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Lo, Book Expo America is upon us. So hoards of publishing professional will descend upon the Javits Center in New York to gorge upon free advance copies, swag, and other loot. There were a fair number of complaints about the attendance at last year’s convention since it was held in Washington, DC. But now that it’s [...]

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  “A man clad only in underwear and a T-shirt wrestled a wild leopard to the floor and pinned it for 20 minutes after the cat leapt through a window of his home and hopped into bed with his sleeping family.” Reported by CNN.

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Check out some of my brief comments about My So-Called Punk: Green Day, Fall Out Boy, The Distillers, Bad Religion–How Neo-Punk Stage-Dived into the Mainstream on Beatrice today. It’s an expansive look at the punk scene and should fascinate any music fan. I had a great chat with author Matt Diehl the other night so [...]

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Some time ago, I visited Louisville, KY to do some research for a novel. I stayed at the grand Seelbach Hotel. First opened in 1905, the Seelbach has hosted nine US presidents, gangster Al Capone, numerous Hollywood celebrities, and most relevant to us, F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald frequently visited the hotel during his Army assignment [...]

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You might recall my interview with J.E. Pitts from a while back. Pitts is a painter, a poet, the editor of Vox, and the poetry editor for The Oxford American. And is first book, The Weather of Dreams, has recently been released. It’s been said of the collection that, “Step by step, the reader’s sense of [...]

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  The New York Times had an interesting article yesterday where authors provided their suggestions for book that could be edited down with large sections cut. It’s an amusing little exercise. What titles would you dramatically whittle down? Off the top of my head, I think I’d tackle James Michener’s Hawaii, just because it’s fresh in [...]

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There is the eternal question of trying to write a book that cashes in on a hot trend. Authors say, “I’m going to write a thinly veiled novel about being a tyrannical CEO’s assistant (or movie star’s assistant, or editor’s assitant, or a blogger from Terre Haute’s assistant, whatever) and hit the bestseller list.” Or, [...]

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Fresh is a debut novel by Scottish writer Mark McNay. The book is due out May 18th from MacAdam/Cage. It’s an enjoyable novel, gritty enough to be tough, fun enough to a page-turner. Check out my comments about it on Beatrice.

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  While I’ve been trying to catch up from my trip to Hawaii, Alan DeNiro has been blogging at The Litblog Co-Op. His collection of short stories, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead was named the Spring 2007 Read This! winner. So there are several interesting posts from DeNiro on the LBC site. [...]

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Hi gang. Tomorrow, I’ll be on a panel at the CityLit Festival IV in Baltimore. Our topic is blogging on books and the conference organizers assure me they have enough security and crowd control to handle the hoards of adoring Slushpile.net fans that will be there. The panel also features Sarah Weinman from Galleycat and Lizzie [...]

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  New writers often fear losing their ideas. They’re the ones who ask agents to commit to total confidentiality before they’ll send a submission. They’re the ones who worry about trusting editors and publishers. It does seem easy, after all, to send in a great idea and have the editor just hand it to his drinking buddy to write. [...]

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