Chris Grabenstein: The Dog Finished My Homework
Chris Grabenstein and I went through the same Book Promotion 101 workshop earlier this year so we’d know what to do when our debut books came out this fall–and, yes, guest blogging’s one of the tips we picked up! Believe me, I’m more than happy to help, because Chris is a fun guy: I like him a lot, and I think you will, too. His novel, Tilt A Whirl, is the first in a series of mysteries set in a coastal New Jersey town with a seedy amusement park, so during the lunch break, I told him, “Dude, you totally have to call the next one Wall of Death.” Turns out the second one will be Mad Mouse, but I’m positive he’s going to come around to my way of thinking eventually… Before he turned to novel writing, Chris worked in advertising—was hired by James Patterson, in fact—and invented Trojan Man.
A lot of writers mention their dogs in their bios. I guess it helps foster a romantic notion of the writer as this dreamy, solitary soul crunching through the leaf-strewn forest with his faithful companion in a perfect L.L. Bean moment of authorial contemplation. I find it corny and swore I’d never mention my dog in my book jacket bio if I ever got published.
Then Buster, my Beagle-mix mutt, came up with the idea for my first murder mystery, Tilt A Whirl.
Well, not the idea—the structure.
He’s the one who first said, “You need a Watson!”
29 September 2005 | guest authors |
Rosemary Santini’s Jane Addiction
Rosemarie Santini is a poet, journalist, and novelist who has lectured for more than a decade at The New School. She’s been published in Playboy and other major magazines and is the author of a nonfiction book called The Secret Fire: How Women Live Their Sexual Fantasies. I mention it because her latest novel, Sex and Sensibility: The Adventures of a Jane Austen Addict offers a fictional foray into similar territory, heavy on the romance. In this essay, she thinks about why she and her character just can’t get Austen out of their heads.
I’ve always been a Jane Austen fan. In the last decade, my creative writing classes have been populated by young Sex in the City gals who also love Jane Austen. Invariably, the contrast between our present era and Jane’s comes up in discussion, and I’m constantly surprised at the similarity in courtship rituals and romantic dilemmas.
That’s what inspired me to write Sex & Sensibility. I’ll be reading from the book at an upcoming meeting of the Jane Austen Society. The theme of the meeting is: “Is it possible to lead a Jane Austen-inspired life?”
Well, can we?
16 September 2005 | guest authors |