. It's romantic but not overtly sexual. Classic but accessible, which says, "I respect your intelligence, but I still hope to get lucky with you." And you know Dickinson. Something for every mood swing. This book has a good physical heft, is easy to wrap, and not so expensive that you'll feel awkward when she hands you the Netflix gift card. Happy holidays!
.)
by Michael Koryta
by Charlotte Gordon
by Greg Bear
by Emma Donoghue
by Benjamin Percy
by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss (Blast from the past. It holds up.)
by Emily St. John Mandel
by Christopher Priest (I don't care if you saw the movie, you need to read it.)
by Claudia Sternbach (Watch this space. Over the next few months, Claudia will be chronicling her journey to publication here on BoxOcto.)
, my dear friend Rue McClanahan suffered a stroke and subsequently died. I wrote this article about our collaboration for the Houston Chronicle. Rue was the personification of Shaw's "spark of divine fire". I miss her terribly, and I'm heartbroken that she didn't get to blow the doors off Broadway one last time.A monk asked God to show him heaven and hell. First, God showed him hell: a banquet table laden with a great feast. But the people at the table were shrunken and famished, wailing in frustration. They had spoons melded to their fists, and the handles on the spoons were longer than their arms, so they couldn't put the food in their mouths.I look forward to featuring more author interviews and book reviews on BoxOcto in 2011, tweeting accordingly, and staying true to my hippie-dippy ambition to be a purveyor of shalom for my ghost clients and industry colleagues.
Then God showed him heaven: an identical table with an identical banquet and the same spoons with impossibly long handles. But the people assembled were healthy and strong, laughing and feasting, having learned to feed each other.
Don’t give in to internal and external pressures to try to find an agent before you’ve matured as a writer. The book business is very difficult and not getting any easier; most books that are published don’t sell well, and many careers end practically before they start.Can I get a amen? Read the rest here.
Write a book that only you could write, and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Be more patient and more honest with yourself than you ever thought you could be.
Find a couple of writers who you think are better than you are, ingratiate yourself with them, and start reading and workshopping each other. And ask them—beg them—to be merciless. Be humble and quiet while they give you feedback. Be prepared to cut, delete, throw away, put in a drawer.
Only when you’ve got your best possible work—something that can stand up there with the best of whatever genre you’re working in—should you start looking for the right agent to represent you. If you’ve got a terrific book, you should end up with plenty of good agents from which to choose, so don’t jump at the first person who says “yes.”
Put the good of the work before the good of your ego as much as you can.
, tells the story of her family's difficult journey after her son Ned was left paralyzed from the neck down after a car accident. (The surprising superhero in the book is Kasey, a 25 year old capuchin monkey trained by Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled.) A few weeks ago, we featured this excerpt, about the Rogers family's traditional reading of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
. Grab a box of Kleenex and check it out.
, which will be published in April 2011 by Unbridled Books. Starting today (scroll down an inch or two for the first installment), Claudia will joining BoxOcto so we can ride along with her on the bumpy road to publication.
Claudia Sternbach
The Story of Reading Lips
Chapter 1
Waiting for a book to be published is not, no matter what one may have heard, like waiting to give birth. At least not as far as I am concerned. When I was trying to get pregnant I was fully aware of the fact. Each romp in the bedroom was, I was hoping, going to lead to growing fat and round and swollen and then to the big Ta Da!
When I was writing the personal essays that would eventually become a collection to be released by Unbridled Books in April, 2011, I had no idea I was actually nurturing a seed which would grow and grow and become more than just nattering for my own personal pleasure. Each romp at my computer was simply for fun. Not for procreating. I was not imagining celebrations for a newborn or attempting to come up with a name. And yet, here I am, a book on the way. Unplanned to say the least. But a welcome surprise. And perhaps more fun as I wasn't trying at all. I felt no pressure from anyone. No one even knew I was working on this. No friends or family members called on a weekly basis to ask if anything was new. Unlike when I was trying to get knocked up. I had opened my big mouth and soon everyone wanted to know what was new.
The other evening a couple of writer friends were over and we were well into a bottle of wine, which if I were pregnant with a baby I would not be able to enjoy but when waiting for a book to come out is almost mandatory. One of them asked me about my “process.” How my writing came to feel, in his opinion, so honest and so relaxed even when dipping into the very personal. The secret, I told him, was that when working on this soon-to-be-released book, I never, ever, imagined anyone reading it. I was free to move about the cabin without a care in the world. No seat belts to restrain me. I just sat down at my desk one afternoon and listened to a voice in my head and stepped back into my past and wrote. I wrote about a boy named Teddy and how much I loved him. And in the blink of an eye I was in fifth grade and it was the end of the school year and rumor had it that Teddy was planning on kissing me. And as I sat writing I could remember every moment leading up to that last day of school. I could hear the kids in the yard. I could taste the tuna sandwich my mother had packed me for lunch. I was off and running.
For months and months I would set aside my real work, my newspaper columns and magazine stories and play around in the past. When in New York City, where I am lucky enough to be able to spend months at a time apartment sitting for friends, I would treat myself to time at the computer at any time of the day or night. If words began to buzz in my head at three in the morning I got up and made myself a cup of tea and sat at the desk and played. And as the essays continued to come, not in any particular order, I began to save them so I might print them when I returned home. And eventually I began to share them with my husband, Michael. He was my first listener. And he was encouraging. He made me feel as if they were good enough to at least place them in a drawer where they would not get lost. And there they stayed. For a very, very, long time.
So how did they get from my cluttered drawer to Unbridled Books Spring 2011 Catalog? And were there any bumps in the road? Sink holes narrowly avoided?
I'll have to get back to you on that.
