Books

Author Q&A with Bookies: Monday, October 2nd

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I’ll be leading a Q&A on Bookies’ Facebook page this Monday, October 2nd, from 5pm to 7pm (Pacific time). The event is part of Bookies’ #Authorberfest, their yearly October event giving independent authors a chance to meet readers and answer their questions.

This year I will be discussing Bridge Daughter and its upcoming sequel, Hagar’s Mother. I’m also working on a giveaway as part of the Q&A, so come and check it out!

More information about the event is on my Facebook page. Learn more about #Authorberfest at Bookies. If you like and share their announcement, you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive a $10 Amazon gift card.


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Hagar’s Mother entering the home stretch

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It’s the final week for Hagar’s Mother on Kindle Scout!

If you’ve not nominated it yet, your last chance is Sunday, October 1st. Visit the campaign page and vote before it’s too late! At the campaign page you’ll have a chance to learn more about the book, download an excerpt, and read about its background.

And if Amazon selects the book for publication, you’ll receive a free digital copy.

New cover

If you nominated Hagar’s Mother earlier this month, you probably noticed the cover changed. The decision was mine and is purely cosmetic. Two weeks ago I decided to shake things up and offer readers a better idea of the book’s focus and subject matter.

Will I stick with the new cover in the final book? I’m not sure yet. I like the old one. It has a distant, almost whimsical feel to it, but am concerned that’s not the right message to convey.

At this moment, I’m simply eager to cross the finish line and hear back from Amazon their decision. Either way, I’m looking forward to getting the book into reader’s hands.


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Hagar’s Mother now on Kindle Scout!

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I’m pleased to announce that Hagar’s Mother, the sequel to Bridge Daughter, is now seeking nominations on Kindle Scout!

Amazon’s Kindle Scout program allows for readers like you to preview and evaluate unpublished books. Your nomination acts as a vote for Kindle Press editors to select the books you like.

If Hagar’s Mother receives enough nominations over the next 30 days, Amazon will publish and promote it across their site.

What’s more, if you vote for Hagar’s Mother and it’s published, you’ll receive a free digital copy! It costs nothing to vote and takes no more than a minute of your time.

Here’s how you can help:

  • Visit Hagar’s Mother at Amazon’s Kindle Scout site
  • Learn more about the book and read an excerpt
  • If you like what you see, click the blue Nominate Me button

That’s it!

The nomination period will be over before you know it, so please vote now.


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Update on Hagar’s Mother

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Many people have been asking me about the follow-up to Bridge Daughter…I’ve been pretty tight-lipped about the project, but did want to share that I finished the final draft tonight.

Hagar’s Mother clocks in around 90,000 words. It’s a not-quite-direct sequel, in the sense that the events of the book take place a generation later than Bridge Daughter. The history of bridge daughters is explored further as well as the story of Hanna’s family.

Quite exhausted at the moment. I have high hopes for this book. Wish me luck! More news coming soon.


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Margalit Fox & Bruce Weber, NY Times obituarists, on NPR’s Fresh Air

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In the comments for a previous post on Ann Wroe, obituary writer for The Economist, Peter Marinov helpfully pointed me to a recent NPR interview with two New York Times obituarists, Margalit Fox and Bruce Weber.

Margalit Fox wrote an eye-opening Times essay in 2014 on the art and craft of writing obituaries, so I’m familiar with her name and work. The recent NPR interview coincided with the release of a documentary on Fox and Weber, Obit: Life on Deadline, which I certainly look forward to seeing.

Obit: Life on Deadline, a film by Vanessa Gould

My own interest in all of this comes from a short story I published years back in the North American Review called “The Obituarist”. Researching and writing that story led to my own interest in this underappreciated field of journalism.

Like Ann Wroe’s thoughts on the profession, Fox and Weber share fascinating insights on this odd but rewarding career path. There’s a goldmine of wisdom in the interview, but it’s this observation that stood out for me:

And I think the other great attraction is we are the most purely narrative genre in any daily paper. If you think about how an obit is structured, we are taxed with taking our subjects from cradle to grave, and that gives obits a built-in narrative arc, the arc of how someone lived his or her life. And who doesn’t want to start the day reading a really good story?


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Ann Wroe on the art of writing an obituary

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Death, Matt Batchelor (CC BY 2.0)

From The Economist comes an interview with Ann Wroe, one of their in-house obituarists. I’ve documented my interest in the profession here (multiple times) and elsewhere, and even wrote a short story about the career choice.

Wroe on the craft:

I look through the obituaries of the New York Times and the Telegraph. I’ll spot someone who looks really interesting and I’ll hear a bell going off in my head. I do it for the story, and not whether the person is famous. I love it when someone’s had a quirky career that we wouldn’t be dealing with in any other part of the paper, such as a woodcarver or a whale hunter or a firefighter.

On the career itself:

It’s odd because people think it’s a rather gloomy job, but it’s very seldom a sad job. Usually, the people you’re dealing with have lived for ages and have done really interesting things. … An obit is really a celebration of a life. It’s really a joyful thing most of the time. That’s why I love the job.

I believe a great exercise for any student of writing would be to select someone currently alive, famous or not, and write their life story in under 1,000 words. Do that five, ten, twenty times, each time a different person. The exercise will change how you approaching writing stories, from microfiction to saga-length novels.


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