Chris Abouzeid's Blog, page 43

What Is “Word of Mouth” Anyway?

Guest Post By Catherine McKenzie The titled question may seem like a bizarre question to ask, but several recent events have me thinking about it. It first came to mind when I was reading and reviewing Jon Harrison’s excellent debut, The Banks of Certain Rivers for my 52 books in ...

Friday Faves: A First-Timer’s Fruit Salad

Welcome to my first Friday Faves post — I hope my selections are delicious and nutritious, just like the lovely fruit salad photo here. I can’t overlook this week’s most-tweeted-about piece, the Claire Messud interview in Publishers Weekly. Many an outlet has remarked on Messud’s tetchy response to Annasue McCleave ...

Managing Critique in Writing Workshops

   By Randy Susan Meyers “No child could possibly be happy about her father moving out!” The above was said to me at a writing workshop, in a discussion about my then unpublished novel (it eventually became The Murderer’s Daughters.) The ‘child’ in question lived with a selfish, sarcastic, angry ...

An Interview with Amy Sue Nathan author of “The Glass Wives”

Amy Sue Nathan’s debut novel “The Glass Wives,” (St Martin’s Press Griffin) launches May 11th.  I had the good fortune of meeting Amy through her blog, www.womensfictionwriters.com, where she is open-heartedly generous to writers.  When I learned about her debut I knew I wanted to interview her to learn about ...

Listening to Dad: A Reflection on Launch Day

    By Julie Wu I was thirty-five and pregnant with my first child by the time I figured out that I needed to listen—truly listen—to what my father had to say. For years I had been trying to write a Taiwan-based novel and I could not, despite my best ...

Wrinkles in Time

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner by Kathy Crowley Of course, William Faulkner and I were never acquainted. He couldn’t have read any of my stories or my novel.  But whenever I hear the quote above I feel like he’s speaking to me.  Not ...

Friday Round-Up: The Unintended Theme Edition

        Rounded Up By Robin Black   No theme this week, just a lot of super interesting things. This first one, an article about the Face Blindness of artist Chuck Close is fascinating. With thanks to the brilliant writer Dylan Landis for posting on Facebook. (Impatiently waiting ...

The Demise of Private Writing?

By Nichole Bernier Shortly after my novel came out, I got an interesting email from a reader. She said she hadn’t been sure she would like a book half written in the form of journals, but had been grabbed by the point of view: the private side of a woman ...

I Love This! – A Workshop-to-English Dictionary

Photo by Maica – iStockphoto.com By Chris Abouzeid Anyone who has ever been in a workshop knows there are certain key phrases that crop up all the time, both in discussion and in mark-ups on manuscripts. To novices, these phrases, symbols and abbreviations appear to be straightforward, a necessary shorthand ...

THE END

  By Juliette Fay It’s that last glimpse back as he runs for the train, or the sigh as the hot sun sets into the water with an all-but-audible sizzle, or the relief of confirming the killer. Or not. The closing words of any novel will either satisfy or they ...