Grit Lit and Growth January 23, 2012
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in fiction, grit lit, literary fiction, Uncategorized.Tags: Eleanor Henderson
1 comment so far
Some stories are just so raw and gritty they can’t be told without wincing in pain for the characters and with the author who surely bled tears while writing. These are stories and characters who linger like the scent of flowers after a funeral, neither unpleasant, nor comforting. Reflecting the times in which they occur, they are mirrors to some and to others they’re hideous portraits of life’s underbelly. This week in #litchat we’re discussing the raw and gritty literature that leads to growth and keeps you thinking.
Joining us on Friday, January 27, is Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints (Ecco). Named among the Top Ten Books of 2011 by the New York Times, as well as a dozen other notable lists, Ten Thousand Saints is a solid literary debut from an author with a strong voice. There are so many themes worthy of discussion within Ten Thousand Saints, it’s hard to draw on one to the exclusion of others.
Set primarily in a fictional Vermont town and NYC’s lower east side during the mid-1980s, Henderson skillfully folds us into the lives of four teenagers escaping the dysfunctional homes of their 1960s generation hippie parents. The backbone of the story is Teddy, who early in the novel dies of an overdose, yet continues to prop up the story through the guilt each of his friends carry about the night of his death. In a milieu of drugs, sex and punk rock, we meet Jude, Teddy’s best friend; Eliza, the girl who had sex with Teddy the night he died and bears his child, and Johnny, Teddy’s older brother, a straight-edge adherent who marries Eliza in homage to Teddy. As Jude is drawn into the straight-edge punk lifestyle flourishing in the lower east side, Johnny’s marriage to Eliza conflicts and counters everything they both believe. The specter of death hangs around the three characters, as AIDS raises from the unknown and into the bloodstream of America. Hope rests on Jude in the end, leaving the reader to speculate and wonder and imagine a dozen scenarios of closure.
Eleanor Henderson was born in Greece, grew up in Florida, and attended Middlebury College and the University of Virginia, where she received her MFA in 2005. Her fiction has appeared in Agni, North American Review, Ninth Letter, Columbia, and Salon, among other publications. Her story “The Farms” was nominated for a Pushcart and selected by Alice Sebold for The Best American Short Stories 2009. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, All Things Considered, Poets & Writers (where she was a contributing editor), and The Virginia Quarterly Review (where she was the chair of the fiction board). From 2006 to 2010 she taught at James Madison University in Virginia. Now an assistant professor at Ithaca College, she lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, Aaron, and sons Nico and Henry.
View the video trailer for Ten Thousand Saints.
Follow Eleanor Henderson on Twitter: @eleanorofithaca.
Ugly Ducklings August 8, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in African-American literature, coming-of-age, fiction, multi-cultural fiction.Tags: Ernessa T Carter
1 comment so far
Ernessa T. Carter (photo: Christian Hibbard)
Fiction is rife with ugly ducklings who mature into beautiful swans. Some of them leave behind the tatty feathers of the past for the sequins of success, never to look back. Others are driven to soar higher, farther, faster in a “living well is the best revenge” on those who poked fun at their facades in the dark days of their uglihood. Then there are those who harry their harassers, plotting ingenious revenge on the beautiful people who shamed, bullied, and scorned them. This week in #litchat we’re discussing ugly ducklings in literature.
Guest host on Friday, August 12, is Ernessa T. Carter, whose debut novel, 32 Candles features an ugly duckling heroine who belts out velvet soul on stage while plotting silken revenge on her high school persecutors. Abuse isn’t new to Davidia Jones, though. Her mother, an alcoholic small-time prostitute beat the voice right out of Davidia when she was a child.
Davidia finds refuge in the happy ending romances of Molly Ringwald movies until a particularly cruel prank by the richest and most beautiful girl in town sends Davidia fleeing for her sanity. On the road to sanity, she finds her voice on a nightclub stage in L.A. and grows into the skin she was born to flaunt as sultry chanteuse Davie Jones. Having eschewed the Molly Ringwald endings, the transformed Davie is stunned for the second time in her life when high school crush, James, brother to the cruel tormentor of her Molly Ringwald years, reenters her life. Davidia/Davie is one of those characters we root and rage with, whose struggle reminds us that to some extent we are all products of personal reinvention.
Ernessa T. Carter, 32, has worked as an English as a Second Language teacher in Japan, a music journalist in Pittsburgh, a payroll administrator in Burbank, and a radio writer for “American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest” in Hollywood. She’s also a retired L.A. Derby Doll (roller-derby), and now lives, blogs, and writes in Los Angeles. A graduate of Smith College and Carnegie Mellon University’s MFA program, 32 Candles is her first novel. She blogs at www.fierceandnerdy.com.
Follow Ernessa T. Carter on Twitter: @ErnessaTCarter.
Taking the E-Road: Publishing Direct to E-Book June 20, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in commercial fiction, e-books, fantasy, fiction, literary fiction, self-published authors, self-publishing.Tags: e-books, fantasy, literary fiction
add a comment
Last March bestselling author Barry Eisler made publishing headlines when he announced his new novel would circumvent traditional publishing and go direct to market as an e-book. The writing was on the wall long before Eisler came public with his choice. Nearly two years earlier author J.A. Konrath had already cleared obstacles barring the successful promotion and sales of fiction through self-publishing to e-book. Shortly after Eisler’s announcement, Huffington Post published this insightful conversation between the two authors, which went on to become a live discussion continuing today through Konrath’s A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog. How will such defections of bestselling authors affect the publishing industry at large? Last week PBS Media Shift addressed this issue with this report on literary agents acting as self-publishing consultants. The publishing paradigm is shifting so quickly now, the image is blurred.
This week in #litchat we’ll discuss the trend of authors–both known and unknown–to go direct to e-book. We’ll feature three authors who have taken their careers into their own hands and boldly gone where Konrath and Eisler have already been. These authors, however, aren’t bestellers. Yet. Each of them have already achieved success within e-pub rankings and are forging new paths for other yet-unpublished authors to follow.
Monday: Georganna Hancock
Georganna Hancock shares the inside tips on how to whip a manuscript into shape for successful e-book formatting, promotion and sales. Hancock’s rich experience as an editor is the focal point for this discussion, as she emphasizes the importance of professional editing for content, grammar and style that is often skipped by self-publishing authors. She’ll also share insights on how to set-up an Amazon account for direct-to-Kindle publishing, how to format your manuscript for the best e-book results, as well as promotional and marketing tips for sales. Hancock holds a Master’s Degree from Northwestern University and now works as an independent editor and publishing consultant.
Follow Georganna Hancock on Twitter: @GLHancock.
Wednesday: Eileen Cruz Coleman
Eileen Cruz Coleman has published two novels direct to e-book. Her first novel, Sweetwater American, was released on Kindle in February 2010. Excerpts from Sweetwater American have been published in short story form in The Saint Ann’s Review, Bathtub Gin, Thought Magazine, Rosebud Magazine, Sundry: A Journal of the Arts, In Posse Review, Small Spiral Notebook, and Slow Trains Magazine. Excerpts from Sweetwater American have also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won third place in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. At this writing, her latest novel, Rumpel, is holding the number 2 position at Amazon Kindle’s Horror/Ghosts category. Rumpel is a literary retelling of the Brothers Grimm classic, Rumpelstiltskin, peopled with sinister spooks and textured with dark swaths of chicanery. Cruz Coleman was born in Washington, D.C. and is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in European History. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two children.
Follow Eileen Cruz Coleman on Twitter: @EileenCruzColeman.
Friday: Billie Hinton
Billie Hinton began her own publishing company, November Hill Press, in the summer of 2010, launching her first title, Claire-Obscure, a literary fiction masterpiece. In the year that has followed, she has published two more literary fiction titles, The Meaning of Isolated Objects (December 2010) and Signs That May Be Omens (March 2011, continuation in the Claire Quartet). In February 2011, she published the first in her middle grade Magical Pony School series, Jane’s Transformation. These titles have been shaped through the years by Hinton’s magical literary touch and now come to readers through Kindle and Smashwords. Her writing has been praised by bestselling authors, critics and other publishing pundits, both in traditional and transitional fields. Hinton, a psychotherapist by vocation, also leads writing retreats designed to unleash the creativity and empower writers to project completion. She lives on a small horse farm in North Carolina with her husband, two teenagers, three horses, a painted pony, five felines, and two Corgis.
Follow Billie Hinton on Twitter: @billiehinton.
Decisions and Do-Overs June 6, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in bestsellers, fiction, women's fiction.add a comment
Ellen Meister (Hy Goldberg, Visions Photography)
A poster hung in my high school English classroom stating the obvious: “Not to decide is to decide.” At least I thought it was obvious back then. Like many teenagers, I already I knew everything. When one of the girls in my high school delayed having an abortion until she was seven months gone, she found it was too late when she went to the clinic. Her failure to decide forced the decision. She had the baby that summer and didn’t go back for her senior year. The next time I stepped into the English classroom and read the poster, I realized the obvious is often masked by its simplicity. Decisions—whether we make them consciously or they’re made when we fail to choose—live with us forever. This week in #litchat we’re discussing novels with themes of do-overs and decisions.
Ellen Meister joins us Friday, June 10, as guest host of #litchat. Her new novel, The Other Life, asks the question, “What if you could return to the road not taken?” Quinn Braverman faces that question when she discovers she can slip through a portal into a parallel life that seems only to exist when she enters. 
Drawn from the choice she didn’t make, it’s a life where loved ones now gone still live and speak and give answers, where the excruciating decision overshadowing her real life will simply not exist. Most compelling of all, it’s a do-over life as real as the one she leaves behind, tempting and seductive and safe. Pure escape. While Meister’s first two novels showcased her comedic talents, and The Other Life has moments of humor, its power comes from the hard choices facing Quinn, not just the struggle to stay in her authentic life, but the inevitable decision that shapes her future.
Meister is the author of two other novels, The Smart One and Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA, as well as numerous short stories. In addition to writing, she served as editor for a literary magazine, runs an online mentoring group for women authors, and curates for DimeStories, a literary radio program. Ellen does public speaking about her books and other writing-related issues. She is working on her fourth novel, Farewell, Dorothy Parker. She lives on Long Island with her husband and three children.
Follow Ellen Meister on Twitter: @EllenMeister.
Memoir Masquerade May 15, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in chick lit, fiction, novelography.add a comment
Dana Precious
Fiction is made of lies sprinkled with truth. Or is it made of truth written as lies? Either way, some novels are referred to as veiled autobiography, or as #litchat has tagged them, novelography. Why do some writers couch their life stories in fiction, rather than memoir? What about memoirs later exposed as fiction? This week in #litchat we’re discussing memoir masquerading as fiction.
Joining us on Friday, May 20, is Dana Precious, author of Born Under a Lucky Moon (William Morrow). A debut novel released in February, Precious admits much of the storyline is derived from her real life.
“The novel Born Under A Lucky Moon, while fictional, is based on real life events in my life,” writes Precious in the novel’s website.” 
The story that takes place in 1986 is inspired by some things that happened in my life. It noodled around in my head for decades until I knew I had to write it down just to stop thinking about it. I did compress some events to fit into a specific time frame.”
Born Under a Lucky Moon is the tale of two very important (but distant) years in the lives of Hollywood studio executive Jeannie Thompson and her colorful family members to whom zany things just seem to happen. From the Great Lakes of Michigan to Los Angeles and back again, it is a story of unexpected marriage proposals, surprise marriages, a renegade granny, a sprinkler system cursed by the gods, and myriad other factors Jeannie blames for her full-tilt, out-of-control existence.
“Why I felt I had to write part of Born Under A Lucky Moon also as a present day love story was not self evident to me for a long time. It just kind of kept inserting back itself into the book – much like it kept inserting itself into [character] Jeannie’s life. It started as a tale of two confused lovers with the most vague of a Hollywood setting. Gradually it took form and I’m pleased with the results.”
As an advertising executive for a Hollywood studio, Precious draws the line about the reality of much of the Hollywood hijinks occurring in the storyline.
“Other than the fact that I worked (and still work) as a film studio marketing executive, this part of the story is completely fictional. Maybe I was inspired by the behaviors, excesses and eccentricities that I witnessed in the film business but no character, event or place is true. “
Follow Dana Precious on Twitter: @danaprecious.
Suspense May 9, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in bestsellers, e-books, fiction, suspense.Tags: paranormal, suspense
1 comment so far
M.J. Rose
Learning to control fear is a milestone along life’s journey. Educators and psychologists agree that reading scary books actually helps people face and overcome fear. With suspense as our topic of the week, we’ll begin on Monday discussing what makes a suspense novel work, why it’s different from a thriller, and how suspense works to help people through their own personal phobias and fears. On Wednesday, we’ll continue the conversation with discussion of specific suspense novels and the authors who write them. Friday’s guest host, award-winning suspense author M.J. Rose, will complete the week’s topic.
Rose is the international bestselling author of 11 novels, her most recent release being The Hypnotist, the third in her Reincarnationist series which includes The Reincarnationist and The Memorist. Her other novels are Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex and The Venus Fix.
Getting published has been an adventure for Rose who self-published Lip Service late in 1998 after several traditional publishers turned it down. Editors had loved it, but didn’t know how to position it or market it since it didn’t fit into any one genre.
Frustrated, but curious and convinced that there was a readership for her work, she set up a web site where readers could download her book for $9.95 and began to seriously market the novel on the Internet.
After selling over 2500 copies (in both electronic and trade paper format) Lip Service became the first e-book and the first self-published novel chosen by the LiteraryGuild/Doubleday Book Club.
Rose is also the co-author with Angela Adair Hoy of How to Publish and Promote Online, and with Doug Clegg of Buzz Your Book .
She is a founding member and board member of International Thriller Writers and the founder of the first marketing company for authors: AuthorBuzz.com. She runs two popular blogs; Buzz, Balls & Hype andBackstory.
Follow M.J. Rose on Twitter: @MJRose.
Connections April 18, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in bestsellers, commercial fiction, fiction, food, literary fiction.add a comment
Jael McHenry
The information superhighway has bridged oceans, united diverse voices, and placed virtual libraries in the palm of your hand. It’s the age of connection, when reaching out to strangers through chatrooms, forums, blogs and other forms of social media such as Twitter, is not only common, it’s expected. This week in #litchat we’re discussing connections and how they inform our reading choices, our writing practices, and the way we interact with other people.
On Friday, April 22, #litchat welcomes Jael McHernry, author of the recently released novel, The Kitchen Daughter. In this brilliant debut, McHenry brings us a sheltered young woman with Asperger’s Syndrome, whose struggle for independence following the death of her parents is a poignant buffet of surprises. McHenry’s protagonist, Ginny, has difficulty connecting with people, but can connect with the dead when cooking from their handwritten recipes.
The invoking of ghosts puts one in mind of horror or other spine-chilling scenarios, but don’t expect screams and wails and rattling of chains in this high concept literary novel. The real story within The Kitchen Daughter is discovery of self, acceptance of family, letting go of and reaching out to others through simple things such as touch, talk, and trust—each an essential element of connection. Read more about The Kitchen Daughter here.
McHenry is a passionate amateur cook who grew up in Michigan and Iowa before moving from city to city along the East Coast: Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and now New York, where she blogs about food and cooking at the Simmer blog. The Kitchen Daughter includes ten of her original recipes, ranging in simple cocktail concoctions to complex ethnic cuisine. McHenry tantalizes readers of The Kitchen Daughter with descriptions of food and its preparation, layering the text with fascinating cooking lore and culinary techniques.
In addition to cooking and writing fiction, McHenry is a monthly pop culture columnist and Editor-in-Chief of Intrepid Media. Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing.
Follow Jael McHenry on Twitter: @JaelMcHenry.
Ensemble Novels March 14, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in bestsellers, commercial fiction, fiction, thrillers, weekly topics, women's fiction.1 comment so far
Meg Waite Clayton
Can a novel have more than one protagonist without losing focus and continuity? This week in #litchat we’re discussing novels that feature an ensemble cast, where more than one protagonist shares the stage for the revelation of story.
Guest host on Friday, March 18, is Meg Waite Clayton, whose debut novel, The Language of Light, was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. Her most recent novel, The Four Ms. Bradwells, features an ensemble cast of four strong women who bond during law school in 1979 and remain allies throughout life’s trials and triumphs.
Nicknamed “the Ms. Bradwells” during their first class at the University of Michigan Law School in 1979—when only three women had ever served full Senate terms and none had been appointed to the Court—the four reunite for a long weekend as Betts awaits Senate confirmation of her appointment to the Supreme Court. But when the Senate hearings uncover a deeply buried skeleton in the friends’ collective closet, the Ms. Bradwells retreat to a summer house on the Chesapeake Bay, where they find themselves reliving a much darker period in their past—one that stirs up secrets they’ve kept for, and from, one another, and could change their lives forever.
In addition to the acclaimed, The Language of Light, Clayton’s 2008 ensemble novel, The Wednesday Sisters, was a national bestseller. Clayton hosts the blog, 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started, which features award-winning and bestselling authors sharing stories about their paths to writing and publishing. Her short stories and essays have been read on public radio and have appeared in commercial and literary magazines. She’s a graduate of the University of Michigan and Michigan Law School, and lives with her family in Palo Alto, Calif.
Follow Meg Waite Clayton on Twitter: @MegWClayton
Intuition February 21, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in commercial fiction, fiction, mystery.add a comment
Sara J. Henry and her four dogs.
When is the wrong thing to do the right thing? If the wrong thing makes everything work out fine, was it the wrong thing to begin with? How does one know the difference? Intuition. Knowing something without knowing why or how is one of the mysteries of human experience. This week in #litchat we’re discussing intuition.
On Friday, February 25, author Sara J. Henry joins us to discuss her debut novel, Learning To Swim. Set in the triple locations of upstate New York, Vermont and Ottawa, Learning to Swim is a triathlon of mystery and self-discovery with a hint of romance. What would you do if you saw a child falling overboard from a ferry in the middle of a frigid lake? Female protagonist Troy Chance doesn’t think twice before diving from the side of the ferry and swimming to the child’s rescue. Troy’s choices immediately following the rescue ignite a fuse of intuition that threatens to consume her self-controlled life.
Henry grew up in Oak Ridge, Tenn., graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Carleton University in Ottawa, Ont., and in between took journalism classes at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Like her character Troy Chance in Learning To Swim, she has been a sports feature writer for magazines and newspapers, including the Longview Daily News and the Tri-City Herald, both in Washington state. Also like her main character, she once lived in Lake Placid, N.Y. in a house with a lot of roommates, and worked as sports editor at The Adirondack Daily Enterprise in nearby Saranac Lake, and freelanced for magazines.
Follow Sara J. Henry on Twitter at @sarajhenry.
Quick Change Authors: Writing in Multiple Genres January 15, 2011
Posted by Carolyn Burns Bass in bestsellers, chick lit, children's literature, coming-of-age, commercial fiction, fiction, historical fiction, YA fiction.add a comment
Lauren Baratz-Logsted
It’s been said that a good writer can slip between genres without leaving tracks. Ken Follett made his name with action-packed cold war suspense, but turned the clock back hundreds of years with his medieval historical fiction. Margaret Atwood’s science fiction holds its own against her literary work, while Joyce Carol Oates writes in several genres using two additional pen names. The bard himself wrote comedies, tragedies and sonnets.
This week in #litchat we’re discussing what it takes to write well, publish and be read in multiple genres. Joining us on Friday, January 21, 2011, is Lauren Baratz-Logsted. One of the most prolific authors of our day, Baratz-Logsted has successfully published children’s early readers, young adult, chick-lit, adult suspense. Just last week Baratz-Logsted wrote “the end” on the ninth book in her popular children’s series, THE SISTERS EIGHT.
A graduate of University of Connecticut at Storrs, in 1994 Logsted-Baratz left her job at a bookstore to take a chance on herself as a writer. Success did not happen over night. Between 1994 and May 2002 – when Red Dress Ink called with an offer to buy THE THIN PINK LINE – Lauren worked as a book reviewer, a freelance editor and writer, and a window washer, making her arguably the only woman in the world who has ever both hosted a book signing party and washed the windows of the late best-selling novelist Robert Ludlum. Since Red Dress Ink’s call in 2002, Baratz-Logsted has been very busy writing novels and checking her Amazon ranking on a daily basis. She still lives in Danbury, with her husband and daughter, where she has lived since 1991.
Follow Lauren Baratz-Logsted on Twitter: @LaurenBaratzL
Note: There will be no moderated #litchat on Monday, January 16, while we observe the Martin Luther King holiday in the United States.
Read chatscripts from this week’s #litchat:
January 19, 2011: Quick Change Authors
January 21, 2011: Quick Change Authors, Lauren Baratz-Logsted
