Perhaps the Most Meaningful Contract I’ve Ever Signed

Posted on December 3, 2021January 3, 2022 by Sally Wiener Grotta

I’m thrilled to announce that I recently signed a contract with the playwright David Zarko, giving him the rights to produce a play based on Honor, a novella by Daniel Grotta. I can’t imagine any other contract feeling so right to me, helping to firm up Daniel’s legacy.

Honor is a story about the fragility and power of the human heart. It explores the terrible toll paid when patriotism, personal ethics and the deep bond of friendship collide.

Next step on the road to production: a staged reading in New York City, hopefully later this year.

“Honor” a Novella by Daniel Grotta Comes Alive in the Reading of a Play by David Zarko

Posted on May 24, 2021November 8, 2021 by Sally Wiener Grotta

This Saturday afternoon was an event that I have been looking forward to for a long time, and it was years in the making: a Zoom reading of David Zarko’s play based on Daniel Grotta’s novella Honor.

I wasn’t the only audience member with tears in my eyes throughout the performance, and that wasn’t unexpected. Readers of Daniel’s small book have long reported how soulful and emotional the story is. Hardened, street-wise individuals have written me (and when he was alive, Daniel) that Honor made them openly cry, even in public.

Honor is the story of Jeff Smith who, as his bully of a brother-in-law Gene Engelhardt is fond of retelling, is “what the cat dragged in.” He’s a scruffy, bearded hippie who Gene’s sister Bonnie fell in love with decades ago, after meeting at a Washington peace rally against the Vietnam War. Even shaved and doing whatever the Engelhardts wanted, his in-laws never accepted or approved of Jeff. Now, Jeff is saddled with a family, a dead-end job, and, after Bonnie died of cancer, a mountain of debt. Read More

They Called Us “Team Grotta”

Posted on May 19, 2016June 20, 2018 by Sally Wiener Grotta

They called us Team Grotta.

I’m not sure which editor first gave Daniel and me that nickname. When we were long-time Contributing Editors at PC Magazine, I remember being pleasantly surprised when various people started referring to us as Team Grotta. It came so naturally to their lips that we felt that they had been using the term for a while. Perhaps it had developed organically, put forward in staff meetings and in office discussions. “Why don’t we put Team Grotta on that project?” or “Ask Team Grotta, they’ll figure it out.”

Not that it was exclusively a PC Magazine thing. Other editors and clients took it up, as did conference and workshop organizers and, eventually, readers.

When I look back, I sometimes feel that Daniel and I were the last to hear the sobriquet. But we were delighted when we realized what a nice compliment it was to who we were professionally and personally, how well we worked together and how others had learned to depend on us.

Team Grotta. I’ll never know if it spread out virally from one person’s dubbing of the two of us as a single well-tuned entity. Or was it an outgrowth of the nature of our relationship which was evident to anyone who saw us together? Heck, a number of years ago, a young couple with whom we used to square dance told us that their toddler son thought that “DanielSally” was one name. Read More

Memories & Dreams: Looking Back, Stepping into the Future

Posted on December 18, 2013May 1, 2018 by Sally Wiener Grotta

Memories and dreams
Life intangible
Life imagined
What we hold
In our minds
In our hearts
As we stand Janus-like
At the cusp of the year.

Life lived back to back
Supportive, protective
Opening ourselves
To beyond the now
Remembering the past
Stepping into the future
To whatever comes
Together.

Poem (c) by Sally Wiener Grotta

How appropriate that the symbol of the new year is Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions and endings, of time past and to come. We imagine that he will stand at once more at the stroke of midnight as 2013 ends and 2014 begins, with one face gazing into what has come before, while the other focuses, dreamy eyed, onto the future.

Looking back on the past twelve months of our lives, the view is so very different from what it was as we experienced it. Sally likes to say that the defining aspect of our personal and professional world is creative chaos. She has that right. Every morning we’re awaken by Watson, our Golden Retriever, to a new adventure, never knowing what will happen that day, or how much of our ever-growing ToDo list will get done. At night, as we fall into our bed, we are certain that we got very little done.

Yet, as we gaze Janus-like at 2013, we are surprised at all that has happened in the long run, as we simply did our best to live each day fully. Here are some of the highlights of 2013 in the Wiener Grotta household.

OUR HERO

One of our proudest moments of the year was when our Dad, Noel J. Wiener, was honored for his service in WWII, as the last remaining officer of SHAEFheadquarters. That was General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Europe.Read More

The Story Behind the Story of Black Bear, Pennsylvania

Posted on September 17, 2013May 1, 2018 by Sally Wiener Grotta

This week, I was invited by Chrissy at Every Free Chance to recount how Daniel and I create and work in our shared fantasy world of Black Bear, Pennsylvania, where we both are setting novels and stories.

“Welcome to Black Bear, Pennsylvania. Similar to so many small towns you’ve known, driven through or possibly even lived in, Black Bear has a Main Street dotted with local businesses (active and defunct). Marge at Good Taste whips up the best hot fudge sundae you’ll ever have. Buck’s has been spruced up and modernized in recent years, and is now a franchised supermarket (though not as super as those you’d find in big city or suburban shopping centers). Grampa Schmoyer’s drugstore was driven out of business by the Rite-Aid that opened up in nearby Hamlin, about fifteen years ago. It’s now a charity consignment shop, run by the two local churches and the tiny new synagogue. And the old elementary school, where “everyone’s” grandparents went, is a boarded up derelict building where kids are warned not to venture. Schoolchildren are now bussed out of town….”

To read the rest of this essay about Daniel’s and my creative relationship and our personal writing processes, click here: The Grottas’ Literary Folie aux Deux .

Collaboration & Marriage: Strange Bedfellows?

Posted on February 14, 2013May 1, 2018 by Sally Wiener Grotta

“Team Grotta” (Daniel Grotta & Sally Wiener Grotta)

Reprinted from Book Dude Blog (which apparently is no longer an active blog).

Intro: Daniel Grotta and Sally Wiener Grotta are long-time collaborators who happen to also be a married couple. They’ve written literally thousands of articles, columns and reviews for scores of major magazines, newspapers and online publications. In addition, they’ve co-authored numerous non-fiction books. This means they live and work together 24/7. Of course, they argue; they’re married. Not over the “usual” trivia (taking out the trash, money or whatever) but about split infinitives and Harvard commas. Gluttons for punishment, even when they go their separate ways, writing their fiction independently, they still edit and advise each other. And now, they’re stealing each other’s characters and places, as they dip into a shared fantasy of fictional locales and characters, to create their very separate stories set in the made-up village of Black Bear, Pennsylvania. The first two Black Bear, PA stories are Honor a novella by Daniel Grotta, which was published last summer, and Jo Joe a novel by Sally Wiener Grotta ,which will be published this May.

What’s remarkable is that both their marriage and their professional reputations have not only survived, but thrived. How do they do it?

Sally: Daniel, these folks want to know how we can work together and still remain happily married.

Daniel: Not now, Sally. I’m busy.

Sally: Okay, when?

Daniel: About 15 minutes

Precept #1: Just because you’re ready to discuss a crucial point doesn’t mean your partner is. Make appointments and keep them, as though you are strangers working together.

15 minutes pass

Daniel: Okay, Sally, now what is it you wanted to talk about?

Sally: How does our marriage survive our partnership? Or, vice versa.Read More