Authors Electric

  Have you been to a poetry reading where some of the poets read in the same way? The stretched pauses. The careful pacing. The slightly mystical cadence. The voice that quietly announces, “This is a poem.” If you have, you'll know that the prior   sentence, in “poetry voice,” would probably sound like this: The voice  that quietly  announces,  “This is a poem.” And it would be read with rising inflection at the end of every line, like everything was a question, or a revelation, or both. A recent  New York Times  piece looks at this, often called the “poet voice,” and asks why so many poets end up reading their work in nearly identical ways.  Poetry lives in two spaces at once. On the page, it’s quiet, interior, personal. Out loud, it becomes physical and shared. Breath matters. Silence matters. Tone matters. Pace matters. The same poem can feel like a different piece of writing depending on how it’s voiced. But sometimes readings by different po...

Meet Peggy Arthur, writer of the forthcoming novel, The Pretender's Game. Peggy is working a strategy to encourage readers who would enjoy reading her book to find her. Peggy has begun a regular feature on her website called "Rooted Reads." Peggy's book, The Pretender's Game, is a sweeping tale of a Black family in the southern United States. Peggy, through this book, is creating a new mythology that is based, or rooted, in southern Black culture. Did you know you could create your own myths? I confess I thought just dead Greeks could do that! But as soon as I began to read Peggy's excellent and, frankly, thrilling book, I knew I was wrong.  And so, where do we find our readers, when our book releases? Well, one good thing to do would be to line them up ahead of time, so that they're waiting for your book. Peggy is doing this by giving something away free to people who might want to read her book. She is giving them a recommendation for another book, like ...

  It was a rainy and cold day in Roxborough when my future husband, Dave, and I went to see a new movie at our local movie theater,   Rushmore,   the first film to be in wide release from director Wes Anderson. I was already pretty loaded in on our relationship because my husband wore Doc Martens, wrote and drew satirical comics, and liked some cool music. When we came out of the movie I felt even more in love, with my husband, with life, with the world in general. I was vibrating. So, there was no question of what I was going to do last weekend: I was going to go see Anderson's newest movie,   The Phoenician Scheme . It was everything I could have hoped for, weird, hopeful, sad, funny, well-acted, well-written, and the set was amazing, as were all the props, details, etc. The postcards were absolutely gorgeous, and how many films have you been to where there are postcards? I will say this, having seen  The Phoenician Scheme,  I do think Wes Anderson is mak...

Recipes from My Garden This week author Nadja Maril released her collection of f lash prose, poetry, and essays inspired by her kitchen, garden, and family memories. I sat down with Nadja to ask her some questions about the book, and her process. It's interesting to note that Nadja comes from an artistic background: her late father Herman Maril was an artist, and his painting is the cover of her book. I have enjoyed Nadja's poetry and flash fiction for many years now, and I am very excited for her book! Dianne Pearce (Dianne): What inspired you to combine poetry, short form, gardening, and cooking in one book? How did these different forms of expression come together?   Nadja Maril (Nadja): In January 2020 I’d just completed an MFA (masters in fine arts) in creative writing from the low residency Stonecoast Writing Program at the University of Southern Maine and was in the midst of moving into a 100-year-old house. My husband Peter and I were the General Contractors. Both th...

( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/05/books/publisher-authors-equity.html ) I t's no secret that I am a publisher. And, after seven years as an indie publisher, I am changing my business model to be an author services model. So, you can self-publish, anyone can with some minor computer savvy, but you can also do it with my help. The difference between what I was doing and what I am now doing is that, before, I was an "indie," meaning that I took a book on spec, and did quite a bit of work to create the book in the various formats, and hoped it would sell, and, if it did sell, split the profits with the authors. The authors tended to give me their book, and then waited for it to sell. Now, (if I choose to take a book) I ask for a fee for my services, and the author gets the same services from me, but keeps all the profits, should they occur. This change means two things for the author who wants to work with me: >They must pay for the services I used to do for free and ...

This fabulous song by Cream has been in my mind this week, primarily because of the first line of the lyrics, which is the title of this post. I work as an editor, and over the past week have edited a mystery novel, one collection of short stories that are acting as a novel when put together, and five mini pieces from five different authors as part of a small workshop I held, and they were one mystery, two sci-fi/speculative, two memoir/non-fiction. And as part of this week's editing I have encountered a few times what I have come to think of as "the white room," and with that, because that is just how my mind works, the Cream song quickly follows (I do love that song, so maybe any excuse? I mean, those lyrics are great!) Other than containing the white room, the Cream song doesn't actually apply here, but maybe it will help us remember the concept. And perhaps a famous author we have all heard of was also inspired by the Cream song, because she is the correct age to ...

  Picture is an overhead shot of many swimmers swimming in blue water with the word "PRACTICE" floating among them Practice is to do something in a low-stakes environment that we will later do in a higher-stakes environment. Or so said the eighth-grade choir director when I was in eighth-grade choir. He encouraged us to keep singing, at home, in the shower, walking to school, to continue to turn each song into a well-oiled machine before we stood on stage in our long robes. I took him very seriously, and by the time the concert came I was very well-oiled.  This morning, for my first post of 2024, I got up before 6 am. I made coffee, fed the cats and the Guinea pigs, closed the bedroom door very firmly and quietly on the dog and my sleeping spouse, and sat down with my laptop in my lap, coffee by my side. I'm not thirteen anymore.  This means that there are pets to feed, and soon a child to wake and feed and layer with coats and bags and scarves and books and load into a c...

  Honestly, if I could live anywhere in the world, it would be Ocean City, New Jersey, USA. Yes, someone who would willing relocate to New Jersey. A few years ago now, when my spouse and I decided we had to gtfo of exit Delaware, we were ten miles from the Atlantic Ocean and a lovely beach. But we weren't in Ocean City. We realized, when we burned completely out on where we were, that the pandemic had freed us. My husband's company used to have a rule that only a certain percentage of the office could work remotely, but during the pandemic the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent a few floors in the Oppenheimer building that no one went to. And they noticed that while that rent ate away their budget, all the work got done, so they dumped their offices... forever. And I had begun teaching and tutoring remotely as well, and one thing the colleges realized was that, while in the main they wanted everyone back on campus (especially the dorm colleges), students di...