authors

9 posts

How to Start a Conversation, America vs France – The Paths of Marriage Series

websiteheader_nowavailable2_smallThis is the final post of the series that examines topics from the perspective of the characters in the upcoming novel, The Paths of Marriage which will be for sale starting 1 October 2014.

“How to Start a Conversation – America versus France” is written from the point of view of the character, Audrey Girard.

I am French. Not rude, French. Yes, there is a difference. As a psychologist, I can say with confidence the difference is almost always perception. Most of my patients come to me with a dramatic story of social isolation, or betrayal, or deception. While some of these patients certainly have actual mental illnesses, far more simply perceive something much too severely compared to what was intended. That is what we French think of your reactions to our culture, my dear Americans.
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George Saunders’ “Victory Lap”

Tenth of December bookstackHere in 2013, American short-fiction author George Saunders is having a moment. His fourth collection of short stories, Tenth of December, was published in January. Wikipedia describes the book’s critical reception as “mixed to positive” — but the positive end of that range seems remarkably intense: A recent New York Times Magazine interview with the author is titled “George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year.” (Bold title for an article published during the first week of January.) And on a winter Sunday after yet another nor’easter had finished slamming New England, Saunders’ Boston-area reading practically filled a local auditorium with his fans. Continue reading →

Jan Berenstain, Co-creator of Berenstain Bears Dies

Janice “Jan” Berenstain died this past Friday after a severe stroke on Thursday.

Jan along with her husband Stan, created a book series for pre-schoolers over a period of 50 years. Jan and Stan met when they were 18 on their first day of art school.  They married years later after Stan returned from a stint in the army as a medical illustrator in an army hospital.  During that time, Jan worked as a draftsman in the Army Corp of Engineers and a riveter of seaplanes. Continue reading →

Recommended Writers: Lisa See

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of going with a friend to see Chinese-American author Lisa See give a lecture at a nearby library. (Woot-woot for library public lectures! Check out to see who your own public library is bringing in. I’ve seen people from Nobel physicists to Ray Bradbury.)

See is the author of several novels (most recently Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy) and a sort of biography of her family’s immigration-to-America experience, On Gold Mountain. She’s also the author of some fairly successful mystery novels (Dragon Bones, and others. You know where powells.com is, go look.) Continue reading →

QOTD: Ask a Former Harlequin Writer

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Once upon a time, long ago and far away, I wrote several Harlequin romance novels. How did I get into it? Like a lot of people, I had graduated from university and couldn’t find work in my field, librarianship. During school I’d heard about librarians being needed so I studied that, but had the misfortune to graduate the year after they (mostly, government and public libraries) had hired all the librarians they could afford. I worked in a bookstore for a couple of years, but it didn’t pay well and I had ambitions beyond that. So I thought I’d try writing Harlequins. They had an established structure, and you had to keep within certain parameters as regards the plot, which struck me as good training for a new and indecisive writer. We got to the point where my husband was making enough money that I could quit work and we wouldn’t have to eat cat food. I gave myself 5 years to produce a publishable novel. It took 3. Continue reading →

Crasstalk Book Club: Discussing Ethan Brown’s Shake the Devil Off

Sorry about the brief delay in the discussion post! Hopefully this gave those of you who waited until Friday night to open the book (I know who you are) time to finish.

On that note, I would much rather have been writing this post than hard-restraining tornado refugee pit bulls for fourteen hours on a weekend. So if you’d like to help me get my posts done on time in the future, donate to the ASPCA or HSUS.

So. Shake the Devil Off. Did you find it uplifting? A story of triumph over adversity? If you did, give it a quick re-read. But though it wasn’t the feel-good book of the year, hopefully you appreciated the book. And if you didn’t, hopefully you want to tell everyone why.

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Simple Rules: Writing Posts

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As everyone knows, this site has become an experiment in just how big a group blog can get before it crashes into an iceberg and kills thousands of people. We love the enthusiasm that our 90+ authors bring to the site and we have absolutely no intention of limiting your ability to express your creativity.

That said, we’ve learned a few things over the past week and it’s necessary to make some subtle changes to ensure that the site keeps getting better.

  • DO request an author account. If you don’t already have an author account, and would like one, email jfurfari -at- gmail.com to request one. If you’re brand new to the site, settle in and start contributing as a commenter. We’re much more likely to approve commenters who’ve already made a contribution to the site.
  • DO pick a unique password. If you haven’t picked out a unique password yet, do it NOW. Failing to do that could compromise the site’s security, and with so many authors, this is a real concern.
  • DO NOT hit publish. From now, authors will not actually be publishing their articles themselves. Instead, you’ll write the post and format it as normal in WordPress and save it as “PENDING REVIEW.”  An editor will look it over, make sure everything is ready to go, and schedule a time for it to be published. This will make it much easier for us to make sure everyone’s articles stay up top for longer without being bumped just because 8 other people posted at the same time you did. If you continually violate this rule, expect to lose your author account.
  • DO NOT edit your post after it is moved to pending or is scheduled.
  • DO NOT create new categories.  New tags are fine though.
  • DO NOT select categories for your post. We’ll assign categories for you.
  • DO add a blurb about yourself that appears at the bottom of your articles. To do that, go to your User page and add it to the About section there. Also, make sure you have an avatar loaded.
  • DO NOT add a “Featured Image.”  Just place a photo at the top of the post that’s around 550 pixels wide.
  • Do NOT start open threads. We’ll handle that. It gets crazy when there are five different open threads being started around the same time.
  • DO submit your articles ahead of time. The further ahead we can schedule all the new posts, the better.
  • DO NOT assume we’ll automatically publish your article just because you wrote it. We don’t plan to wield a heavy hand in terms of what you write about, but in some cases we may feel that your article is not a good fit for the site. Please try to either be cool about it and understand that your article just wasn’t quite the right fit… or cause a big pageview-generating public bitchfest in the comment section. We like spectacle.
  • DO come up with ideas for weekly columns. If you have a great idea, pick out a day of the week and post your idea in the comments here so that the other authors know what you’re working on. We really want more liveblogs, recaps, reviews, etc.
  • DO NOT make posts with just a single link/video and not much else. This isn’t Twitter. Put some time and effort into your posts. There are a LOT of eyeballs reading your articles so focus on presenting something unique and interesting.