Historical fiction requires a completely different mindset. To lose yourself in another time, it helps to experience it. To write MODERN GIRLS, I needed to block out the twenty-first century and pretend I lived in the first half of the twentieth century. So I immersed myself in the spirit of the 1930s, using every sense I could. I looked at the paintings Dottie sees at MOMA. I listened to music…
From the 2011 Debs… Deb Eleanor’s The Weird Sisters has its first review! Library Journal calls it “lovely”, with “creative and original” narration. Woohoo! Deb Kim is into countdown mode for her book launch on November 1st. Excited and a bit nervous. OK, a lot nervous! Deb Sarah’s latest Real Simple article, The Winter Washing Guide (how and when to wash all your favorite winter weather staples), is out this…
Can you imagine me as a biologist? Nope, didn’t think so. Neither can I. But somehow in the beginning of my sophomore year of college, I got distracted and lost, and even though my lifelong dream had been to pursue writing, I had concocted some strange plan to go into medicine. I’d hightailed it from the journalism building to the biology labs one quarter, and after one particularly grueling lab,…
After a Debutante’s debut, what tends to happen? In the old days, she probably got married off and began living a life of luxury. Today — who knows? But surely a tiara or fancy dress is involved. I guess you don’t need me to tell you that times have changed. Absolutely nothing about my own debut happened the way I expected it to. Like in most things I do, I…
Today was one of the weirdest days of my life. I woke up in New York city, in a hotel room, and I had miraculously transformed into a supermodel. Okay, so that’s not exactly how it happened. In actuality, I participated in something that Woman’s World magazine is calling the Deskside Diet. For one week after Thanksgiving, I ate a reasonable diet and used a little bicycle pedaler that fit…
I would say that the main thing that publishing has taught me is how to meet my deadlines and then make a joke about the fact that it’s 4:23 on Saturday where I am and I’ve officially thus missed my deadline for this post. Missing deadlines is atypical for me — I’m actually the opposite, the virtual equivalent of the kid who sat in the front row and raised her…
I subscribe to WAY too many magazines. When some hit my mailbox, I will trample everything in my path to read them: Country Gardens and Organic Gardening are the biggest culprits. They are the glossy, professionally-bound crack of my magazine world. I devour them in an hour, drooling over the lush garden photos, dog-earing pages I wish to revisit, dreaming of the day when the pages will be scratch-and-sniff. Because…
I have a confession to make. I am slightly addicted to People Magazine. Well, that and US Magazine. I am inclined to slink away in shame at this admission, because I know that by actually enjoying reading these periodicals, I’m only feeding into the national Zeitgeist (or is it Volksgeist?!) into which we are currently plunged–the need for dish, gossip and mindless tidbits of information about people who we really…
