Archive for November 2009
Music critics: A dying breed?
It occurs to me that the music critic is a relatively useless profession, providing the reader with meaningless information fairly regularly. Theatre and movie critics can help you decide if you want to invest two or three hours of your life plus admission to a film or play. Book critics can help you to decide…
Read MoreWrite like Palin!
Slate is hosting a writing contest in which readers are asked to write like Sarah Palin. Brilliant. I wish I knew who at Slate should be credited with this idea. The goal is to write a sentence that could be mistaken for one from her book. The deadline is Wednesday. Slate defines the Palin style…
Read Moreinternet
In reviewing the copyedits of Unexpectedly, Milo, I was saddened to learn that the word Internet still requires capitalization. Why? Can we please agree to stop the insanity? The internet is not a place like Tallahassee and Timbuktu. It is a network of computers, no different than the telephone or electrical lines that crisscross our…
Read MoreWaiting is the worst
My favorite literary agent in the whole world (and one of my favorite people in the world) is Taryn Fagerness. I am proud to call her my agent and my friend. She is a brilliant professional and my hero. Hero? Heroine? I don’t know. I think hero sounds better, but if she likes heroine, that…
Read MoreTackle football one more time. Please?
The previous week has been quite interesting in terms of my athletic accomplishments. Last Sunday, I played nine holes of golf and beat my friend, Jeff, for the first time. Granted, he played poorly, and I played well, but down two shots going into the final hole, I made par after hitting a wedge 90…
Read MoreNew website up and running
My new author website debuts this morning at matthewdicks.com. Everything you might want to know about me and my books, including a link to this blog, can be found there. I am still filling out certain sections of the website, but it’s already full of information, including a peek at the cover of my next…
Read MoreI hope he’s right
Sometimes, I worry that I might have entered the publishing world at the wrong time. Falling book sales, an unsettled eBook market, and the decline of the independent bookstore have caused massive upheavals in the industry. Add to this experienced and respected authors like John Irving, who suggests that new novelists have a tough road,…
Read MoreHoping for disaster. Again.
I plan to watch Oprah with my wife this evening, a talk show I never usually watch. Elysha recorded Oprah’s interview with Sarah Palin, and I’ve been waiting to hear her speak about her new book, Going Rogue. Just writing the title of the book makes me laugh. Admittedly, my desire to watch Sarah Palin…
Read MoreHappy to be alive
Yesterday, I was interviewed by a reporter about Something Missing and my life in general. She was surprised to hear about the many things that I manage to squeeze into the day, and when she asked how I managed to do this, I told her that I sleep less than most and attempt to live…
Read MoreUniformity be damned!
I find the degree to which authors differ in their approaches to writing utterly unique. Alexander Alter of the Wall Street Journal has collected remarks from various leading authors about how they approach the process of writing, and they could not be more diverse from one another. For example: “Orhan Pamuk writes by hand, in…
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