s faces without warning when they sign in to Amazon annoys people (the blogs look like unsolicited advertising), and it also means that Amazon has ceded control of its front page to a bunch of people whose content they don’t control, which is not the way I’d run my own business’ front page, personally.”

“What would really be interesting,” he concludes, “is if the authors start complaining on their Amazon blogs about the e-mail, and then someone at Amazon panics and deletes the entry, thereby starting an avalanche of author-Amazon silliness that gets covered in the media and blogs, and ends up with they guy at Amazon who suggested the ‘plogs’ demoted to stuffing copies of The Da Vinci Code into boxes at the distribution center. Let us hasten the day!” Well, they can’t delete it from our blog, so the full letter (with my own guesses as to paragraph breaks, because the version forwarded to us was one long blur) appears after the jump!

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“Anything with a twist or a hook works,” said Jenny Bent, literary agent with Trident Media Group in Manhattan. “I think there is an appeal to the reader when a writer has some sort of vision to go out and get it done. You can compare these books to adventure narratives that were once so popular. We always want a view into other people’s lives, especially if the story provides insight.”

And even if it sounds overly trendy, the writers in question aren’t too worried. “On the one hand, it’s a good book, so I’m not too worried how it’s categorized,” said Maria Headley, author of THE YEAR OF YES. “On some level it helps, you know, in terms of ‘if you liked this book, then you might like this other one.’ And I really think people like the fish-out-of-water stories, which is generally what these books are.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

At BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow recalls that “her oeuvre is too modest, but will never be forgotten” and that “the field and the world has lost someone wonderful this weekend.” Steven Barnes adds that “for a time, Octavia and I lived within walking distance, and she would come to the house for dinner. A lady of incredible intelligence and rather dark humor, she was also what I called “a REAL writer.” She put so much more of herself into her work than I ever have, or would be capable of.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.