Let me tell you what I’m excited about at the moment: two memoirs I recently edited, which are two of the best manuscripts to come across my desk in a long time. “Diamond” is such a page-turner that I’ve passed it on to the producer I work with. That’s one of the perks I can offer my clients–exposure of their novel or memoir to a New York film producer if I think it checks all the boxes for a great movie.
Read MoreAn Author and a Gentleman
There’s a fun story I’ve been sharing with friends that I think my blog readers also will enjoy—especially those of you who like thrillers. (And isn’t that just about everybody?) No, the story I have to tell you isn’t a thriller, but it has to do with thrillers, as you will see in a minute. No fair skipping to the ... Read More
‘The Dearly Beloved’: A Novel for Troubled Times
The book is a harmonization of opposites–personalities that clash, beliefs that never bend, burdens that never ease. The novel demonstrates the remarkable ability of people to adapt to the most impossible circumstances when love is the driver. There’s no sugar-coating. We get raw, real life here, but a golden light suffuses it.
Read MoreThrillers Worth Your Time: Lee Child’s ‘Jack Reacher’ Series
What is it about Lee Child’s plots that makes his thrillers so much better than most? I think it’s that genuine, complicated problem to work out, that each of his stories promises. Compare that to other thrillers that try to disguise a thin plot with cheap tricks to keep you guessing, such as jerking the reader backward and forward in time for no good reason, or withholding important facts when narrating a scene, in hopes of creating “mystery” …
Read MoreThe Almost-Great Novel: A True Cautionary Tale
I recently struck up a friendship with a first-time author I met in an online writers’ forum. He had written a YA novel that was soon to be published by a small publishing house. He hoped it would be the first of a trilogy …
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