Archive for September 2009
‘Pleasant but uneven’: A bad review! Ow-ie!
Yesterday my editor at Houghton sent me Kirkus Reviews‘ take on Tinsel from the Oct. 1 issue. Remember when I promised I would post the bad reviews along with the good? Well, here’s a bad one — not horribly awful, but far from glowing. First of all, you might ask: What is Kirkus Reviews? It’s…
Read MoreShe works hard for the money
It’s funny when you open your morning newspaper and there’s a big story about your particular raging anxiety right there on the front of the Style section. Although I did not know he was working on such a thing, there’s this spot-on story today by my colleague Neely Tucker about how authors have to do…
Read MoreBiz crawl at the bottom of my mental screen
Time for the business news. The National Retail Federation, the big D.C. lobbying group that represents 15,000-plus American retailers, usually releases its Christmas season forecast around this time — Sept. 20 or so. I went looking for it this morning and couldn’t find a word about it. A business reporter I know told me she…
Read MoreCompromises
Michael and I have seen a few movies lately. I thought District 9 was intriguing enough and mostly original — though I wonder if the novelty of structuring movies around “found video” and “news reports” is wearing thin, or if it’s just so commonly accepted now as a narrative device that I need to get…
Read MoreMy one-man book club meeting, now in progress
Between work and Tinsel pre-pub jitters and promo stuff, I keep forgetting to develop the part of my brain that can think of anything remotely worthwhile to type here and send off into the ether. So, until I get things rolling again, how about some book reports? I have three quickies… Finished reading Lorrie Moore’s…
Read MoreBlahg
I guess it happens to everyone — the best of blogging intentions go astray. What’s happening now is that I’m in the full brunt of writing about the fall TV season, and there’s a lot of Tinsel pre-pub stuff going on (good stuff). Please stand by. All two of you. (Three?) I’ll play catch-up this…
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