SlushPile.net

It’s back to the grindstone here. I was in Antigua last week working on a magazine article and Internet access was a bit more elusive than I figured. The Internet in my hotel was down and the wi-fi at the local coffeeshop next door was the equivalent of a 1996 dial-up. Hence, the lack of [...]

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If, like me, you’re struggling to cheer up on this tax day, then pop down to your local bookstore and spend whatever meager amount of money you might have left on Jason Buhrmester’s debut novel, Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery. It’s a tremendously fun read, full of seventies rock [...]

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For aspiring authors, the topic of book advances is murky and mysterious. We read about the massive payouts to a very, very select few others. But no articles are written about the vast majority of $20k and $30k and even lower advances that are dished out to the vast majority of writers. On the other [...]

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Longtime readers of Slushpile.net know that I’m a huge fan of Jay McInerney’s work. And I have to admit that sometimes it feels like I’m the only one out there. So I was pleased to see Janet Maslin’s largely positive review of McInerney’s new collection, How It Ended in yesterday’s New York Times. “His stories [...]

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Being the luddite that I am, I have to admit that I haven’t goofed around with a Kindle yet. Hell, I’m not completely convinced this whole internet thing is going to last anyway. So it will probably be about 2019 before I tackle any digital books. However, novelist and pop culture fan Stephen Graham Jones [...]

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The Southeast Review has a fantastic interview with Daniell Woodrell. Damn, now I’m going to have to dash home and devour Give Us a Kiss again. [via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind]

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In contrast with the awful book I read this weekend, I have enjoyed a couple of interesting works of both fiction and nonfiction. And we’ll be discussing these more in the coming days. But to just quickly recap, and get myself out of this funk, here’s the good stuff from recent days. William D. Cohan’s [...]

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As a book critic, you learn to put aside (as much as humanly possible) your personal tastes and judge a book on its own merit. There’s the old John Updike advice to evaluate what the author intended to do, and don’t criticize him for failing to achieve something he didn’t intend to attempt. Also, as [...]

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As spring arrives and the grass finally turns green and flowers begin to bloom, our minds turn to fixing up the yard and digging in the dirt. But crime writer Ace Atkins gives us a reason to spend time in a different garden. One where fame, celebrity, sex, alcohol, and intrigue cloud the notorious story [...]

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