Recommended Reading: Matt Jakubowski’s short story, “Sharpening the Sickle to Shame the Scythe,” which I dare you to say out loud several times in a row.
“Their judgment of themselves was remorseless.”
Fact and Fiction
“if I am going to set a novel in a real place, in a real time, I must get all the details right. I should not put a wall around Washington Square, start the Iraq War in 2005, or claim that maple trees bear acorns. This matters because it has to do with keeping faith with your readers. If you get something verifiable wrong, why should they believe you when you really are making things up?” Helen Benedict for Amazon Author Insights on finding the balance between research and imagination when writing fiction. (Full disclosure, Amazon helps us pay the bills around here!)
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Letter from Scott Turow
Anyone who cares about the financial viability of the book business should read Author’s Guild President Scott Turow’s open letter on the implications of the government’s threatened anti-trust suit against major publishers and Apple over alleged collusion in e-book pricing.
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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell No More
US Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Geata and her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlaic Snell, showed that, indeed, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is dead. The couple shared a kiss in the Navy tradition: winning a raffle for the first kiss on the pier after a ship returns from sea.
We Done Good
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The Well
Anne Fernald writes about getting deep into her research: “Peering down isn’t enough, however. If you want to find the treasure that lies beneath the surface, you have to dive down into the well.”
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