What a week! Thanks to our re-designed books and blogs pages, our letter asking our Members to update their profiles, and the widely read and elegantly written blog by Tim Wise, we saw a huge increase in readership and traffic. As if that weren’t enough, I also was able to help a record number of talented authors go live with their very own homes on Red Room, and here are a few highlights:

Carol Cassella is a practicing anesthesiologist as well as a novelist. Her debut novel, Oxygen, was published by Simon and Schuster to great reviews, and it is perched among the top 10,000 books on Amazon. She lives in Seattle.

Jena Pincott is a writer with a science background and is a former senior editor at Random House.  Her latest book, Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?, is about the science of love and attraction.  She has written several other books on topics that span from self-help to science fiction.

Amitabha Bagchi was born in Delhi where he studied Computer Science and Engineering before receiving his PhD in computer science from Johns Hopkins University in 2002. His novel, Above Average, about a middle class boy growing up in Delhi, was published in 2007 by Harper Collins India. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Sandra Ingerman is a psychotherapist who teaches workshops on shamanism, and has served on the board of trustees of the Foundation for Shamanistic Studies. Ingerman is also a board certified expert on traumatic stress as well as certified in acute traumatic stress management. She has written several popular books on stress, the self, and shamanism.

Sherry Jones now describes herself as the “World’s Most Dangerous Author,” due to the controversy surrounding her debut novel.  Originally slated to be published by Random House last year, the now-infamous The Jewel of Medina, was indefinitely postponed over warnings that the book would be “more dangerous than the Satanic Verses.”  Her rights were since picked up by Beaufort Books, and the book will finally be released in October. (For more information about the controversy, check out the Wikipedia entry.)

As always, lots of exciting features and authors are in the pipeline for the upcoming weeks as we continue to grow and work to make Red Room the best place for people who love books.

-Max Sindell, Author Liaison and Community Coordinator.