Books/Mags/Blogs

BS: One day back from vacation and already leaning on guest posters to make it through the week! We are privileged to know the uber-charming Matthew Cheney, proprietor and wiseacre behind The Mumpsimus, a favorite way to waste time — and Matt, generous man that he is, hooked us up with a copy of Best American Fantasy (excellent, excellent beach reading and a fantastic gift for all those on your holiday list). The 2006 edition is also Volume 1 with Volume 2 in production as we write. Matt, the series editor, also graciously offered to corral the anthology’s editors, Ann […]

[BS: The great thing about Jane Austen fans is the myriad of reasons they come to Jane. Some come for the clothes, stay for the satire. Others seek the social skewering but discover the empathy. And, yeah, there a few who figure if it’s good enough for Colin Firth…. Today, we welcome Laurie Viera Rigler, whose novel Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict captures the beauty of loving Jane while indulging in the ever-tantalizing “what if”] The decision to write Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict wasn’t exactly a decision. It happened like this: I was standing in the kitchen

BS: Ah, Summer. The living is easy. Especially when you can get someone else to write while you’re, well, talking on the cell phone and land line and emailing and IMing and all the stuff that goes with a busy day. Today, we bring you Katharine Weber, author the great novel Triangle. In what can only be described as perfect timing, Katharine proposed writing about patterns in her books just hours after I’d attended a William Gibson reading where he talked about…patterns in his books. Thus the title. Great minds read alike.] “What did you mean, when you wrote- ”

[BS: Yesterday, we talked about genre and reaching readers. Today, we have one of the authors discussed in the post. Please welcome Nicola Griffith, author of Always as she talks about the challenges — and then some — of living with a single character over the course of many books. Needless to say, this is a book you have to read.] I’ve been writing about Aud (rhymes with cloud) Torvingen for ten years. In The Blue Place she was someone I would have run from, a woman *this* close to being a sociopath. In Stay she was grieving, tentative and

[BS: How a novel is marketed often signifies how it is perceived. And, as we all know, genre designation does not necessarily adequately capture the essence of a book. Today, we bring you Pam Jenoff, author of the gorgeous The Kommandant’s Girl, who has experienced the ping pong nature of genre designation firsthand (and survived to tell the tale!).] Since the announcement in June that my first novel, The Kommandant’s Girl, was up for a Quill Award, I have heard from many readers who are surprised that the book, which depicts a young Jewish woman’s struggle in World War II

Despite the social whirl that was BookExpo America, we made it a point to attend the bash thrown by Unbridled Books. They have been nothing but kind in their sharing of books, and we thought to repay this generosity by, well, eating their food and drinking their wine. Hmm, sounds like someone got the short end of the relationship. With eating and drinking comes making merry, and we spent the evening chatting and trying to work our brand-new camera. Then it happened…someone dared to ask our true first name, which, alas, always leads to a lengthy discussion (“Did your mother

Yesterday’s news was all doom and gloom about the state of the independent bookstore — an entity that has been under siege since the dawn of the first superstore. We do not pretend to know the laws of economics (except to have a vague comprehension that projections always seem to be off for reasons nobody understands), but being independent is expensive. The problem, of course, is that there’s always a bigger, scarier monster in the closet, and even the superstores are nervous. As venerable institutions like Tower Records face the end of their storied lives, independents are growing increasingly…creative. And

Possibly one of the most fascinating things going on this week (yes, back from vacation and ready to go) is the story of Borders and its online book club. After sitting on the sidelines for about ten years, the retail giant has decided it’s about time to go with a little book club love. Alas, it’s a decision to enter into a time warp as well. We applaud the decision to go with original content — good move on the part of Borders. The rest? Hmm, not so much. First, let us say that there’s a bizarre, almost obsessive, interest

The BS household is celebrating a return to a life of DSL and electricity today. It is a thrilling, thrilling morning. You don’t realize how much you depend upon, oh, lights until you don’t have them. Turns out they’re quite useful, and the little pluggy thing that goes into the laptop serves a purpose. It is a magic device. We feel that we have learned so much — with more to go. But let us get into why you’re really here. You want to know how to land a book deal and an agent (not necessarily in that order). Let