It is a rare thing to be able to reference American Idol and ghostwriting in the same sentence, but here goes…
Seems the ghostwriter of American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino’s autobiography Fantasia: Life is Not a Fairy Tale is upset. Her name isn’t on the book. No one called her for input into that [...]

I’m fine. Thanks for the emails. All is well, I swear. Except for an extreme lack of sleep, life ticks on. The last few days have been filled with non-writing work. Hours and hours and hours of non-writing work. Just hate it when life interferes with my internet time. [...]

I’m starting off the week somewhere else. I’m blogging at Access Romance today. The topic is the use of newspaper review quotes. My confusion stems from this situation: a newspaper prints a uniformly negative review of a book with one or two positive sentences. The author then uses those one [...]

Most people don’t think of D.C. as the literary capital of the world. Understandable, but possibly not fair. D.C. is a big reading town. One of those towns where people read nonfiction, political novels and literary trade in public. In private, well…
For those wanting to know what’s happening in the world [...]

At the end of a tough work week I retired to my couch and picked up the newest issue of People magazine. Every now and then all you want is fluff. People fills the fluff need very nicely. Unfortunately, I quickly got ticked off.
My first stop in People usually is [...]

Paranormal romances are everywhere. That’s not exactly a newsflash. I’ve enjoyed many but must admit sometimes I want something else. For the last few weeks, I’ve been desperate to find a contemporary romance. No vampires or paranormal aspects - just a contemporary romance. Susan Elizabeth Phillips or Jennifer Crusie are [...]

I’m blogging at the Brava website today. Stop by and say hello.
There’s a contest going on over there with prizes donated by the fabulous Brava authors. You need to comment on the Brava site to be entered. The rules are posted on the Message Board under the Weekly Housewarming Contest. [...]

At some point in Fall 2004, a group of unpublished writers started chatting online, visiting blogs, posting comments, and generally trying to encourage each other until The Call came. And for many of us, it did. Someone coined the phrase the *thisclose* club to describe our journey. For many of us, the journey [...]

In the nothing-in-particular category, saw this today:
J.R.R. Tolkien’s THE CHILDREN OF HURIN, one of his three Great Tales, reconstructed from its “unfinished state” by Christopher Tolkien, edited together from multiple drafts, to Harper UK, by the Tolkien Estate, for publication in April 2007 (world). US rights to Houghton Mifflin, for simultaneous publication with Harper.
Can another [...]

In the debate over whether or not it’s a appropriate for authors of a genre to review books by fellow authors in the genre, I offer this: Lisa Scottoline, author of Dirty Blonde and other thriller/suspense novels reviewed Sandra Brown’s newest suspense Ricochet in the Washington Post Book World today. Scottoline enjoyed Ricochet, [...]