Chris Abouzeid's Blog, page 44

Writing Outside Your Generation

By Dell Smith [Photo by ErwanLB] I’m currently writing a novel featuring four siblings that are ages eighteen through twenty-eight. This is not a memoir; I’m in my late forties. I am not any of these characters. I’ve probably more in common with the character of their father, although I’ve ...

“I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse t...

  “I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it.” Maya Angelou         Picture courtesy ox http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...   

Who’s Your Pub Day Influencer? Amy Brill and The Movement of Stars

On the pub day of her debut novel THE MOVEMENT OF STARS, Amy Brill is the subject of Beyond the Margins’ new feature that asks, Who were your literary influences?  By Amy Brill As a lifelong voracious reader — and what writer isn’t? — winnowing the books and authors that ...

Of Time And The Novelist

  By Dale Neal   Dante Alighieri was deep in the woods, a failed politico exiled from his beloved Florence, flailing through  his mid-30s and a mid-life crisis, before he found the way, punching his ticket to hell, purgatory, heaven and of course literary immortality with The Divine Comedy. I, ...

In the Name of Research: I Drank Champagne with an SS Doctor

  by Ellen Marie Wiseman When I started working on The Plum Tree, a WWII story about a young German woman in love with a Jewish man, I knew the setting like the back of my hand—a small village in Germany surrounded by rolling hills, orchards, vineyards and medieval castles. ...

Are We Badgering Readers?

  When I was a reader, I spoke as a reader, I understood as a reader. When I became a writer, I read as a writer, I understood as a writer. I just finished “Readers Don’t Owe Authors S**t” on the online site Book Riot.  The credo of the post ...

Friday Faves Teen Writer Edition

By Juliette Fay With three teenagers in my house, and that vast open time slot called “summer” looming closer, my anxiety is rising. One has a job, but so far the other two are looking forward to a lot of down time (also known as sleeping till noon, watching way ...

The Story of My First Published Story

By Kathy Crowley Not too long ago David Cameron (not the British Prime Minister David Cameron, a different David Cameron) wrote a blog post for The Review Review in which he attempted to expose some of the biases literary journal editors may bring to their selection of short stories (The ...

When Words Fail

By Elly Rubin As my mother lost her ability to describe what she knew, I tried to find a way to articulate for both of us what was happening to her.  That was one of the primary facets of my experience as a caregiver when my mother was ill with ...

Illuminating the Indescribable: Rebecca Wait and Her Debut Novel, The View on the Way Down

By Laura Harrington Rebecca Wait’s debut novel “The View on the Way Down” (Picador) launches April 11th in the UK.  Rebecca and I share a publisher and I was so intrigued when they sent me her book to read that I requested an interview because  I wanted to learn the ...