Forwarded mail received from: CENTER1:City:City.smtp:"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" FYIDate: Tue, 25 May 1999 18:41:41 -0700 From: Karen deMoor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: On-line pesticide novel Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Disposition: inline Proceeds of on-line novel to support Pesticide Action Network After researching the horror stories of pesticides poisoning communities in Mexico and on the U.S. border, Leslie Guttman was compelled to write about it. A journalist for the past 14 years, Leslie merged her professional reporting experience at the San Francisco Chronicle with her personal interest in fiction writing to create Message Pending, a fictional love story with a bulletin for the planet. Released May 24, Message Pending can't be found at bookstores, but rather on-line on the World Wide Web. Intrigued by the opportunity of the internet and the new kind of language that e-mail has created, Leslie set out to tell her story through the e-mail messages of the characters she constructs in the book. Message Pending describes the life and relationships between four journalists who are struggling to walk a straight road at a chaotic metropolitan newspaper in San Francisco. One character finds herself in a Mexican village, exposing a pesticide scandal and corporate cover-up. Leslie approached the development of Message Pending with a variety of goals in mind, including using fiction as activism. She hopes that the novel will help raise awareness about the global crisis in pesticide use. "In my novel, Katie O'Donnell, one of the reporters, is working on a big scoop involving pesticides in Mexico. The ultimate message is that you can't pull on one strand of the ecological web without tightening it in another place. Pesticides know no borders." Leslie is donating half the net proceeds of Message Pending to Pesticide Action Network. The first three parts of the novel can be read for free on-line at http://www.messagepending.com. The rest of the novel can then be accessed for $14.50. Hope you enjoy it! _________________________________________ Karen deMoor Communications and Development Pesticide Action Network North America 49 Powell Street, Suite 500 San Francisco, CA 94102 Tel: 415-981-6205, ext. 318 Fax: 415-981-1991 http://www.panna.org Pesticide Action Network, Advancing alternatives to pesticides world-wide.
