Alan Peppard

Fresh from her visit to the Beijing Olympics, first lady Laura Bush popped up in Dallas on Thursday night at a small event on Swiss Avenue for the Texas Book Festival.

She founded the festival in 1995. This year, she is honorary chairman.

Mrs. Bush came to a kick-off party at the Dallas home of Virginia and Bob Dupuy, where a small crowd assembled for the unveiling of the 2008 festival poster with art by David Bates.

Among those present were festival board member and former U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins as well as local thriller author (and past festival author) Harry Hunsicker.

Dallas literary agent David Hale Smith is doing big business in crime fiction. When he read his author Duane Swierczynski's new novel, Severance Package, David thought, "Now there's a great plot for a movie."

Folks in the movie biz thought so, too. David and his partner, Angela Cheng Caplan, just negotiated the book's sale to Lions Gate Studios with a big perk for their client – he gets to co-write the adaptation, for which he gets another big check. Marc Platt (Wanted, Legally Blonde) is producing.

Severance Package is about a corporate media relations director who learns that the firm where he works is a front for a covert intelligence agency that is being shut down. Every manager is scheduled to be terminated – literally.

David calls Mr. Swierczynski his "multisport star, a literary Deion Sanders." In addition to writing nonfiction books, crime novels and now, his first screenplay, Mr. Swierczynski also writes comic books. David negotiated a big contract this year for Mr. Swierczynski to write exclusively for Marvel Comics, where he has been producing stories featuring the X-Men character Cable. He made his comics debut with a one-shot story for the Marvel character The Punisher.

Texas favorite Jerry Jeff Walker has a rabid fan base known as the Tried & True Warriors, some of whom were in the audience on July 24 when he recorded a performance for XM Radio's X Country satellite channel.

Jerry Jeff played solo for a crowd in XM's Washington, D.C., studio.

X Country (that's Channel 12) will broadcast the show on Aug. 25 at 6 p.m.

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