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We’ve held back for several years now. But with yet another article on this crazy new phenomenon, chicklit, we feel we must speak out. No, not about the fact that San Luis has just discovered the genre — it’s a sleepy town with easy access to wineries…who has time to focus on the latest thing […]

Keen literary minds on the Internet (in other words, not ours) are discussing Charles Taylor’s Salon article on literature and reading, and many take a different view of the piece than we did (see below to play along at home). We love reading all the viewpoints. Taylor’s article was a direct response to Andrew Solomon’s […]

We promise you, nobody takes reading more seriously than we do (although we will admit that in the past few years, we have discovered this newfangled invention called television thanks to a most beautiful concept called TiVo). We read like we breathe. Actually, given our tendency toward allergies, we probably read better. To give an […]

We’re sending this one out to our author friend Jill. Jill isn’t crazy about the big rewrite, despite our cheerleading on the subject (Rewriting is Fun! We Love to Rewrite!). Perhaps it’s the way we describe our process (or maybe that we can’t rhyme) — basically, it’s sort of like taking out the trash and […]

We actually can’t say what our fascination with self-publishing is. But we do have a fascination. Let’s face it, getting published isn’t easy, and sometiems, you have to take risks. Now, we’ve read a lot of bad self-published books, and, to be blunt, we’ve read a lot of really bad self-published books. But there is […]

It appears we are having one of those wishy-washy moments we often talk about. Minutes ago, we typed a sentence to the affect that world-building in novels is critical no matter if a work is set in Manhattan or South Central Los Angeles. We very nearly used the example of science fiction novels, but thought […]

Sometimes we sit and ponder articles for a few days before commenting (seriously, that’s why we have the world’s largest collection of links to articles on literary reviews — we’re sure we’re going to pull it all together into something brilliant). This article, from the Los Angeles Times, was a thinker. On first read, we […]

Okay, if we’re genetically predisposed toward blogging, why wasn’t it invented when we could stay up late and still get up early? Answer that one, Mr. Scientist. We are still unclear on what a “boffin” might be (but surely it doesn’t sound good), but love this quote too much to let it pass. Okay, fine, […]

MediaBistro focuses its attention on IMG Literary in its latest Pitching column (yes, members only, but it’s really not much to join; we find the information in their paid content to be worth the price). Agents Lisa Queen and Lisa Hyman (we are enjoying the potential for mixed-up phone calls) run their agency within a […]

When we were much younger, a child author by the name of Alexandra (Ally) Sheedy published a book called She Was Nice to Mice. We specifically recall the title, not because the author went on to another public career, but because back then, our little skeptical brain caught a whiff of nepotism. Something about a […]