Unlike fashion, books can’t become so-last-year (unless they started out as the button-down jumpsuit of the literary world). I browsed through books with pictures released in 2018 and below are four of my micro-reviews. I tried to cast a wide net, since there are so many subgenres of what for a long time were just… Read more »
It’s necessary for a writer to get out and view the world through new perspectives. Sometimes that means observing the regulars at your usual coffee shop or talking to folks in a different part of town, and sometimes it means undertaking something more substantial, something long enough to get lost in. A long journey can… Read more »
I always appreciate a great story about family. By that, I don’t mean I specifically search for books on this literary theme. Rather, when I read a book about family that resonates deeply or refreshes my perspective on the theme, I’m often thinking about that book for weeks, months, even years later. Maybe it’s because… Read more »
Award season happens every December-February, and with it comes a wave of happy authors and illustrators who get to proudly pin a medal on their covers. But what does each award really signify? Who gives them out and who do they give them to? How does a book earn an award? It’s worth studying up… Read more »
My next few articles will act as a deep dive into specific short form works. We’ll examine a piece from each short form and dive deep into its inner workings to find the path to success in our own short form pieces. Poets are alchemists. We transform the chaos of everyday life into sonnets and… Read more »
Walk into any coffee shop these days and you’re bound to see java lovers laughing out loud. Upon closer inspection, you’ll notice the source of their laughter is a book. And that book is the uproarious Crazy Rich Asians, or one of its two sequels, by Kevin Kwan. If you haven’t read it or seen… Read more »
The holiday season always reminds me of my mother’s sugar cookies, warm sweaters, and cozy mysteries—novels, short stories, Hallmark Movie Mysteries—any variety will do. I love sipping an Eggnog Latte curled under a warm blanket reading (or watching) a good cozy mystery while the rest of the world rages outside. There’s something about the familiar… Read more »
In his Pulitzer-Prize winning biography of American aviator Charles Lindbergh, author A. Scott Berg begins page one not with Lindbergh’s birth but with a buzzing crowd in Paris. Lindbergh, hoping to be the first pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic nonstop, has not been seen since he left New York twenty-four hours earlier. Was… Read more »
If you have a spiritual side, you might consider penning inspirational fiction. According to a 2017 news release from the Association of American Publishers, books with “religious and inspirational themes” are in high demand. A wider audience, including millennials and people of color, are discovering this genre once read almost exclusively by mature caucasian females…. Read more »
Stephen King told us, “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” But merely reading isn’t enough. Close reading is necessary to learn the secrets of how stories tick, which will help you sharpen those writing tools Stephen King mentioned. First we need… Read more »
