Topic of the Week: The Fine Line Between Fact and Fiction July 27, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in creative non-fiction, memoir, non-fiction, travel essays.Tags: creative non-fiction, memoir, travel essays, writers
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No matter what publishing pundits say, memoirs and creative non-fiction are still selling. You’d think that after James Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was exposed as brilliant fiction in memoir covers, publishing professionals would be more scrupulous in signing and publishing memoirs. Not so. Along came Misha Defonseca’s, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, followed by Love and Consequences by Margaret B. Jones, both of which have been outed as fakes. Perhaps the most heartbreaking memoir fraud of late was Angel at the Fence by Herman Rosenblat, the Halocaust love story everyone wanted to believe about the girl who threw apples over the concentration camp fence and later married the author.
Gary Buslik with his favorite Tweeter
Gary Buslik says he doesn’t have the faintest idea how to make an honest living. He wrote for travel magazines for a while, and when he discovered that by tossing around insincere promises, he could get hotels and restaurants to give him free rooms, meals, and drinks to write something nice about them, and, what’s more, the IRS would let him deduct lots of goofy expenses by declaring himself a freelance writer, he was able to forge a virtually useless profession into a rewarding lifestyle.
These days Gary writes novels, short stories, and essays and, in case the government should ask any questions, teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago—which isn’t quite an honest living, but you work with what you have.
His work has appeared in many literary and commercial magazines and anthologies and has been nominated several times for Pushcart Prizes. His novel The Missionary’s Position is a favorite of the Caribbean tourist crowd, and his latest book, A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean (Travelers’ Tales 2008), won Benjamin Franklin and Foreword Magazine Book of the Year Awards for travel writing.
Gary windsurfs and plays softball. He wants his gravestone to read, HERE LIES GARY BUSLIK. NOW, THANK GOD, HE NEVER HAS TO PLAY GOLF.
Follow Gary at @rottenperson.
Topic of the Week: Finding the Fountain of Youth in Fiction July 20, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in fiction, women's fiction.add a comment
The youngest boomers are entering their fifties now, the oldest are retiring and trying to reinvent themselves. If there ever was a fountain of youth, it can be found in fiction. We’re not talking about the urban fantasy of an aging Indiana Jones discovering Ponce de Leon’s legendary fountain of youth somewhere in Miami. The fountain of youth bubbles within the covers of smart, savvy, and sincere fiction from boomers taking on a new career as author of fiction.
Maggie Dana
Joining us on Friday, July 24th is Maggie Dana, whose first novel, BEACHCOMING, has just been published in London by Macmillan. When asked what inspired her to write Beachcombing, Maggie says it grew out of a challenge. She’d been complaining to a good friend that there weren’t enough novels about feisty, middle-aged women who tackled life head on, and was promptly told to quit whinging and write one of her own.
So she did, but it took half-a-dozen years and even more false starts to produce Beachcombing, which another friend described as, “A coming-of-middle-age story about girlfriends when you’re no longer a girl, about growing up when you’re already grown up, and the price you’re willing to pay for the love of your life.” Maggie’s editor liked this so much, he put it on the back cover.
In her misspent youth, Maggie was a cartographer, flight attendant, PA at Pinewood Film Studios, and script reader for commercial TV in London. Then came motherhood (her favorite career) followed by children’s author and, for the past 30 odd years, book designer and typesetter.
Born and rasied in England, Maggie now lives on the Connecticut shoreline where much of her novel is set. In addition to writing, Maggie enjoys gardening, quilting, horses, and hanging out at the beach with her five grandchildren. She is now working on her next novel, Not Mine to Keep, about a birthmother who searches for the child she was forced to give up almost 40 years earlier.
Because Beachcombing has been published in England, it’s only available in the U.S. via online booksellers, including The Book Depository which offers free shipping to the U.S.
You can visit Maggie at her web site: www.maggiedana.com. Follow Maggie on Twitter at: @MaggieDana.
Topic of the Week: Faith, Religion & Mysticism in Fiction July 13, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in faith, fiction, literary fiction, multi-cultural fiction, religion and mysticism.add a comment
Carleen Brice
No matter our background or our personal beliefs, we are surrounded by people who talk to dead people, who see ghosts, who read auras, who pray, meditate and believe in something or someone beyond this world. This week in LitChat we’ll discuss books that are based in reality, but have significant mystical or religious threads.
Joining us on Friday is Carleen Brice, author of Orange Mint and Honey and the recently released Children of the Water. Both novels have characters that may or may not be speaking from the great beyond. Orange Mint and Honey includes what may be the ghost of Nina Simone or another character’s imagination. The late grandmother in Children of the Waters leaves a letter for her granddaughter to find after her death, and may or may not be leaving other clues as well. Also, her characters have novel spiritual practices, like Billie in Children of the Waters, who speaks with her ancestors and believes they speak back.
Carleen’s debut novel, Orange Mint and Honey, was an Essence “Recommended Read” and a Target “Bookmarked Breakout Book.” For this book, she won the 2009 First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the 2008 Break Out Author Award at the African American Literary Awards Show. Orange Mint and Honey was optioned by Lifetime Movie Network.
Her second novel, Children of the Waters (One World/Ballantine), a book about race, love and family, just came out at the end of June. Booklist Online called it “a compelling read, difficult to put down.” You can read an excerpt at her website www.carleenbrice.com.
She is at work on her third novel, Calling Every Good Wish Home, which, you guessed it, includes themes with mysticism and faith. And she maintains the blog “White Readers Meet Black Authors.”
We’re giving a way a signed copy of Carleen’s Orange Mint and Honey during Friday’s LitChat. We will blind draw a winner from names of everyone who participates–on topic–in LitChat during Carleen’s chat.
Follow Carleen at: @carleenbrice
Topic of the Week: How Real Life Informs Fiction July 6, 2009
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in Uncategorized.add a comment
Lynne Griffin
Do you ever wonder where novelists get the ideas for their stories? Some authors pluck ideas from the headlines, others draw from their own life experiences, still others conjure them from the recesses of their imagination. This week in LitChat we’ll discuss how real life informs fiction.
Joining us as guest host on Friday, July 10th, is author Lynne Griffin. Lynne is one of those talented people who enjoys success as as author of both fiction and non-fiction. 
A nationally recognized expert on family life, her first book was Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (Penguin, 2007). Her first novel, Life Without Summer (St. Martin’s Press, April, 2009) draws on her professional experience with family counseling and social work.
As the parenting contributor for Boston’s Fox 25 Morning News, she appears regularly in the segment Family Works and teaches in the graduate program of Social Work and Family Studies at Wheelock College, and at Grub Street Writers.
Lynne has written for Parenting Magazine, Scholastic Parent & Child, The Writer Magazine, and the popular blog, The Writer’s Group. Currently she writes for the blog, The Literary Maze. Lynne lives outside Boston, Massachusetts with her family.
Follow Lynne on Twitter at: @Lynne_Griffin.
