In a North Bay state of mind...

A gritty gumshoe New York writer can't get rid of his native North Bay, Ontario. It's kind of like herpes, in that regard. I had a similar reaction to living in New York, and began work while there on a novel set against the backdrop of Bradford, Ontario: Harley Davidson painters caps, slack-jawed yuppies-cum-yokels in SUVs, bottle toke bottles strewn in the highschool parking lot, 40-something dye-blonde divorcees at the Village Inn, the occasional carrot festival, and acid wash denim as far as the eye can see. Then I moved home and the spell was broken. The pages have been burnt, rest assured. (From PFW)


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Chicago: writers' town

Chicago newspaper highlights Chicago. And just in time, too. Dr Von Moribund! Halt the DestructoRay's countdown and reposition. Coordinates: Boise, Idaho.


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It's like getting screwed at the drive thru... once you're gone, you can't really do anything about it...

Perhaps A Death in the Family isn't what it would have been, had there been no death... in the family. Like I always say, once you're dead, you're so fucked.


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Wakka wakka.

i thought the hot dog metaphor was incredibly profound

you're up with Atwood now

The curse of the prolific author

Can one write too much? (You know, I had said a whole bunch of eloquent stuff too, about the well of creative energy and public perception of the work of the artist, but apparently the hotdog metaphor was just too good to resist. Much like hotdogs themselves.)


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Drunken poet penned 250,000 copy bestseller

This sounds about right.

For almost 30 years from 1757, Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies was the essential gentleman's accessory for a night on the town. Historian Hallie Rubenhold estimates it sold at least 250,000 copies.

It offered very particular advice, guiding clients to the doorstep of Miss Smith, of Duke's Court in Bow Street, "a well made lass, something under the middle size, with dark brown hair and a good complexion"; warning them off Miss Robinson, at the Jelly Shops, "a slim and genteel made girl - but rather too flat"; and kindly including Mrs Hamblin, No 1 Naked-Boy Court in the Strand - "The young lady in question is not above 56 ... we know she must be particularly useful to elderly gentlemen who are very nice in having their linen got up".

Oi! Shoin yeh shoes, guvnah? Ow's about sumfin else ven?


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Oedipal thing gets more complex

Mother and son release books on the same day. In my family that means I have a new book coming out and my mother has just finally passed out and let her latest Dean Koontz fall to the floor.


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My only concern in pleasing my dad is remembering how to tell the difference between the left- and right-handed hammers...

I'm what they call a "first-generation writer", so I wouldn't know, but it seems being the child of a famous writer ain't as easy as it looks.

The publishing world is seemingly witnessing a boom in the population of writers whose parents made their living in literature, and not just in America. In Canada, Anne Giardini, daughter of Carol Shields, is making the bestseller list with her first novel, The Sad Truth About Happiness; Emma Richler, daughter of Canada's legendary Mordecai, releases her first proper novel, Feed My Dear Dogs, this month; and David Layton, son of Irving Layton, releases his first work of fiction, The Bird Factory, after his memoir Motion Sickness.

Okay, so it is.


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They're so cute!

Six first time authors write about launching their books.



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<b>Quoth the Huey: that's the power of love
The poetic power couple.



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He's big in Japan
The Rake sobers up long enough to post about the meeting of Raymond Carver and Haruki Murakami.

In the waning of that quiet afternoon, I remember with what distaste he was sipping black tea. Holding the teacup in his hand, he looked as though he was doing the wrong thing in the wrong place. Sometimes he would get up from his seat and go outside to smoke.

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that is hilarious

If ear hair is the key, then I'm poised to get more pussy than Sinatra. All I need is a book...

The bookphrodesiac

The writer, the groupie, and you.

And yet I have to concede that, as anyone who has earned an M.F.A. or attended a writing conference already knows, a surprising number of those over-the-top rumors about writers and their torrid affairs are actually true. If books aren't aphrodisiacs, then what else can account for a guest opening the coat closet at a post-reading party a few years ago in Greensboro, N.C., to find Mr. Very Famous 60-Something Poet and a young blonde, with whom he was not, apparently, discussing ''Ode on a Grecian Urn.''

Do you know how many friends I've lost (okay, given up) because of their groupie crushes on flaccid old men? Ew. And where in the name of god are my groupies? Am I just not old and disgusting enough yet? I'm getting there, I swear! Give me some time! I'm letting myself go to pot! I'll even grow jowls so big I can't shave in the folds! Will that do it for you? Ear hair? I'm dying here!



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What did you do/will you do with your first book?
Not many writers are proud of their first efforts.

My first novel, thank God, was never published. The typescript still lies at the bottom of some drawer box, its pages no doubt yellow and impregnated with dust. I have not destroyed it because, even though ashamed, I am grateful to it.

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