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,…
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,…
Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace conference is this weekend. It’s always a good time of the year in Boston. Hundreds of writerly folks gather to talk craft, to talk publishing, to talk to each other, and to drink (because…
The slogans zing at writers everywhere we go, from tree-dangling kittens on social media to well-meaning cocktail party guests. Keep the Faith. Never Give Up. Butt in Chair. And we spoon feed it to ourselves as well, suckling at the…
It wasn’t so long ago that I was a person who kept her calendar in stone. I did not flake, bail, ghost, disappear, get busy, or “forget.” If I said I was going, I went. Period. End of story. I was that…
As I’ve been in the throes of revising my novel (again) and will soon be querying agents (again), hoping to launch my first book out into the world, visions of my next novel have been creeping into my consciousness. So,…