Well, I handed in the final draft of my book yesterday and am waiting for the copyeditor to make sure I look like less of an idiot than I am, so it’s time to officially celebrate and begin the long, agonizing process of worrying about what I have done. Nine or ten months from now, a book will appear with my name on it and everything I did wrong will be standing out in bold type that only I can see. Well, not only me. I’m sure there will be a kind critic or two out there that will helpfully point out my foibles in a public venue. But hopefully there will be a reader or two that will go past all that into whatever it was I meant to say and find it jives with whatever it was they always meant to say as well, and the circle of life will continue. It’s a very glamorous literary life. Now I’m off to Costco to buy cheese and a barrel of mayonnaise. Have a good weekend, common folk.
- Emily St. John Mandel keeps picking up little endorsements... Today it’s someone named “Barack Obama”, for whatever that’s worth…;
- …It’s a small endorsement by another author who has sold mildly well;
- Toronto Star crunches the numbers on diversity in children’s books;
- Nita Pronovost, who happens to be S&S ed director and who I had a crush on in high school, just sold rights for her first book to Universal for a film starring Florence Pugh… Pronovost rhymes with Bravo;
- Bookninja hero William Gibson profiled at the CBC;
- RIP: Lucianna Ricciutelli, feminist publisher and advocate, dead at 62;
- le Carré didn’t invent the spy novel, but he did make it his own;
- It’s a Christmas Miracle! Electric Lit picks up the bad sex award so we don’t have to go without;
- When the corp closes your imprint, you strike out on your own;
- On what it’s like to be the president of a group of diverse voices like the IPA;
- While I would LIKE for there to be a Galactic Federation we can talk to, my rational mind knows that even old army dudes can go nutso in old age… but just in case, maybe we should read these books to get ready;
- George Saunders gets an all-star cast for his audio book;
- Stats guru Silver looks at what all those Trump books actually accomplished;
Bookninja 