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…
Aloha! Today my debut novel, The Atlas of Reds and Blues, is released — and tonight there’s a big book birthday party planned at Books Inc. in Mountain View, CA to celebrate the journey thus far. What began as a short story I wrote for a workshop in 2004 will have a life of its own, separate from me. It is a surreal feeling to look back and realize one…
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 want to go on record as saying that I have nothing to add to K.A. Doore’s perfect post yesterday. 🙂 Being part of a literary community is the best thing I writer could wish for. Writing itself is a solitary and lonely, and often isolating, endeavor. But if we’re really lucky writers, we learn some craft techniques and make friends along the way. Then you have people in your…
We are thrilled to have Rachel Howard as our guest author this week at The Debutante Ball! Rachel Howard’s novel THE RISK OF US, described by Jenny Offill as “an emotionally complex and amazingly suspenseful novel about love and fear,” will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on April 9th. Rachel earned her MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College and is the author of a memoir, The Lost Night….
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…
I don’t have any magic formulas for the books I selected and used as comparable titles — except if you consider reading, as I do, as a superpower. A few years ago I wanted to start sending out my own book. I attempted to take stock of what I loved to read and re-read, the books I kept returning to for inspiration and solace: The House on Mango Street by…
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…
We are so excited to welcome Barbara Ridley to the Debutante Ball this week! Barbara was born in England but has lived in California for more than 35 years. After a successful career as a nurse practitioner, which included publication of academic articles in peer-reviewed journals, she is now focused on creative writing. Her work has appeared in journals such as Writers Workshop Review, ArsMedica, The Copperfield Review, Blood and Thunder and Stoneboat. WHEN IT’S…
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…
