First off, I’m very pleased to report that after last month’s You Tell Me wherein I sheepishly admitted I had never read LORD OF THE RINGS: this has now been rectified. I even started with The Hobbit. Loved them! That Tolkien guy was a pretty good writer in case you haven’t heard. Now then. This […]
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
What is the Funniest Book of All Time?
Thank you so much to everyone for participating in the Inaugural First Page Critique, and especially to Michelle, our Inaugural First Pagee. There have been requests afoot for this to be a regular feature, and: consider it done! Every Monday henceforth we’ll have a page (and occasionally query) critique, and I’ll continue to reward those […]
Which Book Would You Want to Be In?
Reader Neil Vogler passed along a recent Guardian post about the number of authors who are auctioning off the chance to name a character in one of their novels. This sparked Neil’s idea for today’s You Tell Me: if you could inhabit any book, which would you choose? I’d go with THE GREAT GATSBY. No! […]
Who is Your Favorite Character of All Time?
It’s a simple question that I’m finding nearly impossible to answer: Who is your all-time favorite character in a novel? Sherlock Holmes? Quentin Compson? Jay Gatsby? Zaphod Beeblebrox? Willy Wonka? Leopold Bloom? Ahab? The whale?
This Week in Publishing 9/19/08
I’m off to New York next week for a whirlwind round of approximately 2,274 1/2 meetings, so posting will be sporadic until my return. Now if New York would kindly cooperate and keep its weather below 80 degrees I’d appreciate it. I’m watching you, humidity. Don’t get sassy. It may have been Gut Week in […]
Character and plot are inseparable
You may have the idea that you somehow have to choose between writing a plot-oriented novel and a character-oriented novel, and that one has to come at the expense of the other. I’m here to tell you why you don’t worry about these categories. It’s a completely false choice. UPDATED 5/30/19 There’s no such thing […]
