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Writers in movies: Hemingway & Gellhorn
Another in an occasional series. Like An Invisible Woman, Hemingway & Gellhorn is about a famous novelist’s relationship with a woman — in this case, the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. This...
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Why give away an e-book?
The Portal continues to be free on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The main idea here is to generate customer reviews, because reviews are what stimulate e-book sales. As my publisher says: The more...
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Writers in Movies: The New York Times gets into the act
Last Sunday’s Book Review had a pair of essays on the topic “Why is it so hard to capture the writer’s life on film?” This a question that seems easy enough to answer. Thomas Mallon captures it like...
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Walden Pond, 160 years on
My edition of Walden notes that, of all the English-language books published in 1854, only two are still read: Dickens’ Hard Times and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. My son spends a lot of his time...
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Now where was I?
I had a great couple of weeks away from my novel. Real life is great! But now what? What are these characters supposed to be doing? Wasn’t there some plot point I wanted to add right around here?...
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Use your talent before life decides to take it away
The other day I heard a story about a brilliant young novelist who had a brain aneurysm that left her unable to write. The next morning I listened to a podcast about Jacqueline Du Pre, the brilliant...
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Thoughts on Amazon vs. Hachette
Amazon is apparently playing hardball in negotiations with the publishing conglomerate Hachette, and as usual people are outraged. As usual, I find it hard to understand what the problem is....
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Publishers as gatekeepers
One of the arguments made on behalf of mainstream publishers in the Amazon-Hachette war is that publishers act as gatekeepers — keeping the junk out of the market and using their editorial skills to...
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Slate weighs in on Amazon vs. Hachette
This article makes a couple of interesting points. First, mainstream publishers are screwing authors on e-book royalties: “Look at Harper’s own numbers,” DeFiore wrote. “$27.99 hardcover generates...
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Happy Bloomsday!
To celebrate, let’s take a look at Joyce’s drawing of Leopold Bloom: And here is 1955 photograph of Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit reading Ulysses: Does it get any better than that? I think not....
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Another author complains about the new digital world order
This one is Tony Horwitz, who wrote the wonderful Confederates in the Attic. He recounts his tale of woe in a New York Times op-ed. He got an offer from a new digital media outfit to write an e-book...
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The second draft is done!
As I hoped, the second draft of my novel went a lot faster than the first. By the time I had finished the first draft, I had pages of notes about what I needed to change, and I came up with lots of...
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The BookBub promotion for “Dover Beach”: a preliminary post-mortem
The BookBub promotion for Dover Beach expired yesterday, I think. I just have the Amazon numbers at this point. I’ve sold about 600 copies there, plus a bunch of copies of its very fine sequel, The...
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Life is stupider than fiction: robot politician edition
A friend sent me a link to this article, noting that “someone has been reading your book.” “The election for U.S. House for Oklahoma’s 3rd District will be contested by the Candidate, Timothy Ray...
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The novel was pretty much finished on Tuesday, and then . . .
. . . I woke up on Thursday with An Idea. But that was OK — the Idea was limited to one section of the novel, and it wouldn’t require much rejiggering. Then today I squinted at the novel from another...
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Jigsaw Puzzles and Writing
I am a sucker for jigsaw puzzles. My wonderful family got me a couple for Father’s Day, and they have been sucking up my time ever since. I really should be helping humanity by liking Facebook pages...
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Why I’ll never get rich from writing, part xxxvii
This is from Hugh Howey, via The Passive Voice — the way to become successful in online publishing: The idea is this: Annual releases are too slow to build on one another. And not just in the...
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Draft 3 of my novel is complete — am I done yet?
Probably not. But at least now I have a draft I can give to folks without having to apologize and explain about all the stuff I’m going to fix, really, no foolin’, I know I didn’t explain what...
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What you can do when you’re not writing
Go for a run and listen to Chopin. Listening to Chopin doesn’t generally make you run faster, but for me, running is about survival, not speed. Sit on your deck, drink a Little Sumpin’ ale, and read...
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Writers in movies: Third Star
Haven’t done one of these in a while. Third Star is an indie movie from 2010 starring Benedict Cumberbatch and three other young British actors. The main character is a 29-year-old aspiring writer who...
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