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Oyster, the eBook subscription service that has been referred to as "the Netflix of eBooks," now has 500,000 eBooks in its lending library. New titles include: How Music Works by David Byrne, Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, The Cider House Rules by John Irving and It Chooses You by Miranda July. This is huge growth for the company's catalog which counted only about 100,000 titles a few months back. The company raised $14 million in funding back in January and has since been expanding its publisher partnerships. The service launched kids books in February. The service allows users access to its entire collection of books for a $9.95 a month subscription fee.

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Describe your latest book. Fuse is the second installment in the Pure Trilogy, which follows a group of characters in a post-apocalyptic, dystopian world. In the first novel, Pressia, a 16-year-old girl with a doll head fused to her fist, is surviving in this detonated, ash-choked world, and Partridge has survived inside of a protective [...]

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Here are some literary events to jump-start your week. To get your event posted on our calendar, visit our Facebook Your Literary Event page. Please post your event at least one week prior to its date.

Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio and chef Eddie Huang will come together for a conversation event to discuss Huang’s new memoir, Fresh Off the Boat. Hear them on Tuesday, January 29th at Barnes & Noble starting at 7 p.m. (New York, NY)

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Have you ever written a scary story? In honor of the Halloween season, we are interviewing horror writers to learn about the craft of scaring readers. Recently, we spoke with author Jonathan Maberry.

Throughout Maberry’s career, he has won multiple Stoker Awards for his horror work. Last month, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers released the third installment of the Rot & Ruin series, Flesh & Bone.

He has written for Marvel Comics and published multiple novels for both adults and young-adults. As a nonfiction writer, Maberry has examined topics ranging from martial arts to zombie pop culture. Check out the highlights from our interview below…

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GOING TO THE ENDING TO GET TO THE BEGINNING

Rather than start another play and half-way through come to the realization that: a) there is no ending or the ending doesn't match the rest or b) it's full of crap, I'm still in the thinking stage. Perhaps John Irving wouldn't approve but then again, I kind'a think he would.

Can't speak for others but writing a play, short or otherwise, comes easy when the idea is good and I can relate to the concept personally.

Read somewhere - can't trace down the source - that Woody Allen, director, writer etc. etc. starts his script with one word. This to me is incredible! He actually builds his script from one word. Mind you I've got ideas that worked for my mini-plays while sitting in a hair stylist chair and in my dentist's office. No matter where I am, I study and take notes. Sometimes it works and sometimes it don't but when it does, as I've written many times before, it's magic.

The more I'm writing this, the more ideas are flowing through/into my brain so I better take advantage of my muse. It could be a quick visit.

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Perhaps a solution to my dilemma is at hand and it's thanks to John Irving.

As a subscriber to playwriting discussion forums, it's interesting and informative to read other playwright's opinions on the craft. Subjects that focus on how they overcome barriers when working out plots and endings is of particular interest to me, at least at this point.

I've shared...make that bemoaned my 'ending' problem ad nauseum here in this blog, attempting to convert a what was written as a short play into an hour radio play in order to enter the BBC International Playwriting Competition. The beginning moves along nicely until reaching the middle stage, at which point one arrives at the realization that there is no ending. This is the point where I question whether to continue pursuing playwriting especially since none of my plays have been produced.

Reading through one of the forums, there was one of those "eureka!!" moments upon reading the opinion (and advice) of novelist and Academy Award winning screenwriter, John Irving, who shared his philosophy on starting a new writing project:

"I begin with endings, with last sentences -- usually more than one sentence, often a last paragraph (or two). I compose an ending and write toward it, as if the ending were a piece of music I could hear -- no matter how many years ahead of me it is waiting."

This got me excited thinking that perhaps this could be a solution to my"never-ending" dilemma or at least something worth trying. There are two possible plays that I'm toying with submitting to the competition. As aside my two-act plays wrote themselves as did my one and only film script. In my wedding play, it ended with a wedding in an unusual setting but I knew exactly the direction the play should go and how it should get there. Does this make sense? My "Gin..." play on the other hand, had a few changes along the way, while my children"s script wrote itself since it was based on a personal childhood experience.

Perhaps I should put aside what has been written and focus on producing sentences that could lead to moving in a new direction or even a new play. Look - if it's good enough for John Irving, it's certainly good enough for me.

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OBJECTS OF MY AFFECTION

Jill Smolinski

Touchstone

In the humorous, heartfelt new novel by the author of THE NEXT THING ON MY LIST, a personal organizer must somehow convince a reclusive artist to give up her hoarding ways and let go of the stuff she’s hung onto for decades.

Lucy Bloom is broke, been dumped by her boyfriend, and had to sell her house to send her nineteen-year-old son to drug rehab. Although she’s lost it all, she’s determined to start over. So when she’s offered a high-paying gig helping clear the clutter from the home of reclusive and eccentric painter Marva Meier Rios, Lucy grabs it. Armed with the organizing expertise she gained while writing her book, Things Are Not People, and fueled by a burning desire to get her life back on track, Lucy rolls up her sleeves to take on the mess that fills every room of Marva’s huge home. Lucy soon learns that the real challenge may be taking on Marva, who seems to love the objects in her home too much to let go of any of them.

While trying to stay on course toward a strict deadline—and with an ex-boyfriend back in the picture, a new romance on the scene, and her son’s  rehab not going as planned—Lucy discovers that Marva isn’t just hoarding: she is also hiding a big secret. The two form an unlikely bond, as each learns from the other that there are those things in life we keep, those we need to let go—but it’s not always easy to know the difference.

Laugh-out-loud humor, heartfelt writing, relatable characters, and a charming premise all come together to make OBJECTS OF MY AFFECTION the next read for the fans of Jennifer Weiner, Emily Giffin, and Allison Winn Scotch.

 

SOUTHERN CHARM

Tinsley Mortimer

Simon & Schuster

The entertaining first novel by socialite Tinsley Mortimer about a Southern Belle thrust into the frenzied world of high society in New York City.

Small town girl Minty Davenport always dreamed of skyscrapers and yellow cabs. So upon graduation from college, she bids adieu to Charleston and makes a beeline for the Big Apple. Landing a job at a PR firm, she crosses paths with the city’s elite, who are charmed by her vivacious personality and no-strings-attached sincerity. When she finds her picture in fashion magazines alongside A-list celebrities, Minty realizes that her future is in front of the camera, not behind it. But it’s a long way from the deb balls of Charleston to Fashion Week in Lincoln Center, and the gatekeepers to New York society upper echelons aren’t easily charmed.

At first, Minty’s attempts to apply etiquette lessons of a southern belle to big city life fail miserably—to comic effect. But she eventually morphs from the girl who alphabetizes the guest list to a boldface n

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Simon & Schuster will publish John Irving‘s upcoming novel, In One Person. The first-person book will explore the life of a bisexual man.

Publisher Jonathan Karp had this statement:  “It is a major work, both timeless and deeply relevant to our times … We are honored to be John Irving’s publisher — it’s a privilege I have dreamed of since I was a young Random House editor and was introduced to John by his first editor, Joe Fox.  We expect In One Person to be a literary event and a subject of intense conversation in the summer of 2012.”

The company will also publish another book by Irving (pictured via), publication is tentatively set for 2015. Dean Cooke from The Cooke Agency negotiated the deal on behalf of The Turnbull Agency.

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Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson
Young Adult

and

Wintergirls
Laurie Halse Anderson
Young Adult

I read both of these books back to back and did not give up on life entirely, which speaks highly to Anderson's talent as a writer. These are not easy reads. Speak, celebrating its 10th anniversary in print, is about rape. Think that's edgy? Wintergirls is about bulimia and anorexia. This is tough stuff. Anderson does a fabulous job with protraying real, troubled teens. For any girl who has been through rape or is battling an eating disorder, these pieces must feel empowering because they let the individual know, you are not alone.

The reason I review them together is because, despite Anderson's skill at real, gritty portrayal of these issues through a teen character, after finishing the books, I was left feeling much like I had after a spree of John Irving books in my early twenties, i.e. like the main characters were the same person over and over. Lia of Wintergirls, birthed ten years after Melinda of Speak, nonetheless feels like the same teen. Anderson's writing chops are much improved, although the symbolism in Speak is incredible, the writing in Wintergirls will leave you rereading again and again to pick up craft points, turns of phrase, ideas on how to take mental illness and make it real for readers. Still, Melinda and Lia are interchangeable.

Why?

Their voice feels very similar. Their reactions, similar. Lia feels like a more mature Melinda, going further in her personal psychosis, more unstable, more suicidal, more detached. Yet still, Melinda.

Which leads me to ask the following questions: What results in similar characters across novels by the same author? Can we authors only get so far from our own perception? Are we slaves to our own hermeneutics? Or do similar driving motives across different stories nevertheless lead to similar characters?

I am not sure what the answers are, but I would like to know more because I find myself falling into that pattern in a present novel. Certain secondary characters feel similar to ones in an earlier novel I wrote. How do I avoid that? Should I? Or does such similarity define an author much as a defining brushstroke can define a painter?

Food for thought.

For more great reads, hop over to our fearless leader, Barrie Summy's blog.  And for those of you in the Kansas area, if you get a chance, stop by the Kansas School Librarians Conference Thursday and Friday of this week. Barrie Summy, P.J. Hoover, Zu Vincent, Suzanne Morgan Williams, and I are the guest speakers for lunch on Thursday. It's a whole panel of characters just waiting to share!

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I love the New York Times Book Review conversations with authors—Sam Tanenhaus meets a writer meets a camera.

The current subject is John Irving, now nearing the completion of his twelfth book, Last Night in Twisted River.

What I find extraordinary about this conversation is what Irving reveals about his process. He writes, he says, his novel's last sentence first, and that sentence never changes, not even the slightest grammatical bit. Seven months to a year after finding the book's last sentence, Irving writes the novel's first words, and over a long stretch, then—years—the story develops. The beginning of an Irving novel will go through many iterations. The ending will not.

When I think back on the poems, short stories, memoirs, fables, and novels I've cranked my mind around—the things that I have tried, through the years, to write—I cannot think of a single instance in which I had glimpsed the last sentence before arriving right on the doorstep of that very last sentence. Vastly limited in my ability to look ahead in that way, I begin at the beginning, and I feel my way (often blindly) through. Never do I write so much as a pairing of words that goes unchallenged or unchanged (my books endure upwards of two or three dozen edits, and no sentence is spared). Never do I know, as intensely as Irving knows, enough to declare, This is done, solid, fixed in time and typeset.

(If I were to tell you how many iterations each of my blog posts go through, how they endure changes sometimes days after posting, you would ask yourself if my company is worth keeping.)

It works for Irving—this knowing where he's going. It no doubt works for others. But I never know, and I suppose I need this long bath of uncertainty to keep me rising at 4 AM, to keep me sitting here at my glass desk, to keep me hoping. I want to know, in my books and poems (in these blog posts, even), what is going to happen next, and in tiny fractions every day, my brain cedes bits and pieces.

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We love keeping track of the deals that are being brokered in the book world. It should be seen as inspiring that new work is still being acquired. If, perhaps, you don’t agree with some of the books that are being published, than it is food for thought. Here is a round-up of the latest deals.

{image courtesy of Amy Sussman}

Star of Bravo’s The Real Housewives of New York City Countess LuAnn de Lesseps with Diane Reverand’s CLASS WITH THE COUNTESS: How to Live With Elegance and Flair, a complete course in the art of sophisticated living including contemporary etiquette tips, to Lauren Marino at Gotham, by David Vigliano at Vigliano Associates (World).

The deals keep rolling in for debut novelist Anne Fortier’s JULIET. It recently sold to Universal, with James Mangold and Kathy Contrad (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma) attached to produce and direct, by Rich Green at CAA, on behalf of Daniel Lazar at Writers House.

Sandra Bullock’s sister, Gesine Bullock-Prado, recently sold the rights to her debut book. CONFECTIONS OF A CLOSET MASTER BAKER an humorous and edgy memoir (with recipes) of the author’s journey from sugar-obsessed child to miserable, awkward Hollywood insider (she ran her sister, Sandra’s production company) and how she left it all behind to follow her love of baking and open Gesine’s bakery in Montpelier, Vermont, to Stacy Creamer at Broadway, in a significant deal, at auction, by Laura Nolan at The Creative Culture.

John Irving’s LAST NIGHT IN TWISTED RIVER, set in a New Hampshire sawmill settlement, spanning five decades, as the central character and his 12-year-old son become fugitives after a case of mistaken identity, to Louise Dennys at Knopf Canada, in a significant deal; to Alexandra Pringle at Bloomsbury UK, for hardcover publication in October 2009; and to Bill Scott-Kerr at Transworld for paperback, in a major deal, by Dean Cooke at The Cooke Agency (UK/Commonwealth).

Star of Full House Jodie Sweetin’s WILD CARD, about growing up on the set of the hit TV show, her downward spiral of drug and alcohol abuse that began when the show ended, and her path to sobriety, to Sarah Sper at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, for publication in 2009, at auction, in a significant deal, by Kirby Kim at Endeavor (NA).

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