This summer I'm reading every book I can find that ends in "wife."
So far I've read:
The Wife
A Suitable Wife
The Senator's Wife
American Wife
I might have to branch into 'Daughter' just to mix it up. I'm taking a break with a few un Wifey titles right now. It occurs to me that I could have named STANDING STILL "Kidnapped Wife."
Monday, June 15, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Another Editor Bites The Dust!
Yes, it's true. Editor/Dominatrix #3 has left to go back to grad school and teach, because publishing wasn't low-paying enough. So I am moving on to Editor/Dominatrix #4 . . . yes, that's right, same imprint, 4th editor. Has this happened to any other writers out there? Of course some books read as if they were edited by different people about halfway through ( Edgar Sawtelle, anyone? Agree? Disagree?) But that doesn't mean they were . . .
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Handsome Mexican Kidnappers
Every so often, someone in a book club ribs me about the unlikelihood of a plotting, brooding Mexican kidnapper also being handsome (although there is no true reference in the book about Him being handsome, he is looked upon tenderly, shall we say). Anyway, this story in The New York Times this morning -- thank God with a happy ending -- piqued my interest, but then the mug shots made me laugh. Johnny Depp as a kidnapper, perhaps?
Monday, May 18, 2009
Great Article in The New Yorker
There's a funny piece in The New Yorker on Book Clubs this week.
Check it out.
Check it out.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
My Guest Post on Bermuda Onion
Thought I'd share my guest post from the great blog bermudaonion.wordpress.com
FYI, no MFA.
A funny thing happens when you publish a book: People expect you to be smart. And I don’t mean the manageable kind of smart, like witty-at-a-cocktail party, or entertaining-at-the-soccer-field, or even best-read-at-the-knitting-class. (Those are close to doable.) I can handle people expecting I’m the next Nora Ephron. It’s people who expect the next Salman Rushdie that get me into trouble.
Wherever I am, when discussion turns to something literary, all heads swivel in my direction. At my 12-year-old daughter’s book club, I was asked which book is more romantic: Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, or Jane Eyre. Gulp. It’s either bring up the latest study linking past marijuana use and memory loss, or tell ‘em I’ll get back to them on that. At a Christmas party I was asked what I thought of Martin Amis’ earlier work. That’s like asking me if I preferred Michael Jackson when he was seven years old! I quip. (It makes only a tiny bit of sense, but everyone laughs because I must be funny; I’m a writer.)
Of course, when I visit book groups to discuss my novel, I’m comfortable discussing literary aspects of my own work. Or so I thought. Then I was invited to sit in on a graduate class that was studying Standing Still as part of their curriculum. I held my own until the second hour, when the professor asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks, because sitting in the middle of his ordinary nouns and verbs was “verisimilitude.” I confess in a room full of twenty scholars that I don’t know what “verisimilitude” means. The next question, I am certain, is going to be “how did you become a writer with such a small vocabulary?”
Since so many writers teach writing, have Masters of Fine Arts, or at least majored in English Lit, it’s a reasonable assumption, I suppose, that we have an encyclopedic knowledge of the classics. But some of us majored in diaper changing. Some of us didn’t even graduate from college. And please, when it’s Sunday morning and I stop by for a cup of coffee, don’t come up to me with the Times crossword puzzle. I told you last week: literary envelope has to be Mailer, and that’s all my pea brain can muster.
FYI, no MFA.
A funny thing happens when you publish a book: People expect you to be smart. And I don’t mean the manageable kind of smart, like witty-at-a-cocktail party, or entertaining-at-the-soccer-field, or even best-read-at-the-knitting-class. (Those are close to doable.) I can handle people expecting I’m the next Nora Ephron. It’s people who expect the next Salman Rushdie that get me into trouble.
Wherever I am, when discussion turns to something literary, all heads swivel in my direction. At my 12-year-old daughter’s book club, I was asked which book is more romantic: Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, or Jane Eyre. Gulp. It’s either bring up the latest study linking past marijuana use and memory loss, or tell ‘em I’ll get back to them on that. At a Christmas party I was asked what I thought of Martin Amis’ earlier work. That’s like asking me if I preferred Michael Jackson when he was seven years old! I quip. (It makes only a tiny bit of sense, but everyone laughs because I must be funny; I’m a writer.)
Of course, when I visit book groups to discuss my novel, I’m comfortable discussing literary aspects of my own work. Or so I thought. Then I was invited to sit in on a graduate class that was studying Standing Still as part of their curriculum. I held my own until the second hour, when the professor asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks, because sitting in the middle of his ordinary nouns and verbs was “verisimilitude.” I confess in a room full of twenty scholars that I don’t know what “verisimilitude” means. The next question, I am certain, is going to be “how did you become a writer with such a small vocabulary?”
Since so many writers teach writing, have Masters of Fine Arts, or at least majored in English Lit, it’s a reasonable assumption, I suppose, that we have an encyclopedic knowledge of the classics. But some of us majored in diaper changing. Some of us didn’t even graduate from college. And please, when it’s Sunday morning and I stop by for a cup of coffee, don’t come up to me with the Times crossword puzzle. I told you last week: literary envelope has to be Mailer, and that’s all my pea brain can muster.
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