A fun fact about lightning: a strike lasts for about 30 microseconds.
Lightning People starts with a similar flash. The narrator of the prologue, Joseph Guiteau, speaks in conspiratorial terms, suggesting a link between a rise in lightning-related Manhattan-area deaths and the fall of the Twin Towers. Read More
"I must insist on the reality of Jake Yoder's existence. I have no great interest in deceiving anyone--at the same time, I've discovered that you can say anything with a straight face, and somebody will believe it." Read More
Sex, drugs, and chain-smoking Parisians abound in Collin Kelley’s new novel Remain in Light (Vanilla Heart Publishing), the cinematic sequel...
"I want readers to find themselves in this novel, to see their own potential for greatness, authenticity, to understand that they are not their mistakes and that others do not have the power to define them unless we give them that power, and to see that there is great power in time and perseverance." Read More
One thing is certain: no one likes a bad review. Critics take no pleasure in writing them and authors do...
This week, a poem from Jeff Mann.
Jeff Mann's books include three collections of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine, On the Tongue, and Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology; two books of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear and Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. Read More
Hensher, who was shortlisted for 2008’s Man Booker Prize for The Northern Clemency, is less interested in the paranoiac and more in the panoptic. As the novel begins, Hensher introduces a dizzying array of characters from the English town of Hanmouth.
Hensher hops from one viewpoint to another, and this kaleidoscopic approach, though initially confusing, pays off... Read More
"I’m really afraid of repeating myself or writing a book that just doesn’t need to exist for me. I don’t want to get to the point where I’m just writing stuff, where everybody’s like, 'here’s another one of these stupid books...' Read More
The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a gay coming-of-age novel by newcomer Jacques Strauss, and that much information alone is telling. If, for instance, you’ve noted that Jack and Jacques are in fact the same name, you may be asking yourself, “Could The Dubious Salvation be an autobiographical first novel?” Read More
While perusing through upcoming December releases, I came across two books on the frequently fraught intersections between LGBTQ communities and organized religion: Queer Religion by Donald L. Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson, and Love is an Orientation: Participant’s Guide by Andrew Martin, from his earlier 2009 award-winning book, Love is an Orientation. Read More
