The Da Vinci Code is fast paced, a “page-turner.” Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is not. We don’t need Writer’s Digest to define narrative pace as how quickly or slowly the writer takes a reader through the story. And…
At last month’s Craft on Draft event Michelle Hoover, Emily Ross, and Dawn Tripp shared how truth inspired their fiction. In addition to reading excerpts from their novels and revealing what was influenced by fact, the authors selected the event’s…
It’s no secret that 2016 has been a rough year for pop musicians. Did someone set off a slow-acting neutron bomb that kills platinum-sellers? Paul Kantner (Jefferson Airplane), Merle Haggard, David Bowie, Maurice White (Earth, Wind & Fire), and Prince,…
As a writer, I sometimes worry so much about pleasing the marketplace that I become afraid to try new things and lose faith in that little voice that is my muse. This past weekend at Grub Street’s Muse and the…
The first page of Jenny Erpenbeck’s amazing 2014 novel The End of Days (Aller Tage Abend in German, available in English from New Directions) has to rank among the most agonizingly beautiful—and thematically apt—novel openings ever written: “The Lord gave,…
Pamela Wechsler’s first novel, Mission Hill, the first in a series of three legal thrillers featuring homicide prosecutor and Boston Brahmin Abby Endicott, comes out on May 3rd. Publishers Weekly writes about Mission Hill, “Though the swiftly moving plot offers…