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Happy Halloween!

Today I’d like to welcome horror author Kathryn Meyer Griffith who is here to share some not-so-scary childhood Halloween memories. Kathryn is the author of a long list of horror novels, all available on Amazon, several of which are available today for just 99 cents.

Treat or Treat, Robots and Candy Corn By Kathryn Meyer […]

Constance Hale Has a Crush on Verbs

I am thrilled to welcome wordsmith Constance Hale, bestselling author of Sin and Syntax and the just-released Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch: Let Verbs Power Your Writing. Constance is here to talk about … you guessed it: VERBS.

My Crush on Verbs By Constance Hale

How can a person write a whole book, just on […]

How to Write Kick-Ass Character Descriptions

I’m guilty of it, too: The description of a new character who has just entered your story as having “big brown eyes and frizzy black hair” or “ginger hair that cascaded down her shoulders and eyes the color of jade.” No matter how creative you get, describing a person according to his or her hair […]

Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women

This week I had the privilege of interviewing Ayesha Mattu, co-editor of the anthology Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women and Zahra Noorbakhsh, one of the contributors to the anthology, about Love, InshAllah and the success it has seen since it debuted in February of this year. After being featured in […]

Ben Fountain: Author Interview

Today I had the pleasure to meet Ben Fountain, who came to lunch at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Ben’s first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, debuted this month. His short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, won a PEN/Hemingway award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers […]

Hemingway and I: So Different and Yet So … Different

There are some obvious ways in which Hemingway and I differ:

He was male; I’m female He’s dead; I’m alive He was one of the greatest writers who ever lived; I’m a writer.

But then there are some not-so-obvious ways in which we differ, too, and I discovered those while reading The Paris Wife by […]

When Should We Limit Literary License?

An interesting discussion took place over lunch here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto last week. The topic: literary license. The talk was sparked by The Lifespan of a Fact, a book co-authored by essayist John D’Agata, who teaches at the University of Iowa, and his former fact checker, Jim Fingal, that was published by […]

Don’t Be An iPhoney

My life is insane this week. In addition to training for a half-marathon, editing two books, and touring every kindergarten in California, I’ve been left to take care of two snot-nosed kids (literally, there are balls of snotty toilet paper all over the house) alone while my husband is out of town on a business […]

Writerly New Year’s Resolutions

What are your New Year’s resolutions? Mine are:

1. Run the Oakland Half Marathon on March 25, no matter how slowly. I ran this marathon in 2010, and then in 2011 I wimped out after a 10-mile run two weeks before because I hadn’t trained enough. My ego didn’t want to run it slower than […]

2011 Books in Review

Happy New Year! Can you believe it’s almost 2012? I feel like I’m living in the future.

Sierra Godfrey’s post last week reminded me that I used to wrap up the year with a list of the books I’d read that year. My goal is always to read two books a month, and with two […]