Writers in the News

Do You Know Borges?

August 24, 2011

This post should have gone out on August 24, but failed due to technical difficulties.
Jorge Luis Borges would have been 112 today.
This Argentine writer created some of the most compelling works I have ever read.
His work embraces the “character of unreality in all literature”.  His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), are [...]

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Mark Twain: 100-Year Old Gossip?

June 8, 2010

  The countdown has begun. 
  Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910), known popularly as Mark Twain has a new book coming out, 100 years and 7 months after his death.  That is to say, the first of three volumes is being released.  
Clemens believed that if his stipulation that the book not be published until 100 [...]

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Stephen King's "UR"

February 26, 2010

I just finished reading Stephen King’s UR in a single pass.
It wasn’t what I expected.  When I saw the title, I imagined Mr. King was going to rant about Chatspeak.  When I saw the cover of the book I thought perhaps he was going to bemoan the death of the paper book.  For the first [...]

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The Secret to Success in Writing

February 22, 2010

Whoa.  Talk about your sneaky post title.
From what I can tell, there is no secret to it.  There is damn little success.
I’ve just finished reading an amazing article by Ruth Fowler, entitled: “You Want My Opinion?  Never. Write. Again.”
At first glance, this is a piece filled with doom and gloom about the possibility of ever [...]

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Avatar: The Novel

February 22, 2010

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, James Cameron has announced his intention to pen a novel based upon the movie Avatar.  “There are things you can do in books that you can’t do with films,” Cameron said.  The novel will be his opportunity to fill in much of the missing back-story left [...]

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Trusting Your Reader

February 16, 2010

“No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence, or whose attitude is patronizing.”  E.B.White, from Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”
I may be just off the boat on this one, but I had never seen this quote before.  I ran across it this morning, and then found it reprinted [...]

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Dick Francis, R.I.P

February 14, 2010

Novelist and ex-jockey, Dick Francis has died at the age of 89.
Retiring from his career as a steeplechase jockey in 1957, he went on to write 42 novels, many centering around horses and horse racing.  His stories were well-crafted mysteries.
He, and his work, shall be missed.

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R.I.P., William Tenn

February 12, 2010

William Tenn, born Philip Klass on May 9, 1920, died on February 7, 2010.
As Tenn, he wrote two novels, “Of Men and Monsters“, and “A Lamp for Medusa“, both published in 1968.  His many short stories and his work as an English and Comparative Literature Professor inspired future writers, including Rambo creator David Morrell, [...]

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Doctor Who?

February 8, 2010

With the long-running BBC series Doctor Who in hiatus until the spring when Matt Smith takes over as the Time Lord, what interesting tidbit can we dig up?
It turns out that Neil Gaiman (author of Stardust and Coraline–as well as many novels), has penned an episode of a show he began watching at the age [...]

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Writing, Meaning, and Calvin and Hobbes

February 1, 2010

High School Teachers,  College Professors, and cultural savants of every stripe, get great mileage out of drilling down into a writer’s work to find the deeper, hidden meanings there..
I wonder how many writers purposely place these various gems into their work.  Certainly a writer’s philosophy can seep through, but to actually build in wisdom?  I [...]

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