writing.today.com

1. “Herman Rosenblat, who has acknowledged inventing his story of meeting his wife on opposite sides of a concentration camp fence, told ABC’s Good Morning America that he has no regrets and would tell the story again given another chance.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said during a taped segment aired Wednesday. “It was my imagination, and in my mind, I believed it. Even now, I believe it.”

And guess whose TV program he was on several times? You guessed it! Oprah. Another faked memoir on Oprah. I’m starting to think her producers need to have every memoir author take a lie detector test before he or she can go on the show.

But if Rosenblat believes it, then he’d pass the test. Which makes him what?

2. The Dubai literary festival has banned British author Geraldine Bedell because her novel “contains references to homosexuality”. The book was going to be premiered at the festival, but now it can’t be… obviously.

“It’s ironic because the book is incredibly sympathetic to the Gulf,” said the author. And to Islam, by her account. Bedell’s publisher, Juliet Annan, said: “It’s all very unfortunate. In effect the censor has said they will ban it, which means no book chain can buy it.”

The festival’s Web site invites people to “Join 65 of the world’s leading authors in workshops, discussion groups and book signings at the first event of its kind in the Middle East.”

And what a celebration of creativity it will be.

3.  Neil Gaiman has won The John Newbery Medal - which is the top prize for children’s literature. It’s like a Kiddy Pulitzer, or Nobel Prize for Literature.

Yes, Neil Gaiman. The novel actually sounds charming. At the beginning of the story, a baby boy escapes the person who kills his older sister and his parents. “The boy totters to a decrepit cemetery, where he’s adopted by ghosts, christened Nobody Owens (Bod for short) and given the Freedom of the Graveyard.”

No doubt I’ll read it eventually. I’m just curious what’s happening over at the Newbery offices.

4. And if none of that made your head feel fuzzy…

The life of Anna Nicole Smith is set to become an opera. And not in a tiny theater somewhere. The Royal Opera in Britain is planning the show. You have time to save up because it won’t run until 2011.

Which makes sense because the Aztecs said the world will end in 2012.

Sorry about the title. I couldn’t help myself.

It seems that Ron Howard (movie director, once aka “Opie”) has let out a secret: Dan Brown has finished his latest book.

Yes, “Celebrity television show ‘Entertainment Tonight’ said movie director Ron Howard told the program in an interview that Brown has completed his third book based on the fictional, mystery-solving Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.”

Ron Howard is someone who could possibly know since he has directed both “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons”.  (The movie adaptation of “Angels and Demons” is due out May 15.)

“Late in the day, a spokeswoman for Brown’s publisher Doubleday, would say only that Brown ‘is making great progress,’ stopping short of a full confirmation or denial.”

The working title for the new book has been “The Solomon Key,” is based in Washington, D.C., and centers on the Freemasons… which would be hard to make interesting after the way it’s been over-killed in the past, but we live in hope.

There has been resounding quiet from Dan Brown since the publication of “The Da Vinci Code”. I imagine there’s a lot of pressure if you sell over 70 million copies of a book. Plus, he’s proabably had to do a great deal of research. But can anything live up to “The Da Vinci Code”? It seemed to strike like lightning.

And I’m a little skeptical because of one thing that really bugs me about “Angels & Demons”. The hero should have died on page 500 of the novel. Dead. Gone. No one could have survived what happened. I’m dubious about how they’ll make it work in the film.