February 2012
15 posts
“My favorite part of writing a book is the moment when I can actually visualize...”
– Julie Salamon, author of Wendy and the Lost Boys: A Bio of Wendy Wasserstein
“It’s all become much more of a challenge. I find writing novels gets...”
– Alan Hollinghurst, author of The Stranger’s Child
Rising above your past so you can shine brightly
“Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.” (Karen Armstrong)
“When you are not writing, you’re going to be sad. You are going to feel...”
– David Milch, creator of Deadwood and so much more, in a presentation at the WGA Theater, 2001.
Well: Exercise as Housecleaning for the Body →
The ability of exercise to speed the removal of garbage from inside our body’s cells may be one of its most valuable, if least visible, effects, a new study suggests.
“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain...”
– Maya Angelou (via libraryland)
January 2012
4 posts
“I’m a woman, Mary. I can be as contrary as I choose.”
– Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham
December 2011
2 posts
Click through. It cracked me up.
September 2010
3 posts
The short version: Five weeks. Texas. AZ. MO. non-NYC New York. New England. Mid-Atlantic (incl NYC). Texas, Round 2. West Coast. Mid-West and down the mighty Mississippi. Miami so I can drink Cuban coffee, which I will really need by the end of November. Final event at the bookstore closest to my house.
In some areas I will only be speaking in schools. Why? “Logistical requirements” was the...
I’ve known about this for weeks and have just about exploded because I couldn’t say anything.
BUT NOW I CAN!
The first official review of FORGE is in, and it is decorated with a very shiny star, courtesy of Kirkus.
“At the end of Chains (2008), Isabel rescues her friend Curzon from Bridewell Prison and rows away from Manhattan in their escape from slavery. Now, in the second of the planned...
Thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on my WFMAD blogs in the past month. As promised, four of you won Mad Woman in the Forest tee-shirts!
Drum roll, please!
Alison Wuthrich
Southern Self (on LiveJournal)
Bel (aka Itsy Bitsy Monkey)
And Katherine Quimby Johnson won the grand prize, a tee-shirt and my last ARC of FORGE
Will each of you please email queenlouise AT...
August 2010
13 posts
The 3rd Annual Write Fifteen Minutes a Day Challenge has reached its last day. We made it!
How did you do?
If you did not write every day this month, do me a favor. Instead of beating yourself up, or lining up the excuses why you failed despite the best of intentions, take that energy and turn it into writing. Today. If you messed up, it’s water under the bridge. No worries. Start over.
I saved...
My friend Susan Campbell Bartoletti has a new book out: They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group.
You should buy it and read it. Five reviewing publications have given it stars (so far). Sue has written a fascinating account of her research trip to Arkansas to attend a KKK Congress. (They don’t call them rallies anymore.) She wrote four blog entries from 8/23...
More questions today, with the added bonus of answers!!
::shoos chickens out of way::
Not sure if you can answer this, but how do the covers of books get chosen?
It’s kind of a mystery to me, too. Publishers have departments of people who are artists. They have other departments filled with sales and marketing people. Near as I can figure, when it’s time to design a cover, the members of the...
As we wind down the 3rd Annual WFMAD Challenge, I figured I should probably finish answering some of the questions you guys have asked this month.
Without further delay…
How do you find dependable research for your historical novels?
I find out which academics have done the most current research, I read their books, and use their bibliographies to get me started on the path to primary sources....
Bookavore, bookseller extraordinaire at WORD in Brooklyn (and my oldest kid) has weighed in with a resolution to remedy the mud-slinging that seems to be heating up between adult “literary fiction” authors and adult “genre fiction” authors. (You haven’t heard about the feud? Details here.) If you, too, were a Model UN nerd in high school, this will completely make your day. Even if you weren’t a...
Two quick reviews for you: Reading Rants weighs in on FORGE and WINTERGIRLS reviewed in Colorado.
How did your writing go yesterday? Mine floooowed. Like creekwater after a thunderstorm. Sugar pouring from a blue china bowl. Like round hips swaying under a loose skirt to a hot salsa trumpet.
Seriously. It was that good. It was hard to come back to the real world and do things like eat. Run....
First – congrats to my friend David Macinnis Gill on the publication of his new book, BLACK HOLE SUN!!
I got to read an early copy and here is what I said about it: “Black Hole Sun grabbed me by the throat and didn’t let go until the last page. In the best tradition of Heinlein and Firefly, Black Hole Sun is for readers who like their books fast-paced, intense, and relentless. Buy it, read it,...
I received this request from a reader last week.
“Thank u so much for the prompts!! could u mayb please write abt how u get to know ur character? & the charcters devlpment?”
There are oodles of places where you can find lists of character traits that you might find handy when you are trying to make up a fictional person using nothing more than your pencil and the wet clay of your...
Saturday’s post on the censorship issues surrounding the Teen Lit Fest In Humble, TX led to a wonderful series of comments and ongoing discussion. Thanks again to everyone who has chimed in.
One reader wrote in with a link to a censorship lesson plan for 3rd – 5th graders.
Janni Lee Simner wrote about the difference between a boycott and a strike and came to the conclusion that the authors who...
Wow!!
Thank you to everyone who chimed into yesterday’s discussion about the most effective ways to deal with censorship. I really appreciate the obvious time and thought that went into your comments.
I’ll post more on this tomorrow, including a link to a lesson plan from a teacher who has put together a unit on censorship for grades 3 – 5. If you have classroom ideas or if you talked about...
Censorship is in the news again. Start out your Saturday by reading Pat Scales’ great article about Common Sense Media, Three Bombs, Two Lips, and a Martini Glass.
Then bring yourself up to speed on the censorship battle surrounding the Teen Lit Fest in Humble, TX. My friend, Ellen Hopkins, was disinvited to speak after complaints about her books. Ellen blogged about it . Several other YA...
Pretty soon I am going to be selling these tee-shirts.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be giving them away as prizes for the people who comment on WFMAD posts and whenever I feel like giving away prizes.
Do you like them? Would you wear them? Would you be interested in the logo on a sweatshirt or is this concept the height of absurdity?
Seriously. I want to know.
Sometimes you just have to push the silly button. Maybe that’s why it is time for the annual Pimp My Bookcart competition.
Last year’s winner was a Good Humor-themed cart created by welding students at Harlem High School.
If you need to smile, check out all of last year’s winners.
Two more smile makers come to you courtesy of Jim Averbeck and Kristin Clark Venuti. Jim interviews people at...