Jim Nelson's Blog, page 17
September 27, 2017
Hagar’s Mother entering the home stretch
It’s the final week for Hagar’s Mother on Kindle Scout!
If you’ve not nominated it yet, your last chance is Sunday, October 1st. Visit the campaign page and vote before it’s too late! At the campaign page you’ll have a chance to learn more about the book, download an excerpt, and read about its background.
And if Amazon selects the book for publication, you’ll receive a free digital copy.
New coverIf you nominated Hagar’s Mother earlier this month, you probably noticed the cover changed. The...
September 1, 2017
Hagar’s Mother now on Kindle Scout!
I’m pleased to announce that Hagar’s Mother, the sequel to Bridge Daughter, is now seeking nominations on Kindle Scout!
Amazon’s Kindle Scout program allows for readers like you to preview and evaluate unpublished books. Your nomination acts as a vote for Kindle Press editors to select the books you like.
If Hagar’s Mother receives enough nominations over the next 30 days, Amazon will publish and promote it across their site.
What’s more, if you vote for Hagar’s Mother and it’s published, you...
August 6, 2017
A chance to win a copy of Bridge Daughter
Enter now for a chance to win one of five Kindle editions of Bridge Daughter! The giveaway runs until midnight, August 13, 2017.
Published 6 August 2017 by Jim Nelson
July 23, 2017
Update on Hagar’s Mother
Many people have been asking me about the follow-up to Bridge Daughter…I’ve been pretty tight-lipped about the project, but did want to share that I finished the final draft tonight.
Hagar’s Mother clocks in around 90,000 words. It’s a not-quite-direct sequel, in the sense that the events of the book take place a generation later than Bridge Daughter. The history of bridge daughters is explored further as well as the story of Hanna’s family.
Quite exhausted at the moment. I have high hopes fo...
The New American Regionalism
Detective (hans van den berg, CC BY 2.0)
An untested opinion I’ve held for a many years:
Modern mystery fiction has supplanted 19th-century American regional literature, sometimes known as “writing of local color,” as its dominant form.
Regionalism is most strongly associated with Southern writers like Kate Chopin and Joel Chandler Harris, but local color writing sprung up from all over the country. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (“The Yellow Wallpaper”) cataloged New England’s parochialism while B...
July 10, 2017
Bridge Daughter on sale for 99¢
“Thought-provoking story blends action, introspection, and social commentary.” – Publishers Weekly
“A very good book—in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale without being derivative of it.” – Paul Ridge, Fictive
"Resists genre categories…[an] ambitious psychological thriller.” – Ramiro Estrada
July 3, 2017
Margalit Fox & Bruce Weber, NY Times obituarists, on NPR’s Fresh Air
In the comments for a previous post on Ann Wroe, obituary writer for The Economist, Peter Marinov helpfully pointed me to a recent NPR interview with two New York Times obituarists, Margalit Fox and Bruce Weber.
Margalit Fox wrote an eye-opening Times essay in 2014 on the art and craft of writing obituaries, so I’m familiar with her name and work. The recent NPR interview coincided with the release of a documentary on Fox and Weber, Obit: Life on Deadline, which I certainly look forward to se...
June 18, 2017
Remember when everyone thought ebooks would replace physical books? Me neither
A tweet today reminded me of a topic I’ve wanted to get off my chest for some time now:
Remember when both #authors and #publishers thought eBooks were going to replace real books? Me? I prefer holding a real book.
— Jared Kessler (@jaredkessler) June 18, 2017
To answer Kessler’s question, no, I do not remember any moment in time when authors and publishers (or even readers) thought ebooks would replace paper books.
I’ve seen and heard this claim so often I can only conclude some massive re...
June 6, 2017
Ann Wroe on the art of writing an obituary
Death, Matt Batchelor (CC BY 2.0)
From The Economist comes an interview with Ann Wroe, one of their in-house obituarists. I’ve documented my interest in the profession here (multiple times) and elsewhere, and even wrote a short story about the career choice.
Wroe on the craft:
I look through the obituaries of the New York Times and the Telegraph. I’ll spot someone who looks really interesting and I’ll hear a bell going off in my head. I do it for the story, and not whether the person is famou...
May 14, 2017
Externalizing inspiration
North American Review, May/Aug 2009.
Last time I wrote about keeping a writing notebook. Let’s say you started one, or have been keeping a notebook for some time. What do you do with it? Once you’ve filled a notebook with all these id...
