Tag: authors

No Business Like Show Business

My father was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1928. His was not the “typical” childhood: he spent the 1930s and ’40s performing on radio and in the Yiddish theater, where divas starred in ingenue roles even after their daughters were old enough to play their mothers, and the actual words of the script were…


To Blurb or Not to Blurb

Do you buy books based on their covers? I’m not talking about the actual cover image, here. That’s a whole other blog post (ooh, look, I’ve already written that one!). I’m talking about blurbs. A blurb is a short, positive description of a book, written by other authors (because let’s face it, your mom is…


Hello and Goodbye

Happy Launch Day to me, Happy Launch Day to me … sung to the tune of … well, you can guess. Think cake. Think candles. Think best wishes for this next year, because as of today, Newport is officially out there in the world, figuratively “born.” But, wait. What’s that other piece of music I hear swelling…


Ooops!

Back in fourth grade, I was fascinated by the 19th century westward expansion of the United States. The stories I wrote reflected that. Research? Nah. I just wrote. This probably explains how I found myself writing a scene set in a one-room prairie schoolhouse where a bunch of students expressed their boredom by throwing paper…


My History with Historical Fiction

There are only two weeks before Newport‘s official publication date, so please excuse me if this post is a little scattered and self-indulgent. Really, it’s better to let me get it out of my system now so that I can start being more interesting as quickly as possible. I’ve been thinking about my love affair with…


Of Course Book Covers Matter

I’ve fallen in love with the covers of all three of my published novels, and you can see why: Aren’t they gorgeous? I’ve been lucky. It doesn’t take a special study to know that book covers matter. A good cover inspires a potential reader to pick up the book to learn more; a bad cover…


Why Newport, anyway?

I grew up in Annapolis, MD. Maybe that statement feels like a non sequitur following the title of this post, but bear with me. When I began thinking about the novel that would become NEWPORT, location images floated across my mind. They looked like Annapolis. There was a picturesque historic district dotted with homes and buildings…


I Join the 21st Century: or, Audiobooks

NEWPORT will be released as an audiobook on July 7th, and I couldn’t be more pleased. I do, however, have a confession to make: as excited as I am about my novel’s audio release, I’ve never actually listened to an audiobook. I know. What rock have I been living under? Because now that my own…


…wield it wisely

You’ve just finished reading a novel. (For the sake of random and totally unbiased argument, let’s say it’s mine.) You love, love, love it; can’t imagine how anyone on earth could love, love, love it; think the author needs serious help. You want to review this book online because everyone should read it – it’s…


You Have the Power …

Once upon a time, not so many moons ago, there were four magical journals in which authors hoped to find reviews of their books. There was Publishers Weekly (read by nearly everybody in the industry), Kirkus (with its reputation for snarky, cutting reviews), Booklist (a kinder, gentler approach to the review process), and Library Journal…