by Jamie Chavez | Apr 23, 2018 | Your Editor Says …
A friend of mine posted a series of four photos on Facebook the other day, showing pages in a book she’d checked out from the library. (The book was Sue Grafton’s N Is for Noose, which I haven’t read.) Someone who’d read the book previously had taken it upon her- or...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 16, 2017 | Books You Might Like, The Writing Craft
I’ve already written about The Summer Before the War—which I read first (and which is, in fact, the more accomplished novel)—but I really enjoyed Helen Simonson’s novel-writing skills in Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (the New York Times calls it “funny, barbed,...
by Jamie Chavez | May 30, 2016 | Your Editor Says …
Some years ago in a weak moment I fell victim to some mediocre book marketing—“follow-up to the international best-selling Pillars of the Earth!”—and purchased Ken Follett’s World Without End, a one thousand–page historical novel. I’d read and enjoyed his early...
by Jamie Chavez | May 23, 2016 | Books You Might Like, The Book Biz
Sometimes you come across miraculously insightful information where you least expect it. Like, in the pages of your Entertainment Weekly magazine. I’ll explain. Every writer I know—published or unpublished, experienced or less experienced—wants to know the magic...
by Jamie Chavez | May 16, 2016 | Books You Might Like, The Writing Craft
It’s nearly 500 pages long—and I flew through Helen Simonson’s second novel set in an English village. I never wanted to put it down. Also, it made me angry (on behalf of a character I loved), and it made me cry a couple times. This is a sign that I was fully...
