Twelve Months, Cover to Cover
The year gone by was full of milestones small and large: gains and losses, advances and retreats, triumphs and struggles. It was a year worthy of a novel, though I didn’t write one during it. Instead, while hunting down lyric permissions for the completed novel-in-waiting (coming in 2015), I tinkered with three different ideas for The Next Book, and I read. A lot. So much, in fact, that I’m inspired by a book I gave to a loved one this Christmas—Nick Hornby’s Ten Years in the Tub, a compilation of his monthly columns riffing on the books he’s read—to deliver...
Read MoreWhy Authors Celebrate on Publication Day
Authors celebrate on publication day for so many different reasons. It’s the culmination of a journey. It’s watching your child step out into the world and find their way. It’s the satisfaction, hopefully, of a job well done, which can be its own reward. But for authors like me—and I know I’m far from alone in this—there is another reason to celebrate: because once the book is published, you can’t effing edit it any more. No matter how good a piece of writing feels on that first pass, if you're like me, you...
Read MoreTravis Ishikawa: The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of
[Posted on my Facebook page last night. These are the moments every baseball fan dreams of.] The beauty of baseball is the drama and stories that the game's ebbs and flows allow to unfold. Yes, the walk-off pennant-winning home run in front of a delirious home crowd is awesome. But when you understand that the player who hit it, Travis Ishikawa, is a 31-year-old journeyman who the Giants let go in 2011, who kicked around between four other teams in 2012-13, who was released by the Pirates in April, who spent the entire summer toiling in the minors in Fresno,...
Read MoreThe Bookshelf Diaries (An Occasional Series): Rob Yardumian, Kate Atkinson, Don Felder
In recent years my reading list has been around 50 percent favorite series (see: Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Ace Atkins, Lee Child), 25 percent rock and roll (biographies or rock-related fiction) and 25 percent randomly discovered novels selected for craft and reputation more than subject matter. Next time around I may focus on the former—as each of the above-mentioned quartet of authors either just published a new one, or is about to—but this time I’m going to zero in on the latter two categories. Rob Yardumian’s terrific debut novel The Sound of Songs Across the Water is one I’ve mentioned...
Read MorePiecing the Puzzle
I bought my wife a jigsaw puzzle for her birthday, and have been paying for it ever since (metaphorically, that is; I think it cost $14.99). It’s one we had glanced at together earlier in the year, a spectacularly vibrant image of fall colors, looking across a pond at a stand of birches and oaks busy turning riotous shades of red and orange and yellow, with bright green moss ribboning up trunks and peeking through underbrush, with a dappled, slightly cloudy turquoise pond in the foreground. Putting this puzzle together would be challenging, but I felt confident we could handle...
Read MoreHeroes
So, this is awkward. Some part of me has always known this day would come, of course, but until now I’ve been reluctant to share the truth with more than a handful of people. Now I realize that I really should be honest with you about this part of my life. You see… I read comic books. I grant you, this isn’t as big a deal for an alleged grown-up to admit as it used to be. With the geek ascendancy represented by shows like The Big Bang Theory and a slew of popular sci-fi and comic-book-related movies and TV...
Read MoreOf Loss, and Moving on: Thoughts on The West Wing
Most of the great stories ever told involve, on some level, dealing with loss. Hell, most of the pretty good ones, too. It’s an essential part of the human experience: how does loss change you? Is it possible to replace what’s gone? How do you learn to move on? That familiar cycle of loss and grief and struggle lies at the heart of Believe in Me. It gets trickier, though, when what’s been lost is the story’s writer. The Mrs. and I have spent part of this spring making our way through all seven seasons of The West Wing. The...
Read MoreSparks
I can’t begin to speculate on when or where the first book-signing in history was held, but I’d bet the house that someone in the audience asked—maybe in Latin or Aramaic—some variation of this question, the oldest in the fiction game: where do you get your ideas? It’s an honest question, usually asked by someone who is either impressed by the author’s imagination, or frustrated by their own creative struggles. And it’s typically number one with a bullet on any author’s list of Most Irritating Questions I’ve Ever Been Asked. Because no one knows. Let’s face it, if it was...
Read MoreThe Bookshelf Diaries (An Occasional Series): Carole King, Scott Turow, Greg Kihn
“Will You Love Me Tomorrow?” “Chains.” “The Loco-Motion.” “I’m into Something Good.” “Crying In the Rain.” “I Feel the Earth Move.” And of course: “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” These are just a few of the hits that have secured a special place for singer-songwriter Carole King in the fabric of 20th century American popular music. In her self-penned memoir A Natural Woman, King proves her storytelling gifts extend to prose while offering a rich and often fascinating look inside a quintessentially American life, always in search the next frontier. At the start, she delivers an insider’s...
Read MoreSynchronicity
It began, as it often does, on a walk. Walks just before lunch have become a part of my weekday routine recently, offering not just a touch of exercise, but a chance to clear my head and maybe listen to a little music. Lunchtime is also a time when I often try to sneak in a little reading on one of the several books that I’m typically working on. (With books I am sometimes a serial monogamist, but more often recklessly promiscuous.) As I ate, I returned to my latest crush, Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep. Good stories take you out...
Read More