by Jamie Chavez | Apr 11, 2015 | Miscellany
You know I love to talk about getting the details right in your novel, so when I read A. A. Gill’s lovely essay in Vanity Fair, I knew I had to share. “We are coming to the end of the age of the telephone call,” he says, “and that may be a good thing or a bad thing,...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 9, 2015 | Miscellany
My friend Amy sent me this link. Because, hello, books. I like this guy Austin Kleon. He writes things I wish I’d written myself. Or that I’d like to imitate (sincerest form of flattery, yada yada). I think part of it is my fascination with narrative lists, which...
by Jamie Chavez | Mar 5, 2015 | Miscellany
You know how the winter wind swirls dead leaves around until a dozen of them end up stuck in a corner by the fence? The Internet is like that. Late last year it swirled two big stories and an advice piece together, and they got stuck in my office. 🙂 The subject of...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 28, 2015 | Miscellany
As you know, I’ve become interested in the nature of creativity and inspiration, and have written about it here several times—just this week, in fact.* Shortly after I wrote that post, I read an article by author Walter Isaacson in the October 2014 Vanity Fair … about...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 15, 2015 | Miscellany, The Book Biz
In every book there’s usually a note from the author—in publishing we call this the acknowledgments—and if you think editors don’t check to see if we’re mentioned there, you need to research a little more about human nature before you start that next novel. 🙂...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 5, 2015 | Miscellany
You probably know I had a little computer problem back on October third. These things never come at a convenient time, of course, but let me tell you, it was a perfect storm of crap. The briefest rundown of that six-week period would include deaths in my family and...
