Square Pegs

How come nobody told us we were supposed to approach the New York Times Book Review in the same manner we approach, oh, really good Chinese noodles? We will work harder on this, but doubt our efforts will carry over to our arch-nemesis, the book review section of the Los Angeles Times (okay, it’s not really our arch-nemesis, but we’re not fond of it). MediaBistro interviews Sam Tanenhaus about the new direction of the NYTBR — we predict serious backlash no matter how brilliant the new design. How do we know? Well, we once read a letter to the editor […]

We are still working our way to our notes (as of this moment, we have half emptied our suitcase and piled books by size on the floor), but thought we’d share a few random thoughts because the best way to make more room in the mind is to empty a few hills and valleys. In no particular order:

This isn’t an article we’d normally link to, because, frankly, it’s not saying a lot that’s new. There are lots of cliches repeated, reinforcing our belief that for each genre of fiction, there is a journalistic template. Except…yes, there’s always an except for us…one line that leaped out and made us choke on our Luna bar. Not to mention that we love paragraphs containing two disparate comments without any sort of substantiation. Critics argue that romance novels reinforce traditional gender roles. They say it is a woman’s genre, whose content excludes half of the population. We are not going to

Spending a week surrounded by women tends to make our inner feminist a bit more sensitive (just as we are reclaiming the synopsis from its “dreaded” appellation, we are reclaiming the word feminist from its militant connotation). We are in a hotel filled by women who are pursuing dreams and goals — and achieving success on many levels (not just writers, as we note below). Yet for every doctor, lawyer, astrophysicist, MFA, educated, professional…okay, we’ll stop now…woman we see in the elevator, we also see a world that hasn’t grown up as we’d dreamed. The reason the Romance Writers of

As it turns out, the most wired hotel in Dallas isn’t quite…wired the way we hoped. We have spent the week fighting our Internet connection, and, sadly, losing. If we were the type to have technological hubris, it would be decimated by now. Things appear to be working at the moment, and we’re racing through various items to post something before all hope is once again lost. The good news is that spam is impervious to tricky connections. It may be the cockroach of the Internet. Can’t get a message from the husband, but we can still acquire all forms

Another post from Maud Newton triggered a memory for us. Back when we were young and innocent and temping, we ended up working for a Big Name Hollywood Producer. In addition to such chores as cutting up radishes to float in a bowl of ice water should he get hungry (we believe he was supposed to be eating healthy or something — he never touched the radishes we carefully cut each morning) and carrying the shoes fresh off his feet out to the shoeshine dude, we were also supposed to all manner of administrative tasks. We were not good at

We are posting at an unnatural hour of the morning (yes, any hour prior to sunrise is unnatural…any hour before noon is greeted with skepticism) because we’re leaving for Oklahoma City, where we will be fêted at a placed called Chuck E. Cheese. Then we’re off to Dallas for a conference. If all goes according to plan (i.e., the hotel’s boast that they’re the “most wired” hotel in Dallas isn’t a fantasy and all systems are go), we’ll be posting regular thoughts on our experience (which probably means we’ll have to attend workshops rather than just hang out in the

Author Andrea Siegel (Like The Red Panda) has posted a helpful FAQ to save time for everyone who contacts. The FAQ addresses getting an agent, and, if she’s telling you something you don’t already know (except the name of her agent), please, you need to gets yourself educated. Quickly. In our (never humble) opinion, she will be following this posting up with FAQ 2 (where everyone asks her about her writing process — there is in inevitable pattern to these things). FAQ You (we suspect she’s wanted to use this title for a long time) Cup of Chicha (our source)

We pop into the Cupcake Series infrequently and think that’s a bad idea. Regular visits would mean we wouldn’t find lovely rants like this by accident. And with good reason — we remind you of one of the more inane (oh heck, flat out dumb) comments we’ve ever encountered: [Charles] McGrath replied that he would welcome suggestions, but “our standards are so high that a great many writers—even published writers—don’t meet them.” As for the attention to male authors, he explained, “more books are written by men than by women.” Men write more books than women? [Paula] Caplan and her