Tag Archives: author

**** The Flamethrowers

Posted on by

I had the chance to hear the author read an extended excerpt from near the end of this book in mid-April 2015 and appreciated anew how strong the writing is. The Flamethrowers, was Kushner’s second novel. It, as well as her first, Telex from Cuba (2008), were finalists for the National Book Award. Kushner and poet John Yau read from their works as part of the reading series sponsored by Princeton University’s program in creative writing and Lewis Center for the Arts.

By Rachel Kushner – In many publications’ 2013 Top Ten lists, The Flamethrowers: A Novel starts strong, with the heroine testing her new-model Valera motorcycle and her nerve at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Coincidentally, she’s taken up with Sandro Valera, a sculptor of aluminum boxes in Manhattan, where she hopes photographs of her bike’s tracks across the flats will make her mark in the early 1970’s art world, too. This naive gal from Reno, Nevada, is always a couple of steps off pace, trying to hold her own among the older, jaded New York artists and hangers-on, and falls hopelessly behind when Sandro takes her to his wealthy family’s villa above Lake Como. There she encounters the really sharp social knives. Her interactions with Sandro’s mother are breathtaking. I won’t say more about plot, in case you decide to read it. Nice writing. Here’s a sample: “Roy Orbison’s voice entered the room like a floating silk ribbon . . . And the hair. Black as melted-down record vinyl.” (3/3)

Enhanced by Zemanta

See All Those People Down There? They’re Reading!

Posted on by
Los Angeles, Hollywood

(photo source: farm9.staticflickr.com)

50 finalists for the L.A. Times’s annual Book Prizes were announced recently. Bestselling young adult novelist John Green (whose book The Fault in Our Stars I actually read) is slated to receive the Innovators Award for his “dynamic use of online media to entertain and engage.” Susan Straight, will add a lifetime achievement award to her a nice list of other prizes: the Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, National Book Award finalists (for Highwire Moon), and the Lannan Literary Prize.

Finalists were named in 10 categories: biography, current interest, fiction, graphic novel/comics, history, mystery/thriller, poetry, science and technology, first fiction, and young adult literature. See the full list at the link above. I’ve reproduced four of the categories below. Haven’t read a one, but eager to read the highlighted ones! Winners will be announced in April.

Current Interest
Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Crown
David Finkel, Thank You for Your Service, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Charlie LeDuff, Detroit: An American Autopsy, The Penguin Press
Barry Siegel, Manifest Injustice: The True Story of a Convicted Murderer and the Lawyers Who Fought for His Freedom, Henry Holt & Co.
Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, Knopf

Fiction
Percival Everett, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Graywolf Press
Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs, Knopf
Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being, Viking
Susan Steinberg, Spectacle: Stories, Graywolf Press
Daniel Woodrell, The Maid’s Version: A Novel, Little, Brown & Co.

History
Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews, Belknap Press of Harvard University
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, HarperCollins
Glenn Frankel, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, Bloomsbury USA
Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism, Simon & Schuster
Alan Taylor, The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832, W. W. Norton & Co.

Mystery/Thriller
Richard Crompton, Hour of the Red God, Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo’s Calling, Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Co.
John Grisham, Sycamore Row, Doubleday Books
Gene Kerrigan, The Rage, Europa Editions
Ferdinand von Schirach, The Collini Case, Viking

2-9-14 Readers, Writers, Booklovers Unite!

Posted on by

Reading, book, Budi SukmanaHugh Howey’s Rants

Everyone who buys, sells, reads, borrows, downloads, and LOVES books has a stake in moving the publishing industry into the 21st century. It won’t happen easily. Best-selling indie novelist Hugh Howey (Wool) launched a well-aimed missile of advice at the industry in his notorious 1/8 blog post, “Don’t Anyone Put Me in Charge,” in which he explains what he would do if he ran one of the big publishing houses. He followed it up with a new barrage on 1/12, “My Second Month on the Hypothetical Job.” Even if thoughts about publication are not your daily preoccupation, his ideas are lively and thought-provoking.

For Publishing: A Radical Makeover

They would radically change the culture and the economics of the book business, making it better for readers and writers in the process. Among his memorable suggestions: get out of New York to cut overhead and get some work done. From home, mostly. (He suggests Houston. Not in August.)  He wants them to invest in Print on Demand, which would keep authors’ backlists alive. And he’d devote greater attention to the midlist bulge of authors. As publishers whittle down their emphasis to manuscripts that are “sure-fire” best-sellers, reader choice withers. And these are not people you’d want standing at the rail next to you at Santa Anita or Churchill Downs.

These next three were picked up by Business Insider writer Dylan Love:

  • “Every format, as soon as the book is available.” The day a book is released, you could buy it in hardback or paper, or Kindle, Nook, or other e-reader formats. No more stringing people along with a hardcover release, and letting them lose interest while they wait for the Kindle edition.
  • “Hardbacks come with free ebooks.” This “would change my perception of e-books overnight,” Love says. At present, e-book Digital Rights Management systems restrict readers’ flexibility. Bundling a hardback with a digital file would increase it.
  • “No more advertising.” In Howey’s publishing house, the firm’s money would “go into editors [remember when books weren’t full of mistakes?] and into acquiring new authors,” not into bookstore promotions and pricy advertisements that he says “don’t sell books.”

How Publishers Shouldn’t React

Howey admirer Baldur Bjarnason has drafted a list of tips for publishing insiders to use in their inevitable responses to Howey’s assault. The last of these is to make the argument that traditional publishers are “somehow responsible for keeping the general quality of books high.” I’ll let you explore for yourself Bjarnason’s links that stick the needle in that bit of puffery. LOL.

(Thanks to Beth Wasson at Sisters in Crime’s SinC Links for pointing out Howey’s and Bjarnason’s great posts!)

“30 Days and Nights of Literary Abandon”

Posted on by

The first question almost everyone asks when they learn I’ve written a novel is, “Do you plot everything out in advance, or do you figure it out as you go?” The answer is “Both.” I have a general idea of where I will end up, and I point the plot in that direction, but the route is unclear until I get there. Thousands of people—many of whom have never written a book before—are discovering their fictional paths this month.

We are reaching the middle of National Novel Writing Month (awkwardly abbreviated NaNoWriMo). Participating authors from countries around the world already report they have set down some 1.2 billion words. Skimming the long list of NaNoWriMo participants whose books drafted during this annual literary frenzy were ultimately published, I found Hugh Howey’s Wool, Kindle Book Review’s 2012 Indie Book of the Year. I happen to be listening to Wool on my iPod. I’ll bet there are authors in the list whom you know, too.

NaNoWriMo encourages participants to write a novel of at least 50,000 words in 30 days. In its first year, 21 writers participated, and six reached the finish line. (I use that term loosely, since completing the first draft of a novel is pretty darn far from anything resembling a “finish.”) Last year, the 14-year-old program had 256, 618 participants, 14 percent of whom reached the goal. Though they undoubtedly will have further work to do, this is a tremendous accomplishment.

The whole idea of NaNoWriMo appeals to me as a helpful boot camp for writers, aspiring or accomplished. It stresses the importance of writing every day—sustained effort—and shows writers they are capable of actually finishing something. Too many of us have promising, half-complete manuscripts languishing in drawers and Word files,  awaiting the return of a Muse who has apparently decamped to Brazil. NaNoWriMo’s fixed and tight deadline requires writers to power through at a blistering 1700-words-a-day pace, barely leaving time to roast the Thanksgiving turkey.

NaNoWriMo offers moral support and coaching through regional support groups. It took my breath away to learn that my region (Central New Jersey) has almost 3500 NaNoWriMo participants! The “shared experience” this encourages is based on the founder’s first experiment with the concept in July 1999. “We called it noveling,” he says. “And after the noveling ended on August 1, my sense of what was possible for myself, and those around me, was forever changed.”

A wistful look comes over people’s faces when they find out I’ve written a novel and published short stories. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” they say. If they do, there will be a rocky road ahead, but what I tell them about is the joy in traveling it. In future, I’ll also tell them about National Novel Writing Month.

As the NaNoWriMo folks say, “Win or lose, you rock for even trying.”