Square Pegs

Seriously, the one thing writers love is workshops. Especially workshops with pastries. And if you learn something, that’s even better. The Los Angeles Romance Authors are sponsoring a workshop called “Creating Characters that Grab Your Readers Hearts” on Saturday, June 26, 2004. The workshop will be held at the Grand Vista Hotel, Simi Valley. The workshop will be presented by award-winning author Tami Cowden, and will focus on character archetypes and building characters. Visit the LARA website for more information, including registration details. Los Angeles Romance Authors

We won’t bore you with breathless coverage of the hottest story in publishing (synopsis: Bill Clinton wrote a book, and it’s selling. A lot.), but we must mention something. It’s required, we believe. First day numbers are, to quote Daily Variety, boffo. No word on how many people have actually read all the pages. We understand there are a lot. If you need the nitty gritty lowdown, we direct you to Publisher’s Weekly and Publisher’s Lunch (see our links section). Also your local newspaper. And probably your local television news. Maybe NPR. And the Internet — you’ll definitely find a

Today’s Los Angeles Times has an article on a subject that, while not specifically related to books, could impact other entertainment industries. For several years now, we’ve been reading about so-called “sanitizers” — companies that helpfully remove objectionable scenes from films. This, of course, is done without permission or input from the copyright owners. Now Congress is getting in the act, looking at ways to legalize this practice (we’ve had serious concerns with the way Congress supports the entertainment industry with regard to copyright, but this time we’re siding with the studios). We object to this legislation for reasons which

This human condition thing that we all suffer — it sure has its ups and downs, doesn’t it? We suffer, we suffer, we suffer, and sometimes we feel good. Or we want to feel good. And we seek things that make us feel good (drag those filthy little minds out of the gutter — we’re talking writing here). It’s refreshing to read this interview with Jonathan Ames where he states that making people feel good was his goal in his new novel Wake Up, Sir. Actually, the whole interview is great; as noted, we love to go deeper into an

We have to say it: a superhero supply store is genius. Pure genius. It solves the number one problem our secret identity faces (it’s not easy finding just the right cape for flying). But wait, there’s more. Building on the success of their pirate supply store (based in San Francisco — and something we devoutly hope our husband doesn’t learn about), the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company features a secret door that leads to…you guessed it! a tutoring vault, er, room. Yes, Dave Eggers is involved (meaning we’ve name dropped him twice this week; surely a new record). Yes, other literary

We are not known for our conciseness (except in our fantasy world when we’re pretending to be curt), and yet the concept of the short-short fiction intrigues us. Sometimes known as flash fiction or micro fiction (and by micro, they mean incredibly short), this style ends the story almost before it’s begun. We took a class with a woman who did it very well — something about her short attention span. For some reason, however, we never associated the style with Dave Eggers. Which makes us wonder what sort of style we do associate with him. We must ponder this

Okay, seriously, we’re agog. Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman work in the same room. We would kill our husband if forced to endure such circumstances. That’s not true. We wouldn’t have the opportunity to commit murder. He would surely snap first. Unless the commencement of our room-sharing experiment coincided with the airing of Seven Second Delay, surely the worst radio show ever (yes, he loves it to distraction and frequently defends Andy Breckman; we’re Ken fans). We think it’s cute that the New York Times took the time to offer Bill and Hillary Clinton advice on living with a successful

One of the things we find most amusing in life is Harlequin bashing by those who’ve never read romance. We freely admit to a wide and varied library and even more wide and varied tastes, and we don’t discriminate against any type of reading material (except, perhaps, dubious celebrity “autobiographies”). We won’t try to change your minds about romance (just as we won’t try to change minds about mystery or science fiction or literary fiction or just about anything else), but we must take exception to SodaPop Culture’s refuting of Oprah Winfrey’s comparison of Anna Karenina to Harlequin romances…