In many ways, The Dream Peddler is a love letter to L. M. Montgomery. I can’t think of any author whose work I spent more time reading during my adolescence. Eventually I collected every novel she ever wrote, and read many of them over and over. Back then I never gave any thought to the opportunities to read something new that I was squandering every time I picked…
I am so pleased to welcome memoirist Rae Theodore to the debutante ball this week! Rae visited us last year to do an interview for her debut, Leaving Normal: Adventures in Gender, and now she’s back with more great stories in her latest release, My Mother Says Drums Are for Boys: True Stories for Gender Rebels. I’ve known Rae since I first walked into a little writing group in Collegeville, PA…
As you all know by now, it’s a very exciting week for us here at the ball because we are celebrating our first book release! We all had the chance to read Devi’s book many months ago, and I must say, I was not one bit surprised by all the attention it has been getting, the many amazing lists it’s been on, and the literary world’s general excitement…
Publishing my first book in 2019, I often find myself daydreaming about what it must have been like to do this a hundred years ago when there was no internet, no blogosphere, no Twitter or Facebook or Instagram to manage. I don’t know why, because I have absolutely nothing in common with him, but I always picture F. Scott Fitzgerald, scribbling away at his writing desk, blissfully ignorant…
I know you’ll all be shocked when I announce that I did not use comp titles in my query. I did not. I don’t think I was taking any particular stance in this; it’s just that I had a very hard time to come up with any, and very few agents actually required them. I described my book and sent my query off without them, and that seemed…
Before writing this blog post, I never really gave much thought to a bucket list for this year. Or a career bucket list, for that matter. I daydream about miraculous debut and career events all the time: I see my book in O Magazine. Terry Gross wants to interview me on Fresh Air. I make the NYT bestseller list. Wait, they get bigger: eventually, I win the Pulitzer…
This week, I thought I might try to focus on picking one book to represent each genre I like to read in order to keep my list here from being a thousand books long. I may fudge a little, since many of the books I’m anticipating could fall into more than one category. YOUNG ADULT: On the Come Up by ANGIE THOMAS I know this pick could not be…
It’s coming home to me how often I start these posts with some comment about how I “don’t really do” whatever the topic of the week happens to be. I don’t live life with balance, I don’t dispense advice, I don’t blah blah blah. So let me hit you with a big surprise: I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Truly, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard…
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones** From the publisher: Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. In this deft exploration of…
I am practically rubbing my hands together with glee right now, because this has got to be one of my favorite writing topics of all time. There is so much emphasis in writing culture on how much time one spends writing, how quickly one can write, how many words one can churn out in a day. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I do…
