I decided to write a historical novel because I wanted to get completely out of my day-to-day life and contemporary everything—terrorism, the failure of capitalism, modern marriage, childhood and adolescence, politics, racism, climate change, you name it. Did I have…
Aw. It’s sad to watch a poor, lonely author in a bookstore or at a book festival who simultaneously desires and dreads conversations with customers. Because people! Conversations! Eeek! And then there are those authors who flag you down like street canvassers…
Like the author of our first link, Pamela Erens, I’m drawn to depressing books. The darker the better. I can tolerate a happily ever after story, but only after the characters have suffered great trauma to get to the rainbows on…
Let’s kick off the weekend by reading a little bit about the sting of writerly rejection. Then, we’ll slide into how your shitty day job is at least making you a better writer (yay). We’ll get anxious with another writer and…
So I did that thing, the very depressing one, where I pulled an old manuscript out of the files with the intention of fixing it. I was confident I knew the problem: it had to be the stakes. The reader…
Building on her critically acclaimed debut novel The Quickening, Michelle Hoover’s gripping, brilliantly crafted new release, Bottomland, follows the Hess family’s struggle to stay together on the Iowa plains following the mysterious disappearance of two family members during the years…