June 18th, 2010
When speaking about finding a career or life’s path, my father, Tom Favorite, always said, “If it’s not fun, it’s work.” He heard these words from his own father, Clyde Winston Favorite. As a writer, I’ve always found writing to be fun. Even when I’ve been blocked, blank, or stuck, the creative and intellectual conundrums of writing provide a special pleasure. Translating what’s in my mind to the page is a constant struggle, and yet the moments when a character shouts out a funny line I didn’t expect are the best in life. Carol Anshaw, my teacher, once had a short story anthologized and did a tour with Garrison Keillor. Afterward, she said, “Publishing, reading—that’s all great, but nothing compares to the fun I had writing that story.” My father would have loved what Carol said. He was a CPA with a private practice, and he was the only guy I know who had a great time doing people’s taxes. Every client was a character. His favorite was an elderly woman who lived in a spacious Hyde Park apartment with Persian rugs and antiques. But the coup de grace was a poster of Farrah Fawcett in her orange one-piece bathing suit that hung in the dining room. Once my dad asked the octogenarian, “Mabel, what’s with the Farrah poster?” “Isn’t she beautiful?” My dad always smacked the table when he told that story. And every time I heard it (which was often), I smacked the table, too.
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June 9th, 2010
This is a wild cover for the book! Penny looks like an 80s Warrior.
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April 19th, 2009
Here’s a link to a epistolary poem written by seven poets, including myself, who have been meeting off and on for the last couple of years.
http://qarrtsiluni.com/tag/dear-seven/
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January 11th, 2009
How cool! I ran into the journalist Kevin Nance at a party tonight, and he told me he ran my quotes about genre bending in Poets & Writers last September. Oops! Let my subscription lapse! Here’s the link: http://www.pw.org/content/invasion_genre_snatchers
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December 18th, 2008
I had some fun news on Monday that the Russians have bought the rights to my novel. Long live the Rushkies!
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December 11th, 2008
Here’s a message from Roy Blount, Jr., President of the Author’s Guild.
“I’ve been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren’t known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don’t lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn’t in the cards.
We don’t want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let’s mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that’s just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!
There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they’re easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children’s books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they’ll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: “Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see…we’re the Authors Guild.”
Enjoy the holidays.
Roy Blount Jr.
President
Authors Guild
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November 21st, 2008
Here’s what should be the new cover, paperback due to be released in February 2009. Get the hardcovers while they last!!!
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October 7th, 2008
Haruki Marukami, the wonderful Japanese writer, said this at the New Yorker Festival, and I think it’s a wonderful point to have made in this age of snarky bloggers and unedited rants both on the Web and in print.
1. Criticizing somebody is fun and easy.
2. Meanwhile, creating something original is very hard.
3. But somebody’s got to do it.
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September 22nd, 2008
Recently, I’ve (inadvertently) sent some pro-Obama and anti-Pallin e-mails to pro-McCain people. My bad! I can understand that it annoys people (who have let me know), but is this an issue of free speech or bad form? In other words, should I be keeping my beliefs quiet, should I be more polite? Is this bad marketing to say I support Obama? Nice girls don’t ruffle feathers? Am I only supposed to engage with people that agree with me? I really appreciated that Len weighed in on the Swanborn death notice issue with the Tribune. Len is a Republican, but he still believed that censoring and disallowing first-amendment rights is wrong.
By the same token, I’m annoyed with the people who attack Pallin for being a working mother. How she chooses to conduct her family life is her decision. I’m sure she juggles responsibilities with her husband, daughters, and whomever else she must hire to make the house go.
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