The May 31 New Yorker has a short story by Jonathan Franzen called “Agreeable” that made me break my usual “no reading New Yorker fiction” rule. I’m not sure why. The beginning reads like a Good Housekeeping or Redbook article. On second thought, maybe that’s why I kept reading. There Read more…
I would like to thank the students of Melony Kempf’s classes for being so engaged and interested in my talk this morning at Pflugerville Middle School. I had fun and hope you all did too. I talked about how I started writing when I was a little kid and wrote Read more…
Do prologues work or are they just authors marking time? I added a prologue to GWIII and brought it to my writer’s group for their perusal. Here’s what I heard: “lacks urgency.” “Needs to start earlier at a more crucial moment.” “Characters aren’t engaged.” And my favorite — “It’s a Read more…