The Northern California Booksellers Association names its 2008 Book Award finalists — and will pick the winners April 19.

Vroman’s is giving away a pair of tickets to ride on the bookstore bus to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA on Saturday, April 25.

Mary McNamara kicks off the Times’ fictional serial today. Carolyn Kellogg explains, “In `Money Walks,’ each short chapter will be written by a different Los Angeles novelist, including Jerry Stahl, Marissa Silver, Seth Greenland, Denise Hamilton and Aimee Bender. Mary McNamara promises she’ll wrap it all up April 24.”

Edward Humes, the author ofEco Barons: The Dreamers, Schemers and Millionaires Who are Saving Our Planet, fires back at Times car guy Dan Neil for using a book review for “his own class warfare rant about the rich.”

Ellen Sussman has an essay in the just-published collection, Because I Love Her: 34 Writers Write about the Mother/Daughter Bond, edited by Andrea N. Richesin. “My piece,” Ellen says, “is about the vast differences between the world of my childhood and that of my daughters — and what got lost, what got found, along the way.”

Wil Wheaton pens an ode to Print on Demand publishing.

Frances Dinkelspiel shares a roundup of Bay Area writers with new books.

Derek Powazek says , “There has never been a better time to be making media.”

Firoozeh Dumas finds new fans in another California city: . Carlsbad is reading her Funny in Farsi this month.