Everybody Hurts, RIP

Big, huge, exciting news: As of tomorrow or the next day, I will have a new blog site. I know you will miss the jejune photograph of me circa kindergarten. And the blocky hard to read type. I will, too. But this young woman named Hilary who lives in Detroit helped me create a better [...]

Who’s Counting?

Every year, Publisher’s Weekly posts sales figures for the year’s top sellers. I always comb the lists and find myself either pleasantly surprised or dumbfounded as in: wow, that great book sold many more copies than I would have thought, or, I can’t believe that piece of crap sold that many copies. This year in [...]

Half Empty

First week back from vacation and a lot of good news: a blocked writer becomes unblocked, a dazzling new chapter from a memoir in progress, a revision on a proposal sings, a great meeting with a new film agent, entertaining lunch with a major magazine editor, some checks arrived, a contract negotiation down to one [...]

Dooce

Just got back from Heather Armstrong’s B&N reading for the launch of her book, It Sucked, And Then I Cried. It was SRO and she sold every last copy they had in the store. Amazing to see her fans come out, buy multiple copies, take pictures with Heather. Rock star! If you don’t know her [...]

While U Were Out

I’m back from Disneyland. While I was out, I have to say the inbox filled up with some mostly very happy making news. Don’t jinx it but two books on the verge of publication are getting some great coverage — more on that to come. One writer who was stuck has come unstuck. Another who [...]

Mickey

Spring break. Taking my daughter for a culturally enriching trip to Orlando for a few days. I’m attempting a Blackberry black out week. Cold turkey. I thought giving up smack was hard, but this, this is gonna kick my ass. I can tell. Wish me luck, and don’t miss me too much. Though I’ll miss [...]

MyFace

I just read an hilarious column bashing Facebook, or MyFace as I like to refer to it, by Matt Labash in The Weekly Standard. I would link to it here, but who am I kidding, I have no idea how to link. I myself tried to go on Facebook after getting the feeling that it [...]

Big Deal

Audrey Niffenegger, the woman who wrote the Time Traveler’s Wife, just received a five million dollar contract for her new novel from Scribner. This is what EVERYONE is talking about today. I was flabbergasted to learn that the author kept her foreign, audio and CANADIAN rights. I’ve heard that the book is “good,” “what her [...]

You Are Like a Hurricane

Fetching as I look in this crepe paper tunic, I am going a little insane as I wait for Dr. Fox, now over a half hour late. What does this have to with publishing? Patience, dear reader. Nothing except that I want to point out that two women in the waiting room were reading Twilight. [...]

Quote of the Week

“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.” a) Kafka b) Beckett c) Tony the Tiger d) Camus This life affirming quote was brought to my attention in Dwight Garner’s 3/7/09 review in the NYT. He points out that BECKETT, a chatty Cathy if ever there was one, left more than 15,000 [...]