I cried last week reading the obit for Maurice Sendak, realizing there would be no more wild things, no more wild rumpus. No more books from this grumpy, brilliant, wonderful writer. If you haven’t read Where the Wild Things Are for awhile, get it out and reread it. It’s poetry and psychology rolled into one…
If you didn’t read the Sunday Review section in the New York Times yesterday, follow this link to Jhumpa Lahiri’s eloquent essay on sentences, “My Life’s Sentences”. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/my-lifes-sentences/?ref=opinion Here’s an excerpt: For surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a…
Amazon has this cool new thing for published writers called Author Central where you can click on Book Scan Highlights and discover not only how many copies of your books sold through Amazon the previous week but where they sold. (A shout out to you Salt Lake City for buying all those copies of CHERISHED over…
Kathryn Stockett got sixty rejections for her best selling novel The Help. Her first rejection read: “Story did not sustain my interest.” But it was her very first and she was actually thrilled with it – a real rejection letter! She went back to editing her manuscript. Her fortieth rejection finally made her cry. It…
Billy Collins says, "I have no work habits whatsoever…The poem will come along when it arrives. I don't write every day. I try to be on the lookout for creative opportunities, something that might trigger a poem, but I don't sit down in the morning and try to commit an act of literature before lunch."…
It's that time again, folks. Marketing books. Wonderful writers who have essays in CHERISHED will be reading at the bookstore events, including Carolyn See, Samantha Dunn, Linzi Glass, Monica Holloway, Billy and Judith Mernit, Jackie Winspear, Jenny Rough, Cecilia Brainard, May-lee Chai, Melissa Cistaro, and everybody's favorite vet, Dr. Bob Goldman. Bookstore Readings for CHERISHED:…
We are still in Hawaii and I’m thinking that this is probably the best weather on earth, but how does it affect writers? I feel like a large passive vegetable – and getting larger by the minute. I’m not sure what the perfect weather would be for writers – or if we actually notice the…
The marketing whore is back. My new book, Cherished:21 Writers On Animals They Have Loved and Lost, coming out in April, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. New World Library (my publisher) and I will love you forever if you and your friends would pre-order a copy and start a little buzz. (Apparently Amazon…
There's all kinds of chat and print going around about this novel – rave reviews ("The Great American Novel"), Franzen's photo on the cover of Time magazine, some women writers who got snarky about him getting so much publicity, a terrible review in the Atlantic, some less than enthusiastic reviews by readers on Amazon etc. …
I got back from India yesterday morning and my head is still dingy from going through too many time zones. I took 403 photographs with my iPhone, wrote 26 pages in my journal and kept a small notebook on the run with urgent messages that may take me awhile to decipher: "Rajeech's kids books!"…
