Posts made in July, 2009

It’s official. I am a bona fide author. I just signed my name after the words “Author’s Signature” on my very first book contract. Come 2011, the world will be able to buy my book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or their local bookshop. Until then, though, you will just have to content yourself with my mindless ramblings here.

I’ve got to assume that Denis Johnson has already sold the film rights to Nobody Move. This short, incredibly quick-based story reads like a screenplay. It’s almost nothing but action and dialog. With action that tends towards the exciting and snappy dialog that brings to life the cast of dumb criminals, the entire book flies along like a high speed car chase. The review I read compared Johnson’s writing to that of Elmore Leonard. I think one of the most brilliant things Elmore Leonard has ever said is, “I try to leave out the parts that people skip.” Johnson has also apparently followed this rule, as there isn’t a single skip-worthy passage to be found in Nobody Move. Nobody Move is a perfect summer read, just the perfect...

According to this article in the New York Times, Target is making some waves with their own book selections. Even though I spend a lot of time in Target and love books, I’ve never spent much time in their book section assuming it was just the usual bunch of bestsellers that I had no real interest in, but apparently the retailer has chosen some unlikely titles for their featured selections and, at least in one case, turned a dud of a book into a bestseller. From what I read in the article it looked like all the selections were in the women’s fiction category, but I know Target carries other books as well. Does anyone know if they have featured selections in other categories? I am thinking YA and children’s, but there are other big categories like...

Things have come a long way since I was a teenager. I remember the days when store managers viewed teen shoppers as nothing but potential shoplifters and watched us like a hawk as we browsed their wares. OK, I’m sure there still are stores like that, but Borders at least recognizes that teens are great customers and is rewarding them with an expanded section in many of their stores. Read the full article from the Wall Street Journal online here. Of course, it helps that there all these great writers creating awesome books for the teen market right now. One of them is Ellen Hopkins whose Twitter post alerted me to the story. So, thanks,...

One of the quotes on the back of my copy of Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand describes the novel as a literary thriller, but that hardly does the book justice. Take a cast of wonderfully eccentric and completely original characters with more than their fair share of personal demons, stick them on a Maine island in the midst of a bitter cold November, throw in some mystery and murder, and you have an absolutely riveting novel. My problem with traditional thrillers is that they aren’t always so thrilling. The plot twists are often far too predictable in my opinion, but as I entered part 2 of Generation Loss, the plot took a twist I wasn’t expecting, and from there on out the book continued to offer up surprises. By the time I entered the second half of...