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Let your favorite writers hear from you!
Novelist Elizabeth Kostova recently said in an NPR interview, “writing fiction is a very benign form of insanity.”Hearken, readers—it’s true, it’s true!You spend your waking hours hanging out with...
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How much information is too much information?
In the days before the Internet, I always faced biographies about my favorite authors with a certain amount of cringing. Bound to read the books assigned to me, I nonetheless hated reading about Rainer...
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The Person Behind the Face on the Cover of A GOLDEN WEB
Alessandra Lives!The real girl behind the face on the cover of A GOLDEN WEB holds the novel close to her heart.Imagine my surprise and delight when I found this message in my website mailbox:Hello, my...
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Fireflies in Opelika
Chorus frogs calling like nanny-goatsin the Alabama darkness.Crickets chirping, bull-frogslobbing their solos into thewarm night air.Along the blind pathfrom the front doorto the edge of the...
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My Daily Frog
Sorry, I've already found my prince!All summer long I’ve been planting gardens and planning the remodel of our Wine Country kitchen. The proliferation of one and the demolition of the other has...
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The Grapes Are In!
This frog is following me!Imagine harvesting grapes by moonlight, in the wee hours, with Jupiter shining as brightly as a beacon in the night sky (closer to Earth now than it’s been in over half a...
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Summer's Last Gifts
The HarvestI’m grateful to Naturefor making the strawberries red.They’re so much easier to find that way.Same thing with the tomatoes:Parting a thicket of fragrant leaves,I spy them, slick with the...
View ArticleA Transplanted Writer
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } We really are what we eat—and not just in the usual way...
View ArticleTouring in Cyberspace: Part 1
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } It’s a whole new game, being an author today.Take going on...
View ArticleTouring in Cyberspace: Part 2
Oops! I just counted: there were 28 (not 16) stops on the blog tour for A Golden Web.The whole thing started last October, when a YA book-lover named Sandy, author of a blog called Pirate Penguin...
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Touring in Cyberspace: Part 3
I promised photographs...The parade of kids dressed as manga characters in Düsseldorf’s JapantownStill the city of my dreams: Paris!Our unbelievable hotel room in Barcelona(no martinis were made or...
View ArticleA Blog Tour Sampler
How the world has changed in the four years since my last novel, Vivaldi's Virgins, was published! It's as if a good media fairy waved her magic wand and brought into being dozens and dozens of bright...
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Looking for a great new book to read?
As the days get shorter and colder, a lot of us denizens of the Northern Hemisphere want nothing more than a cup of something delicious and a reliably wonderful book we can read by the fire.I've become...
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The Difference Between a Great Novel and Great Potential
Sometimes, as a lover of the arts, I find myself deeply dissatisfied with something that a whole lot of People Who Matter are praising to the high heavens.Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife is a case in...
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I guess size really does matter...
Must one have a penis to win the Pulitzer Prize in fiction? Given that 41 out of the last 58 winners have been men, I’d say, “Not necessarily. But it will certainly increase your chances!”Jeffrey...
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Thanks to the good sense I showed in 2011, marrying violist Wayne Roden, I’m currently tagging along on a 17-day, 7-city tour of Europe with the San Francisco Symphony.Of course, as a novelist—and,...
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Traveling Through Europe with the Musicians of the San Francisco SymphonyIf It's Tuesday, It Must Be DortmundIt’s extremely weird to travel to eight cities in seventeen days: Birmingham, London, Paris...
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