(This post originally appeared on Grub Street Daily). The first book I remember falling in love with was Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede. As the title might suggest, it’s a playful YA fantasy novel about a princess who…
Here’s a comment my copyeditor, Jade Z. Scibilia, made about my last manuscript: “I laughed when you had Lynch mention the number of Johns in the police force (I recall we had to work on that in Idyll Threats). Buuuuut, we have…
Twenty years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by the novelist Robert Cormier. That night he said, “The reader doesn’t care what you were trying to write. The reader only cares about what’s on the page.” In…
I am not a Buddhist (although I have researched Buddhism in the service of one of my novels), but I’ve spent time pondering in relation to my writing a variant of the famous Buddhist kōan*: You can hear the sound…
If you’ve taken a novel-related class at Boston’s Grub Street, it’s likely you’ve crossed paths with Lisa Borders. Author of The Fifty-First State and Cloud Cuckoo Land, Lisa developed Grub Street’s Novel in Progress classes, founded the Novel Generator, and…
I was weeding around the shrubs in my yard this weekend, which gave me a lot of time to reflect on what matters. My answer: Nothing. That’s right. Nothing matters. Let me explain. Maybe you need a better idea of…