Skip to content

Book clubs on boats. Book clubs in cars. Book clubs complete with game shows and nudity.

In the past nine years, I’ve attended hundreds of book clubs to talk about my books. It is by far one of my favorite ways to meet readers, because unlike a book store or library appearance, these folks have already read my book and are prepared to ask some interesting questions. I’ve also learned that…

Read More

4 good ideas and 4 bad ideas about book clubs

PopSugar’s Elyssa Friedland offers 10 tips for a successful book club. I’ve been a member of a book club for more than a decade. Six people – three couples – meet and talk about books over dinner 6-8 times per year. I’ve also visited with well over 100 book clubs over the course of my…

Read More

Book Club Adventures on Planes and Trains and Automobiles (sort of)

Since I published my first novel in 2009, I have attended well over 100 book club meetings both in person and over Skype with people from all over the world who have read my books. While I love speaking in book stores and libraries whenever given the opportunity, it’s always a special honor to be…

Read More

The moment for which every author longs, experienced by my wife.

My wife was checking out books at the library when a woman stepped up beside her and handed Unexpectedly, Milo to the adjacent librarian. “That’s my husband’s book,” Elysha said. “What?” the woman asked. “What?” the librarian asked. “That’s my husband’s book,” she repeated. “He wrote it.” “He did?” the woman said. “He did?” the…

Read More

PowerPoint presentations, game shows, skinny dipping, and now The Oscars: Quirks of the many book clubs I have attended

Last week I attended the meeting of Sheltering Trees, a book club in Wallingford, Connecticut. The members of the group (more than a dozen ladies ranging in ages from their twenties to their seventies) were kind enough to read Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend, so I joined them for their discussion. As expected, it was…

Read More

My book club once featured skinny dipping. This book club has a big time college football player for a member. I think they win.

I’m not a big college football fan. I don’t have an allegiance to any college football team. But wide receiver Malcolm Mitchell may have turned me into a Georgia Bulldogs fan with his recent foray into, of all things, a book club. It’s a great story. I can’t wait to show this video my students…

Read More

The career of an author is not all angst and loneliness. Some of the time.

I am not a starry eyed author. I expect little from my publishing career. When I published my first novel, Something Missing, in 2009, I was not under the illusion that I would be quitting my day job anytime soon. I saw that book as a small, uncertain, precarious step into a new career that…

Read More

“Book club date night” is probably not the most romantic way to spend an evening with your wife

Since publishing my first novel in 2009, I’ve visited with more than one hundred book clubs throughout Connecticut and beyond, oftentimes in person and many times via conference call, Skype or a similar platform. I’ve video chatted with books clubs in Canada, Finland, Australia and the UK as well as clubs throughout the United States.…

Read More