Wrapped Up In Books

There is a special joy that comes with laziness — in today’s example, we do an interview, but the interviewee does all the work. How cool is that? With our usual mix of guile and deal-sweetening, we convinced Lynn Isenberg to spill about her latest novel, The Funeral Planner. In fact, she had so much to say, we’re spreading the interview over two days. First, Lynn discusses the idea behind the book and how writing The Funeral Planner lead to the creation of a real-life business (real-life: that’s where you pay taxes). Tomorrow, we’ll get a peek at Lynn’s marketing […]

Recently, we posted a short piece where we read too much into a few words. Most of our enlightened readers got the point immediately. A few chastised us for, well, overreading a few words (which we’d stated up front, so that ship had sailed) and went off on another tangent entirely. Which was fine, but not really the point we wanted to make. So let us try again: bias can be as blatant as using the qualifier “leggy” before calling someone an essayist (because, unless we’re missing something important, the two descriptions are unrelated). Bias can also exist by omission,

At the risk of overstating the obvious, cats don’t need to be entertained. Fed, yes. Scratched, yes. Convinced that going outside is a bad idea, yes. But when push comes to shove, they’re excellent at amusing themselves. Name another creature who turns staring off into space into an art form. Other than writers. But then it’s not relaxation, it’s work. Unfortunately, not all writers are blessed with cats. Some make do with children. And while we don’t have personal experience with the species, we understand that children require substantial upkeep. Plus medical supplies. And, if we understand the process correctly,

We stretched our vacation as long as possible (you know it’s a conspiracy to avoid reality when even the cats get in the act), and now we’re (theorectically) revived and ready to get back to whatever it is we do to fill our days. Probably that means acquiring food while revisiting the New Year’s goal of quitting eating. Life is always full of contradictions. We cannot thank Jill enough for taking over while we were gone — especially after all the hard work she’s done here this month. We returned to find the flowers blooming, the mail neatly sorted, and

While we hoped to get more guest bloggers online this year, life ran away with our time. We will do much better next year, especially since we have reacquired long-lost time management skills. However, our inability to get our act together does not dwarf our ability to make others suffer. Thus we introduce guest blogger, Jill Monroe, who is celebrating the release of her first published novel. Jill has been our hard-nosed critique partner for several years now (and they say long distance relationships don’t work). It was just a year ago that we lamented lack of editorial response to

We’d really like to thank Gena Showalter for her time and candor this week. Now, originally, we’d planned to throw a final barrage of questions at her, but she was in a car accident this morning. Now while she swears she’s fine and will dragged her bruised, airbag attacked body to her computer as soon as possible, we’ll give her a break. Just this once. Besides, it’s Labor Day, and the one thing we learned in our former career is that one never puts in a full day before three day weekend (which is why we can’t explain the stream

Back when we were young and innocent, we thought books were gifts from above. We’d go the library (ruled by the mother) and she’d hand down the latest acquisitions. We’d take them home, read them, and offer our unbiased and unformed opinions. If they passed our taste test, they would be recommended to other students. As we’ve grown older and looked back on our childhood, we realize we weren’t the only favored reader. Ah well, we still remain her favorite oldest child. Nobody can take that from us. In our motion picture career, we saw how studios get behind their

Sure, we could send a lengthy, private email to ask all of our questions, but that’s not our style. So here’s yet another question for the birthday girl (she’s so regretting offering to drop by for a visit, but she’ll be enjoying her long weekend before she knows it): Now that you’ve finished checking your Amazon rankings for the billionth time, talk to us about alpha males. What works for alpha and what doesn’t? Do you think alpha males have gotten a bad rap in recent years? It seems to us that with stronger female characters the trend is toward

We think we’ve finally gotten accustomed to having a guest in our house. She rises early and posts while we’re snoozing. Sweet. If only we weren’t conditioned to hit the keyboard before our first drops of caffeine hit the bloodstream, life would be ideal. Besides, we’re sure someone would miss us if we disappeared completely. As the meeting gods are (temporarily) sated, we can return to our normal life of sloth and snark. Not necessarily in that order. We’re sure we have lots and lots of things to say, but first we have to toss out the question that kept

Today is the official release date of The Stone Prince, as well as my birthday. I declare this Gena Day. I have an urge to drive to every bookstore in my state and see where they’ve placed my books, count the books to see how many are there (so I can go back later and see how many have sold), and perhaps act as a Price is Right girl, oohing and ahhing over them. I will, however, resist this urge. I will be a big girl today. I will not obsess. I will not be neurotic. I will be calm