Lev Raphael's Blog, page 64

Muscles and Mystery

I write an academic mystery series and because other books of mine have been taught around the country, I've done a lot of readings and talks at universities in the U.S. and even abroad. At almost every school I've visited, Ivy League or community college, someone tells me about a scandal, feud, or vendetta worthy of Monty Python or Joseph Heller.

The ideas and stories people offer me compete with the ones already swirling through my head. I've always been making up stories about people I ...

Is The Hunger Games Really the Future of Writing?

Blogger Jeff Goins says that modern writers should follow the example of The Hunger Games if they want to be successful.

What does that mean? Writers should write for a young, easily distracted audience, which means "short novels, in large fonts, with quick chapters." Sentences should be short, too, but the content should be "edgy."

That's the future of writing according to Goins, whether you're talking about fiction or nonfiction.

What he's arguing for, whether he knows it or not, is myriad...

Can Religion Be Joyful?

Back in my public junior high school choir, one of the songs even us snarky kids loved was an adaptation of Psalm 100. It was really rousing, and decades later I can still remember how much fun it was to not only sing "Make a joyful noise" but to also do that, and how exciting it was at the end to return to "come before his presence with singing, with singing, with singing." As our voices went up the scale and soared, it was a moment of transcendence.

Though we would never have put it that way...

Begging for Blurbs

The New York Times recently ran a discussion about author blurbs. Begging for blurbs is one of the more misery-producing aspects of being published.

It can leave us desperate and depressed. It's humiliating to have grovel for blurbs, rather than have your publisher secure them for you. You feel like the Tin Man facing the Wizard of Oz.

Blurbs seem too important. Far too many of us authors think blurbs will magically rocket a book to success. That the right brilliant blurb will impress not just ...

Writing Is My Business and So Is Publicity

I recently heard a writer who teaches at a Midwest college talk about the brave new world of publishing. Since her last book came out in 2005, she's seen an enormous shift, she said.

Her publisher wanted her to do things she knew absolutely nothing about: create a web page, open a twitter account, go on Facebook, start a blog, produce a book trailer, speak to book groups, organize a blog tour.

As she spoke, I thought how lucky she was to have a day job. She said it herself after her reading: ...

Family Secrets: The Mystery My Mother Left Behind

My late mother loved the New York Times crossword and she loved reading mysteries. Born in Poland, she said the puzzle helped her perfect her English; she never explained the specific appeal of crime novels, but she was a huge fan of Agatha Christie, John Creasey, Frances and Richard Lockridge, and Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I read almost all the mystery library books she brought home; they were always better than the books assigned in school. On my own, I discovered the comic mysteries of...

How I Wound Up Writing Gay Mysteries

I never set out to write mysteries, gay or otherwise. When I launched my career as an author, it was with short stories.

But one of them, "Remind Me to Smile," featured a couple of academics faced with a bizarre situation: Stefan has gotten an ex-lover of his a job in the English department that is his and Nick's home. Nick is outraged, and then depressed when Stefan invites the ex to dinner.

The good ended happily and the bad unhappily, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde. That was what this particul...

Writing Gay Mysteries

I never set out to write mysteries, gay or otherwise. When I launched my career as an author, it was with short stories.

But one of them, "Remind Me to Smile," featured a couple of academics faced with a bizarre situation: Stefan has gotten an ex-lover of his a job in the English department that is his and Nick's home. Nick is outraged, and then depressed when Stefan invites the ex to dinner.

The good ended happily and the bad unhappily, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde. That was what this particul...

What Do Writers Want? Everything.

Roxane Gay recently pointed out in Salon that all our discussions about whether women writers like best selling Jennifer Weiner don't get enough press coverage miss a major point.

Writers are easily dissatisfied, no matter what they've achieved. As Gay puts it so beautifully: "What most writers have in common is desire. We want and want and want and want."

I learned this early in my publishing career when an author I was getting to know told me about a contemporary writer whose first novel ...

Happy 150th Birthday, Edith Wharton!

It's no wonder I fell in love with Edith Wharton in college, given that I grew up in Gilded Age New York. The building on upper Broadway I was raised in was one of two massive apartment blocks built circa 1900 by Harry Mulliken with gorgeous tapestry brickwork and stone detailing, like Mulliken's more elaborate Lucerne Hotel on 79th and Amsterdam.

The public library I visited every week was a Venetian palazzo designed by McKim, Mead, and White. It was a temple of books, a sanctuary, and a door...