I joined the ranks of indie authors almost three years ago now, and I can’t begin to count the number of things I’ve had to learn in order to make it happen. I made quite a few mistakes with my first book, learned from them, and got better at writing, editing, formatting, marketing…the list goes…
Read more
I recently listened to the audio version of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. The book was on my radar for a long time: some of my own readers saw parallels between Niffenegger’s handling of a relationship interrupted by time travel and my own Take Back Tomorrow, so I kept hearing about the book, but…
Read more
Some critics and some unhappy fans have said that Neil Gaiman’s latest book is too short and too unremarkable, not worthy of rubbing covers with Neverwhere or American Gods; many latch onto the fact that this book started as a short story, and they shout “Aha! Gotcha, Gaiman! You should have kept it short. Clearly…
Read more
I’ve been blogging here for six months now. I enjoy it–find it fun and challenging to think of topics, and it’s nice to run up against an idea and be able to put together a little informal essay on the topic and send it out for the world to see. But at the same time…
Read more
Last post, I talked a bit about character motivation. Think of this as Part 2, but with a twist. To recap, briefly, if we’re looking at a major character, readers need to know what motivates that character, what gets him or her going, what causes the character to risk life and limb or to dig…
Read more
So the editor of the Times Literary Supplement feels that book bloggers are doing a disservice to literary criticism, watering it down. Anyone with enough know-how to set up a blog and read a book can become a literary critic. On the one hand, there’s a legitimate concern there. The proliferation of voices on the…
Read more
I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook version of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, the preferred text read by the author. It’s been said that writers are often the worst readers of their own work, which may be true in some cases, but not this one. Gaiman’s rendering of the different characters’ voices is brilliant, vivid, and…
Read more
