The Post Pub

Good Blogging: How To Turn off a Reader

In her latest blog post, Barbara Delinsky admits a missed reading group appointment that could have landed her in hot water:

Did I tell you that this woman had also sent me pictures of the members of her group in advance of our meeting? She had to have been one of the most eager, most generous, most comprehensive meeting preparers I’ve ever dealt with. And I let her down.

Why am I telling you this? It isn’t something I’m proud of. But it is part of the HOW TO of being a writer. It relates to the business part. Ahhh, for the day when all I had to do with my life was to write books! I would estimate that I spend 40% of my work time on business. There are lots of things to keep straight, and I don't only mean the crises of my current characters. I’m talking about things that have to do with that most precious commodity, my readers.

Read Barbara's blog, Everyday Drama, for more about the realities of being a full-time fiction writer. Her latest book, The Secret Between Us, is now available.

Friday's Author Blogging Roundup

The last several posts to this site have been contest alerts.  I'm working on getting a new author interview up soon. In the meantime, here's a roundup of author blogs for Friday (note: not all of these posts are new, but all are well worth reading):

Barbara Delinsky, asks, "Has Your Life Gone According to Plan?"... Jacquelyn Mitchard wrestles with the decision to dress her daughters in geisha costumes for Halloween... Marly Youmans puts out a call for poetry and prose about insects... Janice Erlbaum buys sweaters for homeless cats... Brendan Halpin tries to start a literary feud... Billy Mernit reviews "Dan in Real Life"... Phil Town weighs in on whether Walgreen's is a stock to buy... Tod Goldberg gets angry at his DVR [warning: strong language]... Pam Ribon, a writer for "Samantha Who?", chronicles her picket-line experiences in Hollywood... and Chris Anderson ponders the promotional value of authors giving things away for free. [More on this later!]

Good Blogging: Brendan Halpin

Educator-turned-author Brendan Halpin (Losing My Faculties; Dear Catastrophe Waitress) takes a unique approach to analyzing the 2007 World Series outcome:

The Colorado Rockies, managed,owned, and largely populated by evangelical Christians, have been known to credit God for their victories and their remarkable run up to the series. (Read all about it here.)

So now that the Rockies have been decisively crushed by the Sox, what are the theological implications for the Rockies? I see the possibilities as follows:

1.) The world is a battleground between an equally powerful God and Satan. The Sox, Satan's favorite nine, triumphed over God's own Rockies. This is supported by the office lights in the Prudential building being lit in a pattern that spelled out "Hail Satan" after the game 2 victory. (Note--those who believe this aren't really Christians at all, but, rather, Manichaeans. I'm just saying.)

Read Brendan's blog to see the rest of his list.

Good Blogging: Chris Bohjalian

Author Chris Bohjalian (Midwives; The Double Bind) writes about the moles that are making swiss cheese of his yard... due to his cats' unlikely aversion to meat:

That's right I have five cats ... and moles. I'm a vegetarian and so there's a part of me that approves of my cats' unwillingness to eat meat that is recognizable. Once, back in July, I found a dead mouse on the slate walkway. Out of intellectual curiosity I placed it in one of the cat bowls in lieu of canned cat food to see what they do. Their response? They looked at me as if I were insane and howled for their Friskies. It was as if I were asking them to eat cauliflower. (The thought did cross my mind to next put the mouse in the blender to see if my cats would eat it that way, but that idea seemed to be taking the experiment in the direction of Serial Killer. Also, I would never be able to use the blender again.)

Visit Chris Bohjalian's blog.

Good Blogging: Barbara Delinsky

Author Barbara Delinsky (Family Tree; The Secret Between Us) has tips for knitters on how to stylishly hide extra yarn:

You know you have a problem when you run out of places to hide your stash. You've used up most of your available closet space and have run up a bill at The Container Store on plastic bins that look nice when stacked. Some of the bins are semi-transparent, so you load these with your brightest yarn. Out of desperation, you've raided your basement and reposessed several large baskets that, years ago, held silk flowers. Now they're filled with yarn. What's next?

Read her blog for the answer.

Good Blogging: Neil Gaiman

It's difficult to select just one example of good blogging by Neil Gaiman; he blogs daily, and it's all good. Here, he runs an excerpt of his latest work, Odd and the Frost Giants:

He walked over to the straw mattress, and climbed onto it. It didn't smell like his father at all, he realised, as he sat down on it, as he placed the crutch carefully against the wall, to pull himself up when he woke. It just smelled like straw. Odd closed his eyes, and he was asleep.

Dreams of darkness, of flashes, of moments, nothing he could hold onto, nothing that comforted him. And then into the dream a booming gloomy voice that said,

“It wasn't my fault.”

Visit Neil Gaiman's blog.

Good Blogging: Barbara Abercrombie

I began to think if I got hit by a bus my secret would be revealed: I work in chaos. I work knee deep in cat hair. I have every single draft of a failed novel, drafts of the new novel, all drafts of Courage & Craft, and something like 182 lined notebooks of my journal dating back to 1972. I have copies of handouts from every class I’ve taught since 1992. I have student papers I couldn’t bear to throw away. I have newspaper clippings saved for reasons I can’t remember. In one particularly scary drawer I have dozens of failed pens, a bottle of very hard White-Out, hundreds of business cards from perfect strangers, and a very good recipe for gazpacho that I copied down about the time Carter was president.  This office of mine is like one of those rooms that eventually has to be shoveled out. And shown on local evening news.

Barbara Abercrombie's book, Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story (New World Library, August 2007), is currently available in stores.

Visit her blog.