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Keeping the Plates Spinning—A Chat with Author Daryl Wood Gerber

My daily writing output runs erratic. Some days I’m a scene machine, other days I agonize for hours on a sentence I end up deleting. I’m positive I missed something in the writer’s handbook—the...

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A Market Too Perfect for Profit

In The Navigator there is an unapologetic shout-out to an unlikely place. A suburb. The walking paths of Reston, Virginia are famous and special. They are particularly special to the residents of...

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Order a Zoombie at the Red Panty

A sweet dry wind blows downriver through the Rio Grande Valley. Squinty sun, cornflower sky. Mid-afternoon two and a half weeks ago. I am in Nuevo Progreso, a Mexican border town in Tamaulipas,...

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Goodreads Acquisition: Is Amazon to Big to Fail?

I thought I’d do something a little different for this post and discuss some current events in the publishing world. As most of you have probably heard by now, Amazon has recently announced its...

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Kurt, Bernie and Walt

All of literature is connected. Listen. Norb Vonnegut and I joined up recently in Manhattan at the Algonquin Hotel. Where else agreeably to conspire about the future of Algonquin Redux? We both...

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Noir Star

The audio is clear and resolute. The vibrant voice is that of an older man, still a lion, called upon and caused to reflect. He speaks remembrance in pain and with honor. The words come forth as...

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Writing with a Collaborator

Writers are used to having total control over their work, at least until it goes to an editor. You come up with an idea, maybe you outline it a little or a lot, then you write a first draft. You write...

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Mythbusters are a writer’s best friend

My new book, DEVIL’S NIGHT, features a scene in which heroine Kat Campbell is trapped with a bad guy in a room filled with gas fumes. (Don’t ask why or how. It’s a long story.) At one point, she fires...

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Book Launch. Six Stories.

June was book launch month for my novel The Navigator. Anticipation met reality. I promised from the start here that my posts on Algonquin Redux would concern the book’s marketing. The wild ride of...

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The Three Princes of Serendip

A couple thoughts on creativity: 1. Change Your Perspective A few years ago while visiting a hotel in Denver, I noticed “EXIT” signs not only above the exit doors, but also at their base. “How odd!” I...

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Do You Judge a Book by Its Cover?

How much does the cover of a book influence your decision, if not to buy, then at least to pick it up and take a look? Although we’d like to think otherwise, covers strongly influence our choice of...

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Why I Don’t Try to Come up with More Ideas

When I speak at writers conferences, people often ask me where I get my ideas from. I’m not always sure what to tell them; I mean, the answer is life. I get ideas from the intersection of reality and...

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Does Fiction Really Matter?

When novelist Philip Roth was awarded the International Man Booker Prize he gave an interview with the Financial Times of London and said he wasn’t reading fiction any more. “I don’t read it at all,”...

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Esoterica, Plain & Simple

Who wouldn’t want to knock back drinks and tell tales with (l-r) Art Samuels, Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott? But they weren’t wholly loved. Groucho Marx, brother...

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Z’s Drive-in

  Wautoma, Wisconsin. The corner of Highway 21 and Highway 22. That’s where Z’s Drive-in sat, with its peeling paint, and simple, hand-painted sign. It’s not even a drive-in, because you have to walk...

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The Big Nothing, Small Deaths, and How a Dilemma is Vital for Storytellers

Two days into 2014 I had a ‘New Year’ conversation with a good friend.  Our talk turned to Noam Chomsky. I’d just seen Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy?, an animated documentary on the life of the...

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Does This Book Make Me Look Fat?

I went to the gym yesterday for the first time in … well, I forget. I think it was September. Or maybe August. Months. Let’s just leave it at that. The impetus for this rare trip to the gym came last...

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The Secret to Writing Faster

Last summer I found myself jammed up against a deadline most novelists would have thought impossible to meet. My normal writing pace produced roughly one polished chapter per week. Now, in order to...

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What Do You Have to Hide?

Recently, I was intrigued by an article someone forwarded to me about a sixteen-year-old high school student who was sick of his teacher reading symbolism into the books she assigned them, so he wrote...

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The Five-Minute Story Test

Over years of writing professionally—and coaching and consulting with other writers—I’m perpetually on the lookout for techniques to make it easier to sprout and nourish strong stories. And so the...

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