The Necessity of a Bike
This is the profundity I have arrived at when it comes to writing residencies: there must be a bike. I go to residencies for the same reason as others—to have some extended, focused periods of writing. Normally, my writing time is limited to an hour or so in the evening and lunch hours during the…
Read MoreThe Hard (Un)sell
My publisher is a small, start-up press based in Hong Kong—too small and too new to send its authors on book tours, it if believed in such a thing. And because I can’t afford to hire a publicist, booking readings is up to me, which I’m perfectly willing to do. Or so I thought. My…
Read MoreThe Getting of Blurbs
If there’s an icky part about getting a book published it’s asking people for blurbs. Not just any people, but writers of note, because as a website called Selling Books puts it, “for an unknown author, such endorsements are essential for compelling readers to take a chance on someone they’ve never read before.” Asking for…
Read MoreMy Friend, Alma Johnson
I met Alma Johnson in a fiction workshop in the early 90s. She was the star of the class – not just because of her writing talent or her ability to examine a story and make insightful and precise observations on the plausibility of its premise and structure, on whether the thing had muscle. She…
Read MoreTheory of Relative Visibility
So I have a website now and this blog, too. The reason? My novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced is being published this June. According to common wisdom, a presence on the web is essential to increase one’s visibility. Such a notion requires a certain amount of faith given that there are over…
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