Joshua Henkin Goes All Out on the Book Blogs

Last year, when his debut novel, Matrimony, came out, Joshua Henkin contributed two guest essays to Beatrice, writing about staying with your characters over time and condensing a twenty-year story to 300 pages. Now that Matrimony is out in paperback, Henkin’s winding his way through the blogosphere again, with (among other efforts) a marathon session at The Elegant Variation (24 posts in one day!) and longer meditations on book groups and online book culture at Booksquare. Well worth a look.

5 September 2008 | uncategorized |

Tod Goldberg: Pop and Loving It

Three years ago, I ran an email exchange between brothers and authors Lee and Tod Goldberg; about a year and a half later, I finally met Tod when he moderated a panel at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books where I got to defend the Internet against its latest critic. Recently, Tod landed a gig writing the tie-in novels for Burn Notice, which is one of my favorite current TV shows, and last weekend he wrote an essay for the Times about how it’s moved him from “a career in the literary fiction trenches, where acclaim is something you hang your hat on, since you haven’t made enough money to buy a hat rack,” to a state of affairs where “I am now, apparently, a briskly selling crime writer.”

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. And I can’t wait to read the book.

(He also has some interesting things to say about how his feelings about the show have subtly changed, and about how other authors feel about the tie-in game.)

26 August 2008 | uncategorized |