Funeral for a Rejected Novel
Last week one of my Google Alerts led me to this amazing Web site, My Dream is Dead But I'm Not, where author Mary Patrick Kavanaugh described the funeral she was about to hold for her novel that, while agented, was rejected by sixteen major publishers. She even had blurbs from well-known authors (Lolly Winston, Adair Lara, Catherine Brady) and included praise from her rejectors, such as: ...
Hidden Agendas
A wise man once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I always thought that this was a kind way of saying, "It's okay if you are not a genius, just don't forget to dream." Lately, my attention has been turned to the law of attraction and string theory -- and in my effort to understand the magnitude of these concepts; I had a small but significant ...
"You Need to Consider the Issues!"
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Oh, what a sad state of affairs we have awakened to find our nation experiencing. The deep divisions that exist in our country cannot be easily healed, while the current administration’s leaders fan the flames. Calls for bipartisanship are really asking one to vote against his/her party, not true compromise. Each side is diametrically opposed to the other, leaving no room for such a ...
Shout Out to Readers
I was all set to blog this morning about another 5 hour "tree watch" I sweated through yesterday. Don't worry, for those who love the occasional whacked out Christmas tree story, it's coming. But today, it's a shout out to readers. I didn't know I was going to write this blog until I opened my email this morning. There was a letter waiting for me from a father who had bought my new ...
the end is nigh
The end, however, is not nearly nigh enough. My deadline is in a couple of short weeks, and so I’ll keep this relatively short. I’m working through the end of the draft (leaving myself precious little time to revise before zooming the manuscript off to my editor–but we’ll discuss poor planning another day). The end of this book is more difficult than I planned for. Largely, there’s one ...
Eid, Sherry Jones and my ‘jihad’
Heard firecrackers. The moon has been sighted. Tomorrow will be Eid in my part of the world. I wonder whether I have any right to celebrate at all. The festival is supposed to be a sort of thanksgiving for all that one has denied oneself for one month. If this is the yardstick, I should be celebrating every damn day of my life. Technically, I have not woken up early in the morning to ...
A Gauchito for Carlos Gardel
In contemporary Argentine tango music, there is “Before Astor” and “After Astor”. Astor Piazzolla (a master of the bandoneón, the concertina-like instrument that many consider the soul of tango) revolutionized the genre in ways that either electrified his numberless fans (most of them outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is the home of tango) or infuriated his many detractors (most ...
Moi, from A To Zed
Mr. Huntington Sharp has gotten his closeup from Mr. DeMille, and now he wants people to define ourselves through the alphabet. Okay Mr. Sharp, here I come.A for age: 35 (36 tomorrow)B is for beer of choice: I'm not a real beer drinker, to be honest. Mostly I drink beer on hot days, and that's whatever is on sale. C is for career right now: I work at a testing center. Other careers have included ...
Your Kafka pop quiz: Pencils ready?
From Monday's Chicago Tribune. Your Kafka pop quiz: Pencils ready?Julia Keller | CULTURAL CRITIC September 29, 2008 "Kafka on the Shore" has almost nothing to do with famed author Franz Kafka (1883-1924). That does not mean, however, that we all couldn't benefit from brushing up on the man whose name has become synonymous with soul-destroying frustration. Test your Kafka knowledge ...
shooting at a moving target…
It's been hard to keep up-to-date the past few days: Dirty Sexy Money's canceled, but wait, a couple of actors say not quite yet. NBC announces the come fall 2009, Jay Leno moves from 11:30 PM, Monday-Friday to 10 PM, M-F. And then, there's the never-ending discussion around the future of daytime soaps, here and here are two of the most recent. I've written before about the relationship between ...
