Our March 2nd Launch is here!!

And the new cover is gorgeous! Thank you, S&S. :)
The Greatest Gift at Simon & Schuster UK, official publisher's site

Trailer for UK edition

Here's the trailer for the UK edition of our non-fiction book, The Greatest Gift. Kim McDougall of Blazing Trailers did such a fantastic job. I especially love the ending. Thank you, Kim!

Signing and Shipping

My boxes of books for the pre-order event arrived yesterday! What a thrill. Thank you to all who ordered. I'll be signing and shipping all day today. But first--priorities and all--I had to don the shoes and sit with the stacks.

We Women Globally

I am honored to be featured at We Women Globally today, a site which focuses on the achievements of women worldwide.

There's still time!

There's still time for you to order WOMEN UP ON BLOCKS from Press 53. These are signed, first-edition copies that will be mailed out by mid-February. (If you want them signed to a specific person, just email my publisher kevin@press53.com and he'll make sure we "get 'er done" to your specifications.) And thank you!

Brevity 29

I do love Brevity. They publish some very fine work, and their latest issue is no exception.

Brevity

Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain

Here's a great You Tube video of short performances from my friend Kirsten Menger-Anderson's newly released short story collection. I love this!

Rain Taxi Online

Rain Taxi has some great interviews and reviews this month. Check them out here.

It's available!!

Signed copies of WOMEN UP ON BLOCKS are now available for pre-order at my publisher's website: Press 53. So excited!!

My Short Story Collection

I'm thrilled to announce that Press 53 will be publishing my short story collection WOMEN UP ON BLOCKS in March of 2009. I'm so excited to be publishing with them--I love the work they've been putting out, and am thrilled to be added to their list. :)

College Hill Review

A new online quarterly review has just launched. The College Hill Review. It looks great and this first issue has an essay by a writer friend of mine, Clifford Garstang and an essay of mine.

The Greatest Gift

Here is the new trailer for the UK edition of our non-fiction book, The Greatest Gift. Kim McDougall of Blazing Trailers did such a fantastic job. I especially love the ending. Thank you, Kim!

Jericho Brown

Check out the website and new book of poetry (PLEASE) by Jericho Brown. He's a friend, and a kick-ass writer, too.

New Trailer!

Kim McDougall at Blazing Trailers has made the most wonderful trailer for the Australian version of the NF book. I couldn't be happier!

Our UK Cover!

Simon & Schuster has designed a wonderful new cover for our UK release. What do you think? (Click on the image to see it full-sized.)

r.kv.r.y

I am honored to have my work appear in the fine journal r.kv.r.y. You can read it here: Medusa Song

A fun article about ITME and me

Michele Deluca is a charming reporter and it was a delight to be interviewed by her. You can read the results here. (Photo by Dan Cappellazzo)

The Maternal Is Political

Today I received my contributor copies of the anthology The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection of Motherhood and Social Change. What a great looking book! And I am thrilled to have my essay appearing alongside the work of Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Lamott, Anna Quindlen, Nancy Pelosi, and Benazir Bhutto. Way cool. A huge thank you to editor Shari MacDonald Strong for putting together such an amazing anthology--and to my friend Linera Lucas for encouraging me to submit!

Feeling the Book Club Love

Andy and I recently had our first book club experience and it was amazing!

The wonderful thing about book clubs is that they are most often held in private homes, with a small group of attentive readers, there's food and drink, and no need to "perform" as with a public reading. The meeting is held primarily to discuss the book with readers who have already read it, who are discriminating and intelligent and have interesting questions. We even sold nine additional books to members who already had their own copies and wanted to share the book with others.

It was so amazing to see this articulate group of interested readers sitting there with their books all marked and tabbed and highlighted. I think they remembered more about the book than I did. And several members had marked specific passages where a quote or a lesson or even just a simple observation had come to them at the perfect time to help them through some difficulty in their lives. What could be better? This is why I write. This makes all those long hours at the keyboard worthwhile.

I feel so grateful to readers, strangers who voluntarily give me approximately 8 hours of their lives, attending to words on the page--words that I've written. Then they take the words into their minds and hearts and make the book into an experience that speaks to them alone. They finish my book. Did I mention that it's amazing?

Looking for a good story to read?

Check out the new website Five Star Stories that features new stories available on the web that have been nominated by the editor that published them (as the best of the issue) and are then critiqued by an established author. What a great idea! (I thought it was such a good idea, I volunteered to go first.)