Interview: Gail Jones

Today in January Magazine, contributing editor Summer Block interviews Gail Jones, author of 2004’s Sixty Lights and, more recently, Sorry, which opens with the murder of a white anthropologist in Australia.

“The attack is witnessed by a white girl and her Aboriginal friend,” writes Block. “The Aboriginal girl takes the blame, while the white girl forgets the traumatic event, an allegory for Australia’s own troubled past concerning “the stolen generations” of Aboriginal children forcibly taken from their homes by the Australian government between 1910 and 1970.” Says Block:

The author of four novels that combine elements of photography, cinema and painting, Australian Gail Jones could well be considered a multimedia artist. Her literary work is highly visual, a carefully constructed montage of visceral images whose pacing owes much to her love of film.

The interview is here.

New this Week: Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

Though authors are frequently reluctant to talk about where they get their ideas, (“A post office box in Schenectady.”) when discussing his 11th novel, Skeletons at the Feast (Shaye Areheart Books), Chris Bohjalian (The Double Bind, Midwives) has been very forthcoming.

About a decade ago, a friend asked him to read his German grandmother’s newly translated diary. “Usually,” writes Bohjalian, “this sort of request is a novelist’s worst nightmare. Most family histories are dull as toast and badly written.”

But it was a good friend and, in any case, Bohjalian discovered much of the diary to be fascinating reading, including “passages that chronicled 1945 and Eva’s family’s arduous trek west ahead of the Soviet Army -- a journey that was always grueling and often terrifying.” But it didn’t move him to take up the pen.

Eight years later, however, “I read Max Hastings’s history of the last year of the war in Germany, Armageddon, and I was struck by how often the anecdotes in Hasting’s nonfiction account mirrored moments in that diary.” He asked to read that diary again and it was then “that I began to imagine a novel and started to research the period.”

Bohjalian is careful to let us know that Skeletons at the Feast is a fully fictionalized and wholly imagined work. Still it’s lovely hearing about the lightbulb moment for this novel that we’ll be hearing a lot about over the next couple of weeks.

Excerpt: Lust in Translation by Pamela Druckerman

Today in January Magazine, an excerpt of Lust in Translation: Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee by former journalist Pamela Druckerman:

The morning after François Mitterrand's funeral, a photo showed the late president's mistress and illegitimate daughter standing by his grave alongside his wife and sons. That tableau has become famous internationally as proof that the French are uniquely tolerant of extramarital affairs.

In fact, although French presidents seem to have an infidelity record approaching 100 per cent, ordinary Frenchmen claim to be quite faithful. In a 2004 national survey, just 3.8 per cent of married men and 2 per cent of women said they had had more than one sex partner in the past year (the best approximation of infidelity) -- fewer than in similar surveys in the U.S. and the U.K.

If France isn't the world capital of adultery, which country is? I set off around the world to find out.

See the full excerpt of Pamela Druckerman’s Lust in Translation here.

M Is for Magic by Neil Gaiman

Even if you’ve never read any of Neil Gaiman’s delightful fiction, you might have seen the film adaptation of Stardust, which did justice to the novel and has been compared to The Princess Bride.

M Is for Magic (HarperCollins) is a collection of mostly previously published short stories aimed at younger readers -- teenagers, really, rather than children, as the style of most of them is closer to adult than child. Four of the stories were published in the anthology Smoke and Mirrors. Others were also previously published. One of them is a chapter from a forthcoming novel.

In an introduction, the author explains the title as having been inspired by Ray Bradbury’s younger-reader anthologies, which had such names as R Is For Rocket and S Is For Space. This is appropriate because a number of the stories have a definite flavour of Bradbury. One of them, “October in the Chair,” is actually dedicated to Bradbury, but “The Witch’s Headstone,” which is the chapter from Gaiman’s forthcoming novel, The Graveyard Book, has the feel of Bradbury’s stories about the Family. In it, a young boy has been brought up and taught in a graveyard by ghosts and even a vampire. The stories range from the scary, such as “The Price,” in which the family cat has been fighting the Devil to protect his owners, to the deliciously silly, such as “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” in which two inexperienced teenage boys turn up at the wrong party only to find out that all the girls there actually do come from another planet. There’s “Chivalry,” from Smoke and Mirrors, in which an old lady finds the Holy Grail in a second-hand shop. A young knight comes to ask for its return, but it looks so nice on the mantelpiece…

If you want an introduction to the short fiction of Neil Gaiman, this is a good place to start, and teens or children who are good readers should find it enjoyable.

Review: Dark Wraith of Shannara by Terry Brooks

Today in January Magazine’s SF/F section, contributing editor Lincoln Cho reviews Dark Wraith of Shannara by Terry Brooks. Says Cho:

Terry Brooks, the “godfather of American fantasy” has referred to Dark Wraith of Shannara as “the grand experiment.” It’s not difficult to see why. It’s a brand new story set in the distant future world of Shannara that tells the multi-generational story of the Ohmsford family. Though Brooks has set work outside of Shannara, it is these for which he is best known, as well as being what famed publisher Lester del Rey scooped out of the slush pile in the form of The Sword of Shannara, published in 1977. That was about 21 million copies of American-published Terry Brooks novels ago.

Thirty years later, it’s exciting to see this grand master of the genre trying his hand at something that is, for him, entirely new with a graphic novel.

The full review is here.

New Yesterday: Notes on a Life by Eleanor Coppola

Squint your eyes a bit and this is a book by any talented writer musing on her well-spent life thus far. Connecting characters from her distant past with figures from her near past and drawing them with a steady hand and a poetic heart. It’s all good stuff.

Many lives are rich and hold deep wells of experience and emotion to mine, and often it’s enough. However Eleanor Coppola’s Notes on a Life (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) adds another layer because, with your eyes out of their squint, you see this isn’t just any ol’ garden variety talented writer. This is Eleanor Coppola -- yes, that Coppola -- and thus her internal mining is studded with encounters with people and faces we already know. Marlon said this. Frank said that. Wasn’t Sofia darling when she did that? All of these things add to the book. Take it to another even richer place.

An artist’s view of life. A filmmaker’s view of a life spent in film. A mother’s comment, joy and lament. Notes on a Life could easily have been just another celebrity bio but it is so, so much more. In fact, it’s never that at all.

Writing in Downward Dog

Many of us -- perhaps most -- wouldn’t think to lump yoga and creative writing together. For Jeff Davis, the connection came somewhat naturally when, as a writing teacher, he found himself pushed to his physical and emotional limits. According to Davis, he added a very basic yoga regime into his day to help him deal with the physical stresses of his work. To his surprise, regular yoga practice helped release his muse which led (more or less directly and perhaps not so startlingly, since this is a writing teacher) to him writing a book to help others get to the yoga writing special place in the same way he had.

Now revised and expanded, Davis’ The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing (Monkfish Publishing) is intended to help writers “forge a deeper connection with their muse through the use of simple yoga practices,” and other cool stuff. From the publisher:

Through the processes Davis suggests, writers gain the authentic insights needed to deepen their concentration, increase their self-discipline and bring new life to their writing. At once inspirational and instructional, The Journey from the Center to the Page artfully illustrates how yoga philosophies and practices can be an invaluable ally to the writing life.

If you’re already stuck in downward dog, this might be one to check out.

Jane Smiley on Eight Belles

Like a lot of people, I was heartbroken to see the tragic end the lovely filly Eight Belles came to in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby. I won’t go into it in any detail here, it’s not the place -- though I sobbed a bit about it on my personal blog a few hours after the race -- but I did want to point you at Pulitzer Prize-winning (for 1992’s A Thousand Acres) novelist Jane Smiley’s take on the matter in The New York Times:

This is what we saw in Eight Belles: she was more resolute and competitive than was good for her, and she literally ran herself to death. When the race was finished, every part of her was exhausted, including, I am sure, the support apparatus of ligaments and tendons that were keeping her bones together. She probably stumbled and broke one ankle, then stepped hard on the other and broke that one. Then she fell.

But Big Brown was the other half of the equation. Big Brown looks to be a truly exceptional horse -- exceptionally strong and exceptionally competitive, possibly the Secretariat of our day. When Eight Belles decided she wasn’t going to give up, she risked herself more than she would have with a lesser horse -- and in general, male horses are stronger than female horses, which is why so few fillies run in the Derby.

Smiley goes on to offer a brief, expert and eloquent assessment of American-style horse racing. If the tragedy that grew from the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby was something that moved you, don’t miss Smiley’s piece.

Want more horse sense from Smiley? Try her 2004 memoir, A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck (Knopf) or her wonderful 2000 novel, Horse Heaven (Knopf).

Review: The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, contributing editor David Thayer reviews The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr. Says Thayer:

Atmosphere is one of the hallmarks of the classic thriller, an aspect of suspense that is all too often sacrificed from the recipe for modern-day thrillers. Alex Carr -- a pseudonym used by Virginia novelist Jenny Siler (Flashback, Shot) -- wants to remind her readers that mystery can be found in the most ordinary places, where her characters suddenly find themselves prisoners of circumstance.

In the opening scene of The Prince of Bagram Prison, a Moroccan woman named Manar gives birth. The baby is removed and Manar is sent to a camp in the desert, having been judged guilty of joining an anti-government demonstration. Manar is a victim of the Years of Lead, a 1960s-1980s pogrom under Morocco’s King Hassan II that targeted democracy activists.

Now flash ahead to the present. A young Moroccan boy known as Jamal is working for American Intelligence in Madrid, Spain. Jamal is an orphan from Casablanca, who wants his handlers to believe he has information vital to American interests. In most ways, Jamal is an ordinary teenage boy, eager for a better life. However, he was formerly held at the U.S.-operated Bagram internment facility outside of Kabul, Afghanistan, and released only when he mentioned the name of a wanted terrorist. The boy puts himself in play until his American contact retires. A scandal is about to envelope Jamal in a deadly effort to cover up the torture of prisoners interred at Bagram.

The full review is here.

Books You Just Don’t Want to Know About

Lately it seems like every few days there’s a new crop of books announced that make you roll your eyes and pledge to avoid them. At the very least, they make you groan. Last week, the groaners for us were the prospect of Mylie Cyrus’ “memoir” and “rehab singer” Amy Winehouse’s (ahem) marriage manual.

In another groaner, we announced that Chuck Norris had been contracted to write a book about the time he spent on a bus with (then) presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. A few days later, Huckabee announced his own book, but by then we were so sick of hearing about him, we didn’t bother passing it on. (I mean, there’s who cares and then there’s who cares. In this case, I couldn’t make myself care enough to move fingers to type the story. I have a feeling that by the time that book appears, sales will reflect my apathy. Call that a crystal ball prediction. We’ll see how it all turns out.)

All of this is taking us pretty far from this week’s Books You Just Don’t Want to Know About. Ready? I knew you would be.

First up, you have this to look forward to:

A little more than a month after New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced his resignation, Penguin Group imprint Portfolio will be publishing a book about his career “from start to finish,” president and publisher Adrian Zackheim told CNN.

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned from office in March, saying he wants to “atone for his personal failings.”

But here’s my favorite part:

Peter Elkind, editor-at-large at Fortune and author of a 2005 profile of the governor called “Satan or Savior?” in that magazine, will be collaborating with filmmaker Alex Gibney to produce a book and documentary which will be released together, according to Penguin spokeswoman Allison McLean.

So maybe I’m a little slow on the update, but are they calling the book Satan or Savior? Or From Start to Finish? Either would work pretty well. (And I do loathe titles that include punctuation. CNN has the whole skinny here, but everyone is talking about this one right now.

Now here is something completely different. It’s pretty subjective. I mean, I don’t want to know about this book, because I’m not so big on babies. If tiny humans are of interest to you, this may well be one you’ll care about. For the rest of us? Not so much.

Gurgle.com, a new mother and baby social networking site, which claims to be the UK’s first, is set to launch a series of books on parenting with publishing house HarperCollins.

Due to be published in spring 2009, the series of three paperback books aim to combine educational articles from the site with user-generated information.

Another from the blog-to-book department. Two, really:

A mere month after a book based on popular website Stuff White People Like was sold to Random House for a rumored $350k comes word of another blog-to-print deal. Postcards From Yo Momma, a website that runs user-submitted e-mails and chat transcripts from real moms, is being turned into a hardcover work of literature by the people at Hyperion, publishing next April.

And while both of these sound kinda fun (no babies!) I’m at a bit of a loss to understand why these high dollar deals are being made over what is basically reworked blog content. I mean, it sounds pretty good in theory, right? Clever content, wide established readership, yada yada yada. But unless my memory is playing tricks on me, this has been done before (and done and done) without a great deal of success. No crystal ball on this one, though. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Children’s Books: “Girlfriend Fiction” 3 & 4

The first two books in Allen & Unwin’s “Girlfriend series,” My Life and Other Catastrophes by Rowena Mohr and The Indigo Girls by Penni Russon, were perfectly good teen fiction that would have worked without those hearts on the covers. The new books are more like the kind of fiction the covers suggest, except that things happen in them that you would never have found in fiction aimed at very young women and older girls back in the 1980s: especially Kate Constable’s Always Mackenzie.

She’s With The Band by Georgia Clark is the story of Mia Mannix. Mia has moved to Sydney from the small Snowy Mountains town where she had lived with her father, a famous artist. She has promised him faithfully to drop the music and concentrate on her art, in exchange for the move. Of course, she doesn’t keep the promise for long. Not with a battle of the bands and two new friends. After all, she’s at a school for the arts, like the one in Fame, except nearly everyone is snooty and unpleasant, all of them wealthy because they or their parents are famous.

And there are boys. A few pages in, we meet the boy who is clearly going to be the one Mia ends up with, but she spends the book picking the wrong boys. Needless to say, it’s happily ever after and she learns her lesson. This book reads like a teen soap, which is fair enough since the author works for a popular Australian teen soapie, so it will probably do well. Girls will like it, though it has a gay character, something that tells you this is the 21st century and teen fiction has changed. Teenagers haven’t, though; “That’s so gay,” is still an insult in most schools.

Always Mackenzie, by fantasy writer Kate Constable, starts as a standard teen friendship story. Girls will understand it because their own lives are full of friends and enemies and wondering why your friend has suddenly stopped talking to you... Nerdy Jem meets popular Mackenzie Woodrow at camp. They make friends. Jem is gradually losing touch with her closest friends, for reasons unconnected with Mackenzie.

Jem finds joy in her new friendship. And then, suddenly, Mackenzie stops talking to her, for no reason she can fathom, and those bitchy girls with whom Mackenzie hangs out become even bitchier.

Well, there’s a kiss on the last page all right, but not the kind teenage girls generally expect in a book with hearts on the cover. Whether this will appeal to the average girl or embarrass her I don’t know. There’s a lot of truth in all that girl angst in the course of the book, but what readers will think of the ending, I’m not sure. Kate Constable is a brave woman -- but this is the 21st century, after all. We can only wish her well.

Children’s Books: Sunny Side Up by Marion Roberts

Sunny Side Up (Allen & Unwin) is Marion Roberts’ first novel. It is gentle and humorous and sad all at once. For me, personally, it has the added pleasure of being set in the Melbourne suburb where I live. I recognize the places described and can assure you that they’re real, as are some of the shops mentioned.

Eleven-year-old Sunday -- mostly known as “Sunny” -- lives with her mother and their dog Willow in a seaside suburb of Melbourne. Every Friday, she and her friend Claud -- short for Claudia -- make pizza and deliver it to regular customers. Not just any pizza, of course -- gourmet pizza! Their business, Pizza-A-Go-Girl, is doing well and has just expanded to include deliveries to the uncle of that awful Buster Conroy.

Now Claud seems to be making friends with Buster, Sunny’s mother has announced that her boyfriend and his children are moving in (Ouch! Brady Bunch stuff!) and Mum still won’t tell her why she isn’t talking to her own mother, Granny Carmelene, who has just sent her first Christmas gift in years.

With all the other stuff happening, Sunny decides to visit her grandmother and, hopefully, discover what’s going on. She doesn’t find out immediately, but she does find out why Granny Carmelene has made contact after all these years and it’s rather poignant. By the end of the book, we find out Buster’s problems and he becomes another friend.

This is well worth a read and should suit children in late primary school or early secondary. Marion Roberts should do very well as a children’s writer and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Calling All Comic Book Artists

Between now and the end of May, Platinum Studios -- “an entertainment company that controls an international library of more than 5,600 comic book characters which it adapts, produces and licenses for all forms of media”-- invites would-be comic book artists to submit entries for the 2008 Comic Book Challenge.

Once submissions close, an internal team will select the Top 50 who will move on to pitch their ideas to a panel of celebrity, comic book, and entertainment industry judges on July 24th, during the 2008 Comic-Con International in San Diego, CA. Fans across the globe will then have their chance to settle the debate by voting online for their favorite entry. The Challenge winner will receive a coveted publishing deal along with the chance to see their concept developed across multiple platforms including film, television, and digital.

2008 marks the third Comic Book Challenge:

Past Comic Book Challenge successes include DJ Coffman’s 2006 winner, “Hero By Night,” which sold out through Diamond Comics Distributors during its first print and is now an ongoing series in its second volume, and 2006 finalist, Megan Rose Gedris, who’s “I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space” will appear at comics retailers May 2008. Top 50 finalist Axel Medellin has been hired as an artist for Platinum Studios, while Jorge Vega’s 2007 winning entry, “Gunplay,” dropped in the retail stores as a full graphic novel this past April.

The Comic Book Challenge Web site is here. You can visit Platinum Studios here.

Billionaire Bloomberg Will Offer Business Advice

This one is going to be huge. Let’s face it: he’s extremely successful and very visible. A combination that’s a no-brainer bestseller in a business book. Reuters offers the details:

New York’s billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg will offer business and political advice in a book entitled “Do the Hard Things First” due out in September, the publisher said on Tuesday.

The book, written in collaboration with Margaret Carlson, is subtitled “(And Other Bloomberg Rules for Business and Politics)” and will be published by Vanguard Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group.

And though this is a nice thought, he’s a billionaire so, you know, yeah:

Bloomberg plans to donate all proceeds from the book to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, he said in a statement.

Reuters has the whole story here. The New York Sun has plenty to say here. The New York Times blog chimes in here.

Author Snapshot: Barbara Fister

Anyone who knows Barbara Fister even slightly is not in the least surprised to discover that her novels are smart, sophisticated and deeply concerned with the larger world. In many ways, all of those words -- smart, sophisticated, concerned -- describe the Madison-born and Minnesota-based author perfectly.

An academic librarian at a liberal arts college, on her own Web site, Fister says her “research interests are wide, not to say idiosyncratic, but they all have to do, one way or another, with how various media shape our understanding of the world.”

These interests -- and even passions – inform Fister’s work. “I’m particularly interested [in] the role of anxiety in the formation of social issues,” says Fister, “in life and in fiction.”

In her second novel, Fister says she is exploring “how anxiety becomes a device for the suppression of dissent in In the Wind.” The book draws parallels between the contemporary insouciance regarding civil liberties and the counterintelligence practices of the era around the Vietnam War. Fister herself tells us that she would “like to think I’m contributing my small part toward carrying on the feminist contribution to the PI genre.” And, sure: there’s that. But there’s so much more here, as well.


A Snapshot of Barbara Fister...

Born: Madison, Wisconsin
Resides: Rural Minnesota, US
Birthday: I’m 53. I’m not big on birthdays.
Web site: barbarafister.com


Please tell us about In the Wind.
The book draws on the resonance between the present state of our civil liberties and the excesses of law enforcement during the Vietnam War era.

A woman who has been working quietly in a church on Chicago’s West Side goes on the lam, accused of having killed an FBI agent in 1972, when she was a member of a radical offshoot of the American Indian Movement. The narrator of the story, Anni Koskinen, has recently resigned from the Chicago PD after getting on the wrong side of her fellow cops, and is not quite sure what to do with herself; her only job so far as newly licensed PI has been tracking down a teenage girl with bipolar disorder. By happenstance, Anni helps the fugitive escape, then gets involved in her defense -- which is tricky because her closest friend is not only an FBI agent himself, but the son of the murdered man. But even he is unhappy with the way the FBI is handling the case, and is troubled by the direction the bureau has been heading. Her investigation leads down some mean streets, up to the White Earth Reservation, into the past -- and, of course, into a whole lot of trouble. Which, when all’s said and done, is her business.

I had to reach for the smelling salts when Kris Nelscott, whose Smokey Dalton series is one I’ve long admired, read the book and said I was “Sara Paretsky’s heir apparent.” I’m sure Paretsky is too busy writing to think about heirs, but I like to think I’m contributing my small part toward carrying on the feminist contribution to the PI genre.

What’s on your nightstand?
A lovely big pile of books, including Minette Walter’s The Chameleon’s Shadow and Andrew Pyper’s Wildfire Season.

What inspires you?
I get my dander up about a lot of things, and writing is a good outlet. In the Wind was a therapeutic way to deal with my negative feelings about George Bush. It was strange, as I did research for the story, to read about counterintelligence practices exposed after Watergate; they’re identical to what’s going on today. When Chris Dodd read from the 1976 Church Committee hearings this past December on the floor of the Senate as he filibustered a bill sanctioning warrantless wiretapping, it sent chills up my spine. We’re in a weird time warp; the only thing missing is the outrage and the tear gas. That said, though my book has political themes, I try to play fair with the issues. Anything less would belittle the very real issues at stake, and straw men don’t make for very compelling characters in fiction.

What are you working on now?
My next book deals with the immigration debate and the aftermath of an exoneration. A black man who has spent 20 years in prison, convicted in a highly-publicized rape case, is released after his conviction is overturned. The woman who is raped wants to know who was really responsible -- especially once she discovers that several women have been attacked since in similar circumstances. Anni Koskinen starts to investigate just as another highly-charged crime is stirring passions in Chicago, when an undocumented alien is arrested for the murder of a young woman who had been missing for months. As with In the Wind, what really interests me is the way in which general social anxiety shapes the way people respond to crime, and how that anxiety is manipulated for various ends. While it sounds as if I’m on a soapbox, I’m not: I just think this stuff makes for compelling stories.

Tell us about your process.
I’m what someone at Crimespace evocatively called a “fog walker.” I can’t map out a story in advance, I have to discover it as I go groping along. I’m sure it would be more efficient to work from an outline, but I just can’t do it. If I can see two or three scenes ahead, I’m doing well. Thank god for word processors.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
There’s a cat trying to climb into my lap. He’s jealous of all the time my laptop spends there.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
When I was in fifth grade I wrote a story about a horse that was a whole eight pages long. I was very impressed with myself.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
I would be reading them. (Which I do, anyway.) I have a job I like quite a bit -- as an academic librarian and college teacher. I enjoy writing fiction, but I fit it in when I can. I feel a little guilty saying this, because I know how many people’s fondest desires are caught up in the identity “writer.” For me, it’s something I love to do, but it’s not who I am.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
That’s a very interesting question, actually. You’d think it would be when my agent closed the deal on my first book, in a preempt the day after he put it on the market. But that was both unreal and fraught with anxiety. I hate having my hands shake every time the phone rings. It may sound corny, but my happiest moments are when I write a scene that really works. There’s no anxiety involved, no regrets, no ambition to be someone other than who I am; just pure satisfaction.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being a writer?
Hmm, I’m beginning to visualize Gabriel Byrne sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room asking me these questions as he tents his hands in front of him. “Being a writer” is a phrase that makes me oddly nervous. I guess I’m only comfortable with it as a verb: to write, not as a descriptive noun: a writer. I write. That’s easy.

What’s the most difficult? Avoiding the hype and hysteria about how to market yourself. I see so much unhappiness among people who act like stage mothers to their inner child. That’s no way to treat a kid.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
I don’t get many questions about it; not that many people know I write mysteries.

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
Read any good books lately?

What question would you like never to be asked again?
What do you think of my book trailer? (Or any other marketing topic.) Look, Doc, I’ll level with you: I think capitalism, which celebrates greed as a virtue and separates us all into winners and losers, like some cosmic American Idol show, appeals to our worst nature and fosters intolerance and inequality. Too much bad energy is generated around books as product and authors as brands, and none of it actually benefits readers. It’s gotten so bad that writers go on discussion lists to chide people for checking books out of libraries. It would be much more beneficial to think about developing a healthy book culture than to focus so much on selling ourselves. I think my inner librarian is coming out.

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
Well, quite a few people know this, since I wrote about it in an article that got picked up at Slashdot (“News for Nerds”), but I’m a self-disclosed anarchist librarian -- which is not an oxymoron. In reality, libraries are a model of anarchist philosophy. They are full of ideas that coexist side by side, even though they disagree with one another. You may think we’re creating order, but actually we put all those books together so they can have a good brawl. No single authority gets to decide which answers are the right ones. Anyone who comes in the door gets to make up his or her own mind. When it comes to crime fiction, two of Ranganathan’s laws of library science, first laid out in 1931, provide a model of tolerance: every reader his book, every book, its reader. Forget the bestseller lists and the hype -- just be open-minded, look for the unusual voices that speak to you, find the right match, and all will be well.

Is our time up already? I must say, I feel much better. This therapy seems to be working.

The Stone Angel to Open at a Theater Kinda Near You

Though it opened at both the Vancouver and Toronto Film Festivals last year, I’m still stoked about the May 9th Alliance Films limited release of Kari Skogland’s film adaptation of The Stone Angel by Canadian author Margaret Laurence (1926-1987). From the Alliance Web site:

Based on the best-selling novel by Margaret Laurence, The Stone Angel is the story of feisty firecracker Hagar Shipley (Christine Horne, Oscar Winner Ellen Burstyn). Her passionate heart has always ruled her head and her choices have put her at odds with family and friends. With her life nearly behind her, she sets out in search of a way to reconcile herself to her turbulent past. Through her reflections we come to know a passionate and rebellious young bride, her love for her two sons, the freedoms she claimed, and the joys she denied herself.

Alliance’s PR-speak sounds as though the film might be a lamed-up version of Laurence’s powerful novel. (I mean “feisty firecracker”? WTF?) You can tell Alliance figures the movie is destined for the arthouse circuit because the Web site tells us The Stone Angel will be “in cinemas” on May 9th.

I love, also, how everyone keeps talking about “Laurence’s best-selling novel.” (They break it up like that too: “best-selling.”) But, check it: the book was published in 1964. Was it a bestseller? Maybe so, but whatever gauges they used to count such things are long gone. The Stone Angel is beyond bestselling. It is important, beloved and, when it isn’t being contested, it is taught in schools.

Kari Skogland is one of Canada’s hottest young directors and was named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2001. Since then she’s put in a lot of miles, including writer/director on 2002’s Liberty Stands Still with Wesley Snipes, Linda Fiorentino and Oliver Platt; director on 2005’s Chicks With Sticks and she is currently in post-production on Fifty Dead Men Walking with Jim Sturgess, Rose McGowan and Ben Kingsley.

But for our purposes, The Stone Angel is the one that matters. Back in October, Variety summed the film up thusly:

A tastefully reverent, fundamentally sincere treatment of Margaret Laurence's 1964 Manitoba-based novel, a staple for Canada’s 12th graders, “The Stone Angel” plays precisely as expected from a incident-laden, multigenerational and metaphorical book crammed into a conventional running time. Local auds may thrill at this visual embodiment of literary treasure, but the story won't resonate elsewhere beyond fests and some ancillary.

But, hell: it’s Laurence, right? It’s Skogland. Someone just tell me where to sign; where to stand.

Meanwhile, check my fangirl stats: here's a review I did of an anniversary republication of The Stone Angel back in 1998. You read that right: a decade ago. Fortunately, the book has changed not at all. That’s the beauty of reviewing classics.

Jack London Honored in Geneva

The 22nd annual salon du livre gets underway in Geneva on Wednesday. This year 120,000 visitors are expected during the five day event. Highlights will include celebrations of Egypt, the canton of St. Gallen, Italy’s Aoste Valley and 19th century American author Jack London.

According to 24 Heures: the 2008 fair “has set aside 100 square meters to exhibit documents and photographs of London (1876-1916), reputed to be the most read author in the world, widely translated in multiple languages, including French. Famous for such books as the Call of the Wild, the California native was a self-taught writer who absorbed knowledge equally from the Oakland Public Library and the rough-and-tumble world of miner’s camps in the Klondike and coastal fish boats in the Pacific Ocean.”

24 Heures reports that the Salon international du livre is a culturally important stop on the European tradeshow circuit:

The 22nd Salon international du livre et de la presse bills itself as the biggest cultural gathering of its kind in Switzerland. Targeted primarily at a French- and German-language audience, it features displays by publishers and book stores, as well as magazines and newspapers, such as the Tribune de Genève.

Review: Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff

Today in January Magazine’s fiction section, contributing editor Diane Leach reviews Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff. Says Leach:

Reading Our Story Begins was often painful, reminding me as it did Wolff’s fellow travelers, Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus, those masters of domestic disaster. Our Story was especially reminiscent of Carver, who mined a similar geographic landscape and counted Wolff as a friend. Not to say that Wolff copies either man; rather, that the three make their business the pain and bewilderment arising between ordinary people, often families. Wolff’s people, like Dubus’ and Carver’s, lead largely unhappy lives of struggle and fear. Some are strapped for cash, while others are plain in over their heads. The stories investigate what they hide in life’s interstices, and what happens when things snap.

The full review is here.

Review: Diego’s Pride by Deborah Ellis

Today in January Magazine’s children’s book section, contributing editor Sue Bursztynski reviews Diego’s Pride by Deborah Ellis. Says Bursztynski:

Deborah Ellis specializes in novels about children in the world’s trouble spots. For example, one of her early novels, Parvana, was about a girl trying to cope with life in Afghanistan just after the Taliban takeover. It was successful and the first of a trilogy.

Diego’s Pride, set in Bolivia in the early 2000s, is also part of a series, the sequel to Diego, Run! I haven’t read the first book, but had no problem following this one. It begins with a “story so far” and then just gets on with the current tale. Quite often, there is a reference to what happened in the previous book, but you don’t have to have read that one to understand the action. There is a handy glossary at the end of the Diego’s Pride, but you can generally work out roughly what the words mean.

The full review is here.

Cookbooks: Grill Every Day and Patio Daddy-O at the Grill

For the busy household with no extra time for fussing in the kitchen, the importance of grilling food can not be overstated. Though it’s possible to spend a lot of time preparing the food that will end up on your grill, as Diane Morgan shows us in Grill Every Day (Chronicle Books), quite often the very best foods are the simplest to prepare.

Take, for example, Lemongrass-Grilled Lamb Loin Chops. Basically, you get the grill hot, massage the chops with pre-prepared lemongrass paste, grill four minutes per side for medium-rare and -- voila -- a meat course for four.

But wait: man (and woman) does not live by meat course alone. There are loads of great vegetable and starch recipes for the grill here, as well. Some of them just as simple. Asparagus Spears would be a natural with those lamb chops. The book has us grab 28 spears, prep as instructed, toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper, grill and -- voila again! -- dinner is served.

Grill Every Day is a great book. Subtitled 125 Fast-Track Recipes for Weeknights at the Grill, the recipes here range from super easy to super, duper impressive and accommodate every taste and food restriction. I’ve seen a lot of grilling books in my time. Grill Every Day ranks with the best of them.

The same can not be said for Patio Daddy-O at the Grill (Chronicle Books) by Gideon Bosker, Karen Brooks and Tanya Supina. A sequel to a seminal food and lifestyle book published in the mid-1990s, Patio Daddy-O at the Grill offers up the same self-conscious cool that the original Patio Daddy-O brought to the table, only now it feels like more of the same: only with fire.

Lines like, “At heart, every guy is a pyromaniac, and the outdoor pit is where you get away with it,” seemed funny in 1996. Now it just seems tired. “Don’t get hung up on designer grills. A grill is just a grill.” Yeah, yeah. You see what I mean?

Ditto the art, which is sharp, well done, yet seems not to have evolved very far from the original. Most painful, I think, is that there has been a cookbook revolution over the last dozen years but you can’t tell from Patio Daddy-O at the Grill. Recipes seem overly wordy and even simple things are much more complicated then they need to be.

If you can work your way through all of that, a few of these recipes are absolutely top-notch. I really love the Tropical Fruit Salsa Tuna Sticks: and they’re not as difficult to prepare as would first appear to be the case. And the Emergency Grilled Pound Cake Extravaganza is very good… you can just call it something else.

Exhibition Celebrates Beauty and History of the Book

Even while modern tech types scramble trying to scan every book in the world, in Australia, an exciting exhibition celebrates the beauty and usefulness of the book in its most traditional forms. The Australian reports:

Unlike the stone tablets and papyrus scrolls that preceded it, the book in its bound form was highly ambitious in the amount of information it could carry. Books could be handed down through generations and passed across borders. Scholars could study them, and missionaries travel with them through barbarian lands to show -- as well as tell -- the word of God.

“As a way of ordering knowledge, understanding knowledge and communicating knowledge, the book is really an extraordinary invention,” says Shane Carmody, director of collections and access at the State Library of Victoria.

In recent months Carmody has been immersed in the world of medieval manuscripts. He is co-curator of the library’s fascinating new exhibition, the Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand. The exhibition, co-curated by eminent art historian Margaret Manion, features more than 90 manuscripts from the 8th to 16th centuries.

The Australian’s piece is here.

Catalog of Digitized Books Grows

Scanning all the books in the world is going to take some time. According to AP:

In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library’s book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helped a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible.

Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Inc.’s Book Search, a portal that will eventually lead users to all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world.

The full piece is here.

Author Snapshot: Sandra Ruttan

Titian hair. A deceptively sweet smile. Arms akimbo. Mystery writer and journalist Sandra Ruttan manages these disparate things easily, seemingly without contradiction.

I say this about Sandra Ruttan the author, but it could all be easily translated to what works about her fiction: Sandra Ruttan looks at things from a connected distance. She assesses dispassionately, beautifully, and with a frighteningly delicate care. And then she brings us along.

With her second novel, What Burns Within (Dorchester), just a few days from publication, the editor of Spinetingler magazine and the heft behind At Central Booking contemplates the path that led her to this place... just remember, please, not to call her Susan.

Crimespree Magazine said this author is “talented in the way that a natural musician is talented, making all the notes seem effortless.” We agree, and hold our breath to see what’s next.


A Snapshot of Sandra Ruttan...

Please tell us about your new novel, What Burns Within.
When I was a baby, my mother was walking in Toronto, with my two-year-old sister by the hand and me in her arms. She lost her grip on my sister, and they got separated. A stranger picked my sister up and took her to a police station. Things like that make you realize it’s down to luck. Anyone could have found my sister, but the person who did was a responsible citizen.

The opening scene for What Burns Within came from there. The book was inspired by a real moment in my life, when I realized that anyone could know I was home alone, but saying more would be a bit of a spoiler. That feeling of vulnerability was the seed, and I started to think about how so many people are at risk, every day, without even realizing it, just like that situation with my sister.

When I worked in education it was my responsibility to anticipate danger and protect the children when we did field trips, and once you start writing crime fiction it isn’t hard to imagine the many ways a person can harm another. It made me think about what could have happened all those years ago.

My ex-husband is also a firefighter, so the three main crimes in What Burns Within -- rape, child abductions and arson -- all came out of personal experience. In the book, three RCMP officers who have a history end up working together when their investigations collide and their personal history may get in the way, with devastating consequences.

What’s on your nightstand?
I’m in the midst of moving and packing, so I don't have a nightstand at the moment. But the books I’m keeping in my suitcase are Paying For It by Tony Black and Russell D. McLean’s The Good son.

What inspires you?
News stories, bits of conversation, personal experiences... everything, in other words.

I was on a plane recently, flying from Dallas to Baltimore, and I ended up sitting beside a woman who does national educational testing in the US. By the end of the flight I had her contact information, a resource Web site link and a new book idea. I do keep an ideas file, but it’s more about technical research and contact information, because I find news stories are sometimes taken down or blocked after a certain period of time. I don’t usually look at anything in the file, unless I need to do research, or get in touch with someone. I just wait to see if the idea takes root and starts growing.

What are you working on now?
A stand-alone book I don't want to say too much about, but it isn’t a police procedural. Although a criminal investigation is a part of the book, the focus is on relationships and the things that happen to a person that shape their life and their choices, and how it leaves their life in ruins.

I am also working on the third book in the Nolan, Hart and Tain series... and in that book readers will finally get the full scoop on the investigation the three were working when they met. It’s a story with intersecting timelines when the past finally catches up with the present.

Tell us about your process.
I usually write in the morning, and in the afternoon, and evening. When I’m working on a book I work seven days a week. I don’t pre-plot, so I keep paper and a pen beside my bed and often write illegible notes in the middle of the night, in the dark. I’m obsessive. That said, I do most of my work on the computer, and it’s almost always entirely freeform, minimal pre-plotting. With What Burns Within, the only thing I knew for sure was the last scene of the book.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
Right this moment, an air hockey table, a plastic child-sized chair, a Hogwarts-designed playroom, my nephew Athaniel talking on the phone to his friend, my two-year-old nephew Dashiell grooving to Tom Waits...

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
As a child, from the time I read The Call of the Wild and The Chronicles of Narnia... I guess around the age of seven.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
Working with children with speech delays, or other special needs.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
There are three moments tied for this spot. One was when I got my Publishers Weekly review and they said, “The child abduction and sex crime aspects of the story are handled without exploitation or kid gloves.” Although I’m dealing with heavy subjects, I don’t just do that to manipulate the reader, and I was pleased the reviewer sensed that I wasn’t trying to exploit the crimes in the book for shock value.

The second moment was when Sean Chercover phoned me after reading The Frailty of the Flesh, the second Nolan, Hart and Tain book [coming November 2008 from Dorchester]. Sean told me he had tears running down his face. I knew then that the book had the strong emotional impact for others that it had for me.

The third was when my boyfriend made a remark about Craig Nolan. It was an off-hand thing, but Brian completely understood the character and sensed where I was ultimately going with him. Since we’d never discussed the character or my long-range plans, it was a great moment. It’s very rewarding when someone gets what you’re trying to do with your work, though it probably speaks to what a close reader Brian is more than anything.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?
The evolution of ideas. I have so many ideas it would take me ten years to write them all if I started on them right now, and I’d be scared to think of how many new ideas I’d develop before I finished the current list.

What’s the most difficult?
The politics, all the expectations people start putting on you, what you can and can’t blog about, can and can’t say in an interview, review, etc. Some seem to think you should stop being a person and just be a product. If I wanted that, wouldn’t I have set my sights on Hollywood? The pay is better. It seems the best way to survive is to be nothing but a smile, have no strong opinion about anything, never take a stand. And that runs counter to my nature. I don’t do wishy-washy.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
Where my ideas come from, I guess, but I don’t mind. Usually something interesting sparked them, and that’s why I wrote the story.

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
What’s the worst piece of writing advice you ever received.

What question would you like never to be asked again?
I appreciate any interest in my work and will answer pretty much any question, but I guess if there’s one question that drives me mental it’s one I get asked in life regularly, not in interviews. For the record I am not related to Susan Ruttan. I don’t know her, I was not on L.A. Law and I don’t find it funny when people call me Susan.

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
I’m sure a few people know that as a child, I had recurring nightmares about Hamburglar.

Cookbooks: Postcards from Portugal by Tessa Kiros

If I were going to dream up a an author of rich and gorgeous cookbooks with international flair, her background would look just like this: I’d have her born in London, for the flavors you can find there. (So many. And from everywhere.) I’d stick needles in a globe and say her mother should be from Finland and her father? Let’s make him a Greek-Cypriot. Then, when she was just a little kid, I’d have the whole family pack and move to… let’s say South Africa, just to blend still more flavors into the mix.

Tessa Kiros is, of course, the author described. She is at an early point in her career. Three previous books have been well received and widely acclaimed: Twelve, Falling Cloudberries and Apples for Jam. But Postcards from Portugal (Whitecap) is showstopping and though we’re only in the four month of 2008, I can’t imagine that it won’t be one of my picks for best of the year.

This is the whole package: a literary visit to a country via wonderful photos, a talented author’s carefully crafted musings and -- most important in a cookbook -- well considered recipes across the full table spectrum -- from essential basics of the cuisine to appetizers to dessert after a wonderful meal -- brilliantly photographed and shared with us in a way that is clear and easy to follow.

Highlights for me: the Coffee Steak is so simple, anyone could prepare it. But the balance of flavors make for a memorable meal, especially with Batatas A Murro (squashed potatoes) on the side. I adored the Gratineed Mussels and think they may well become one of my cocktail party standards. (Elegant, relatively easy and inexpensive, even for a crowd.) And the Tuna or Sardine Pate, which I initially thought fairly bizarre, but now can’t get enough of.

In all ways, Tessa Kiros’ Postcards from Portugal meets my criteria for a truly successful cookbook.

And Then There Was the Time We Ran Out of Toothpaste…

Topping the list of book deals you shouldn’t ought to care about, 15-year-old country popper and famous daughter Mylie Cyrus has inked a deal to write something that sounds very like a memoir. According to The SF Gate:

The “Hannah Montana” star has reportedly signed a seven-figure deal with the Disney Book Group, and will write all about her upbringing in Tennessee and her rise to international stardom.

Collecting the recollections of your lifetime in book form when you’re 15 is just sad. In the first place, well… who cares? And in the second, at 15, even if you’ve done a lot -- really -- what have you done? And, worse, what do you follow it up with? At 21, are you completely washed up and looking over your shoulder at your bat mitzvah going, “Now those were the days!”

Literature might hit even higher heights next year: Amy Winehouse, the performer ANI is calling a “rehab singer,” has reportedly been offered close to two million dollars to talk about her marriage with “imprisoned husband” Blake Fielder-Civil. According to The Boston Herald, Winehouse “is still in talks with Penguin Publishers while Blake, 26, who is incarcerated with little else to do, has already agreed.” (Of course, he’s also reportedly selling topless photos of his bride to support his drug habit, so maybe he does have something else to do, after all.)

Norris Gets Patriotism in Print

Washington, DC’s Regnery Publishing has announced that they will be publishing a book by actor and martial arts expert, Chuck Norris. The actor and some time writer raised eyebrows earlier this year by touring with Mike Huckabee who was, at the time, a Republican presidential hopeful.

Regnery tells us the book, tentatively to be called Black Belt Patriotism “offers more than a cultural critique -- it’s a no-holds-barred assessment of American culture, from family values to national security. Black Belt Patriotism offers a unique perspective on the steps we must take to kick the problems plaguing America, straight from a true American icon.”

Can you say, “Yikes!” (I knew you could.)

According to Regnery, “Norris is the author of two New York Times bestsellers, a philanthropist, martial arts expert, and TV and film actor. Best known for his TV series Walker, Texas Ranger -- Norris toured Iraq in 2006 & 2007, shaking hands & taking pictures with more than 38,000 troops.”

The book will be published this summer.

Author Snapshot: Shanna Swendson

We join the Texas-based author previously known as Samantha Carter at a beautiful moment in her career: Don’t Hex With Texas (Ballantine Books), the fourth novel in her widely acclaimed Enchanted, Inc. series is appearing in bookstores right now and the reviews that have been heralding the way have been sunny and enthusiastic. Last fall, the first book in the series, Enchanted, Inc., has been optioned for film by Universal's Strike Entertainment.

The Enchanted, Inc. books are… well… enchanting. And certainly charming. A small town Texas girl pulls up stakes and moves to the big smoke where she gets a job with a mysterious company called MSI, Inc. Magical high-jinx follow. In a review of Don’t Hex With Texas, Booklist said the Enchanted, Inc. books comprised “one of the best romantic-fantasy series being written today.”


A Snapshot of... Shanna Swendson

Born: Fort Sill, Oklahoma
Reside: Irving, Texas
Birthday: August 7
Web site: shannaswendson.com


Please tell us about your most recent book.
Don’t Hex With Texas is the fourth book in my Enchanted, Inc. series about an entirely unmagical woman who works for a magical corporation.

In this one, the action moves to Katie Chandler’s home town, which means that for a change, she’s not the fish out of water. I had a lot of fun making odd magical stuff happen in a small Texas town.

What’s on your nightstand?
A towering pile of partially read books that I’ll get back to someday and read, books that need to be reshelved that’s someday going to topple and kill me, a telephone, alarm clock, earplugs (I have noisy neighbors) and a flashlight (it’s thunderstorm season).

But if you mean what am I reading now, well, I just started reading Pyramids by Terry Pratchett, but it’s on the floor by my bed instead of on my nightstand because the nightstand is where books go to die (or wait to be re-shelved).

What inspires you?
Just about everything inspires me. I like playing games of what-if, taking things too literally, fixing things that I feel were done wrong in another story, trying to see what I can get away with. Most of my story ideas seem to come from me being a brat.

What are you working on now?
I just started playing with a new idea, and I’m way too early in the process to have the slightest idea of whether or not it will go anywhere, so I’m a little hesitant to talk about it.

Tell us about your process.
My process seems to change with each book. Each one has its own rhythm. I write on a computer (because if I wrote by hand, I’d never be able to read it), and usually in the late afternoon or at night. I seem to have the worst of both worlds between plotting or writing free-form -- I can’t get very far without plotting everything out, but then I don’t really seem to know what the book is about until I’ve written it, and then I have to do a lot of revising. I usually write enough to get a feel for it -- as little as five pages, as many as 60 -- then do some brainstorming, plotting, character development, that sort of thing. Then I write a very, very rough, fast draft. And then I take it all apart and put it back together again. My first draft usually takes about a month, and then revisions can take up to six months.

Lift your head and look around. What do you see?
If I look straight ahead, I look out the glass doors onto a balcony that overlooks a little lawn area, the major street beyond that, and then the buildings across the street. The signal lights at the intersection are blinking red thanks to a storm last night, so the traffic flow is fairly entertaining as people unexpectedly encounter a four-way stop and aren’t sure what to do. If I look any other direction, I see a terribly messy office that I really do plan to clean someday.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I think my very first inkling that writing was fun came in fourth grade when we were supposed to write a paragraph describing a picture and I found myself writing a whole short story. I first started really thinking about writing as a career when I was about 12. I figured out then that if I wrote down the stories I made up in my head, I’d have a book, and it was around that age that I looked up “publishers” in the phone book. But as I didn’t live in New York, I didn’t find any.

If you couldn’t write books, what would you be doing?
I have no idea. I keep thinking of things I could do as a fallback career, and none of them hold much appeal for me -- or else they somehow come back to writing. I suppose if I got truly desperate I could go back to doing marketing and public relations work, which was my career before I started writing full-time, but I dread the thought of that. I’m fascinated by psychology and have thought that might be something to pursue, but then I’d still probably end up writing psychology books. I guess if I can’t make this writing thing work, I’m doomed.

To date, what moment in your career has made you happiest?
A few days before the release of the first book in my series, I got a copy of the review Charles deLint wrote in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, in which he raved about the book and about how original my concept was. He was one of the writers I’d looked to as an example in writing contemporary fantasy, and I love his work, so seeing one of my role models praising my work and really getting what I was trying to say was overwhelming. I burst into tears when I read it and spent the rest of the day shaking.

For you, what is the easiest thing about being writer?
Coming up with story ideas is probably the easiest thing. Just about everything I see or do gives me some fragment of idea. I doubt I’ll ever run out of things to write because I have a huge backlog of ideas.

What’s the most difficult?
The most difficult thing is releasing my baby over to other people and realizing that once I’ve written the book, I have very little control over it. I may get to make suggestions, but ultimately, I can’t control where the books are shelved, how they’re distributed and how people can find out about them.

What question do you get asked about your writing most often?
When’s the next book coming out?

What’s the question you’d like to be asked?
Can we please pay you large sums of money to write something for us?

What question would like never to be asked again?
For frequency and futility: Why aren’t your books shelved as fantasy? (Not that I don’t think that’s a brilliant idea. I’ve been politely suggesting it for a while now, but questions about where/how my books can be found are best directed to the publisher or bookseller since I have no control over that.)

For making me deeply uncomfortable: Can you read my manuscript and critique it/recommend it to your editor or agent/give me an endorsement blurb? (I’m not a very good critiquer, I have a reading backlog so you might get a faster response just submitting your work to agents or publishers without my recommendation, and I only take blurb requests that come through editors or agents because I only give blurbs for books when I enthusiastically recommend them, and I’m a huge weenie so I never want to have to tell someone directly that I didn’t like her book enough to give it a blurb. It’s hard enough telling an agent or editor that it’s not for me. I guess the weenie thing also applies to critiques or giving referrals. I don’t want to have to tell anyone I don’t like it.)

Tell us something about yourself that no one knows.
I’m not sure there is anything that no one knows that I’m willing to share. That’s a hazard of blogging regularly for years. If I wanted to tell it, I already have. My readers already know about my crippling shyness in the presence of people I admire, my huge crush on a local TV anchorman, my telephone phobia, my aversion to bananas and my extreme levels of geekiness. What more could I tell?