The Lost Girls – Page 2 – The Debutante Ball

Owning What My Book Says About Me, and Denying What it Does Not

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

I’ve heard it said that all writing is autobiographical. Even if you’re not writing the true story of your own life, the assumption goes, you’re inflicting your life experiences on the people you make up, or writing their relationships to mirror your own. One way or another, your purportedly fictional story is really a blueprint of your own darkest desires, fears, and memories. It’s true that many fiction writers do…

The Five Things I Can’t Stop Talking About

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

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This week’s topic is “favorite things”, but since Louise and Jennifer already wrote clever lists of favorite things, I’m not going to do that. I hate to compete in games I know I’m going to lose. It’s a character flaw, and I’ll never change. So instead,I spent the past two days listening to my own endless blather and coming up with a list of my favorite things to talk about….

The Evolution of a Title: THE LOST EVANS GIRL SISTERS OF STILLWATER BROKEN ARROW LAKE WHO WERE LIGHT ON THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER ONCE

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

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When you sell your book to a traditional publisher, it quickly becomes apparent that the story you lavished for years with the meticulous attention of a cat licking its fur doesn’t belong wholly to you any more. It’s now the foster child of an entire consortium of professionals whose sole purpose is to bring it into the world and sell as many copies of it as possible. Of course, this…

This is My Brain on the Internet

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

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Social media is killing me. It’s rotting my brain from the inside. Not just social media, actually, but the entire internet. That may seem like hyperbole, but right now I’m feeling pretty damned overwhelmed by the vast rabbit-hole-ness of what’s flying around on invisible waves of data and crashing into my consciousness every time I turn on my computer. Right now I have the following tabs open on my toolbar:…

Envy, the Vast Literary Cognoscenti, and Me

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

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Ah, envy. What a complicated topic, especially for writers. And now comes my turn to examine the green eyed monster. First I have to distinguish envy from jealousy (sorry; writers are word nerds). Envy is when you covet what someone else has. For example, when I go to Book Passage to hear debut novelist Garth Risk Hallberg read from CITY ON FIRE as part of his publisher-funded national book tour and…

Heather’s Favorite Books of 2015

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

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This week, we’re discussing our favorite reads of 2015. Here are mine! THE END OF THE POINT: Finding a writer you love who’s been around for a while is like finding candy in your coat pocket. I picked up this novel in paperback — it was a New York Times Notable Book in 2014 — and was instantly swept up in the lilting cadence of Elizabeth Graver’s prose and the verisimilitude of…

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