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When I was in graduate school at the University of Mississippi, noted William Faulkner biographer Joseph Blotner visited campus. I met him in Square Books, the well-known independent bookstore where I worked at the time. I was heavily into Faulkner, stacking up class upon class, filling my transcript with as many Faulkner courses as possible. [...]

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A while ago, there was an uproar of discussion regarding the nature of book reviews and whether the critic should be, in the most simplistic way of speaking, “nice” or not. Quite a bit of the conversation centered on William Giraldi’s self-congratulatory, excessively assholish, show offy, “Let’s see how many references and allusions I can [...]

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As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month. To help folks blast through their 50,000 words in 30 days, GalleyCat has been providing writing prompts, tips, and words of encouragement. Most notable is this roundup where they collected two years worth of tips into a single post. This week, they referred to [...]

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Longtime entertainment and sports industry veteran David Fishof is appearing at Book Soup in Los Angeles today at 7:00pm. Once a sports agent to athletes like baseball slugger Lou Pinella and quarterbacks Vince Ferragamo and Phil Simms, Fishof switched his focus to the entertainment world in the eighties. He reunited the Monkees and started the [...]

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Add guitarist and singer Lita Ford to the burgeoning list of rockers with book deals. [Here's a round up of hard rock books.] Reports are that the former Runaways member and longtime solo artist has signed a publishing deal with William Morrow for a memoir called Living Like a Runaway. Joel Selvin is flying co-pilot [...]

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I was thrilled to read the great review of Power Chord by the Associated Press. Linked here to the Washington Post publication of the review, the key takeaway is that PC is “entertaining travelogue of sorts that hits all the right notes.” Be sure to the entire review here!

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To the outsider, the world of books and publishing is sometimes perceived as a stuffy, stodgy, genteel world of college professors, pipes, and tweed jackets with elbow patches. Now imagine that quiet book reading, with a string quartet playing the corner, being crashed by a bunch of unwashed, drugged out rockers. That clash of cultures [...]

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British writer Steve Boggan tracked a $10 bill as it made its way across America. Along the way, he met a variety of people including farmers, bankers, truck drivers, and other folks. In this excerpt Boggan sums up his 3,500 mile journey. Maybe I’m too much of a homer, but I cringed slightly when I [...]

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On Facebook today, the great Chris Offutt referenced a Forbes blog post today. His joking comment was, along the lines of, “But how will we get signed books?” The blog post itself brashly proclaims “How Algorithmically Created Content will Transform Publishing.” It’s an interesting look at the way that free, public source materials can be [...]

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As I’ve been stuck in book finalization mode and promotion mode over the spring and early summer, I got behind in my blog reading. As I’ve been catching up on some of my favorite blogs, a particular post caught my attention. These are both kinda old, maybe you hadn’t seen it before, just as I [...]

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If you spend any amount of time online, either writing blogs or reading blogs, then prepare to have one of two reactions when you read Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator by Ryan Holiday: 1) You will read nothing you didn’t already know and you will be decidedly nonplussed. 2) You will [...]

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David Duhr at The Dallas Morning News had a great review of Growing Up Dead in Texas by Stephen Graham Jones. The payoff of the review? Without giving away any spoilers, Duhr calls Jones’ latest, “one of the truest, and finest, war stories you’re likely to read.” I’ve been running behind so I’m just starting [...]

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Late this afternoon, Forbes writer Luisa Kroll estimated that Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James is on pace to secure a spot on next year’s top earning writers list. The article points out other estimates that claim James is raking in as much as $1.3 million a week. While the layperson reader sees these [...]

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In The World Without You, Joshua Henkin explores the different ways in which family members grieve after a journalist is murdered in a warzone. The novel centers around the Frankels, a financially comfortable Jewish family from Manhattan who spend the weekends and summers in their Berkshires country house. The clan is composed of Gretchen, a [...]

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