The book to ease every writer’s mind has arrived. No, it’s not a how-to, but a how-it’s-always-been. See, writers have always been a strange breed, and we can use all the self-help we can get. Reading about how crazy our predecessors were is all the therapy we need. (Just don’t tell that to our relatives.)
Bill Peschel’s WRITERS GONE WILD: THE FEUDS, FROLICS, AND FOLLIES OF LITERATURE’S GREAT ADVENTURERS, DRUNKARDS, LOVERS, ICONOCLASTS, AND MISANTHROPES takes us through episodic stories of some of the book world’s best little-known secrets. What I found most interesting was how some things haven’t changed. Sure, writers are expected to self-promote these days on Twitter, Facebook and personal websites, but writers have always self-promoted, going so far as to write their own blurbs and fake reviews.
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Every woman’s worst nightmare is being abducted. Something about the unknowing makes it far creepier than a random act of violence. Oprah Winfrey has told her millions of viewers to never get in the car, to never let the abductor take you to a second location, because it could be your last.
STILL MISSING‘s protagonist, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old Realtor, seems to remember that bit of advice, but unfortunately, too late. The man who comes to her open house as she is closing up seems charming, and the last thing she thinks he would do is put a gun to her back and take her to a secluded cabin located in God-knows-where.
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How can we start a new decade and not talk about Oprah Winfrey? Haters, step aside, because I love my Oprah. I can’t tell you the number of things I’ve learned from the talk-show host over the years (including the proper shape of poo and how to not be a “schlumpadinka”), but one author took it a step further, following Winfrey’s advice for a whole year.
Robyn Okrant had to make sacrifices, of course, and her husband was mostly on board with the whole thing. While Oprah doesn’t intend for each of her viewers to abide by everything on her show, what if? That’s the fascinating premise of LIVING OPRAH: MY ONE-YEAR EXPERIMENT TO WALK THE WALK OF THE QUEEN OF TALK.
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In his best of 2009 list for ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, Stephen King recommended THE LITTLE STRANGER. The next day, I read a tweet from thriller author M.J. Rose, who was reading it and loving it. I figured a ghost story might be just the thing I needed for holiday distraction, so I purchased it. (See how powerful frequency and word of mouth are?) I was right.
What Sarah Waters has pulled off is a ghost story that may or may not be a ghost story, depending on whether or not you believe in ghosts. I happen to, full disclosure, so everything that happens in Hundreds Hall, the mansion which is the main character in the novel, feels haunted to me from the get-go.
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SOULLESS came into my life like many great books do: by referral. I knew from the cover it would be a quirky, fun read — kudos to the art director for that spot-on design. Author Gail Carriger said she knew she wanted to write urban fantasy and noticed that a lot of the genre is contemporary. But she figured these creatures — supernatural, werewolves, vampires — had to have been around for a long time, right?
So she set her story in the Victorian times in England, and gifts us with a wonderful protagonist in Alexia, who is a preternatural, meaning she has no soul. This doesn’t make her mean, but it does mean she can’t be harmed by vampires, and in fact, kills a vampire at the beginning of the book — all in self-defense, of course.
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