Category Archives: Interviews

Best-selling Dalrymple talks writing history

Posted on November 5, 2006 by Aurel

After putting in years of research into books, like his latest The Last Mughal, he’s a little touchy about the slightly condescending tag ‘popular historian’.

“I bristle at the term ‘popular history’. I think the central issue of how good or not a work of history is, how important, how scholarly a work of history, does not depend on the style in which it’s written. Whether it’s enclosed in a cocoon of post-modernist, post-structuralist, post-colonial, foucaultian, post-saidian jargon but the quality of its primary research,” says Dalrymple.

While the author prefers the term ‘narrative historian’, what seems to be the flip side of being a best-selling author, is that he is largely disowned by the country’s academic historians.

get the full story and see video from CNN-IBN

Posted in Articles, Authors, Book Release, Interviews, Newly Released Books |

Interview with film-producer-turned-novelist Frank Beddor

Posted on November 5, 2006 by Keren

Q: When did you start to really focus on your writing?

A: “About seven year ago but I didn’t tell people. In Hollywood writing a book is like a step down and for five years I literally fell off the face of the planet while I worked on this book. People were surprised that I was not producing any more movies and would ask me what I was doing. I’d just tell people I was working on lots of different films and that satisfied them. I didn’t want questions about writing a book because as a first time author I could not take that pressure.

It took me about two years just to sort out the logic, the rules of this world. I needed to understand how the pieces would fit together before I could write the narrative. But this really has now become my real love.”

Q: What is the appeal of writing for the young teen market?

A: “Eleven and 12 year olds don’t come into the room with their arms crossed waiting to be entertained. They are interested and get involved. When I speak to schools I will say I’m about to make my book into a movie and do they know anyone who might be interested in playing in the main roles? Hands shoot up and I get them up on stage, reading out of the book and playing the characters.”

Read the full interview at Yahoo News here.

Posted in Authors, Film, Interviews |

Best-selling author returns home in latest novel

Posted on November 2, 2006 by Aurel

Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani proves over and over again that there’s no place like home. The New York-based writer hails from the southwest Virginia town of Big Stone Gap, the setting for a trilogy of novels featuring Ave Maria Machesney. Trigiani has completed the fourth installment of her heroine’s journey, appropriately called “Home to Big Stone Gap.”

read an excerpt from the novel and full story here

Posted in Articles, Authors, Book Release, Interviews, Newly Released Books |

Film producer Beddor finds new career in books

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Aurel

NEW YORK, Oct 31 (Reuters Life!) – Frank Beddor, best known for producing the comedy film “There’s Something about Mary,” began writing seven years ago — and says there’s no looking back.

His debut novel, “The Looking Glass Wars,” claims to tell the truth about Alice in Wonderland, or Princess Alyss, who fled with bodyguard Hatter Madigan to the real world after her mother, the queen, was overthrown by her older sister Redd. Alyss is later sucked back into Wonderland.

Read more here

Posted in Articles, Authors, Book Release, Interviews |

Author Matthew Skelton on his book "Endymion Spring"

Posted on October 28, 2006 by Keren

Matthew Skelton, author of bestselling children’s book Endymion Spring, discusses his life, career and experience writing the novel.

Having his first novel plucked from an agent’s slush pile and commissioned as a movie let Matthew Skelton make the leap from a failed academic who once couch surfed across Europe to an adored author on a book tour that puts him up in posh hotels.

Yet more than creature comforts, Skelton says the success of “Endymion Spring,” a history-fueled fantasy that has been described as a “The Da Vinci Code” for children, has allowed him to escape the Ivory Tower and accept himself as a dreamer who relates best to adolescents.

“They don’t just read books — they live inside them,” Skelton, 35, says of the young readers whose enthusiasm for fiction made “Endymion Spring” a best seller the week it was published in August.

Link to the Yahoo News story.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Children's books, Interviews, Reading |

Writing tips from a pro: Fiction author Lackey says she once revised a book 17 times

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Aurel

Source: Toledo Blade

Either Mercedes Lackey is a good teacher or she had a keen audience last night. Not long into her talk about how one becomes a published writer, the audience of about 175 was finishing her sentences with her mantra: “Glue your derriere to the chair and write.”

Lackey, who has published 70 books, offered several tidbits, such as send a completed book (not the commonly recommended three chapters and an outline), to an editor; do not hire an agent to promote your work (because you can do it better yourself), and be nice to your editor and publisher.

“Don’t make your editor’s life miserable. It’s already miserable: they live in New York.”
(more…)

Posted in Articles, Author Tours, Authors, Events, Interviews, Reading |

Book Talk: Author Horowitz on his life with a teenage spy

Posted on October 25, 2006 by Aurel
NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters Life!) – Anthony Horowitz has been writing children’s books for 26 years but his teenage secret agent, Alex Rider, carved out a new path for him — action movies, and he thinks it’s awesome.

Horowitz has written six adventure stories about Rider, a 14-year-old British schoolboy who battles villains as a secret agent, since the first in the series, “Stormbreaker,” became a best seller in 2000.

The year “Stormbreaker” was turned into feature film with London-based Horowitz, 50, writing the screenplay.

Horowitz is currently writing “Snakehead,” his seventh Alex Rider book, along with a screenplay for the next film. (more…)

Posted in Articles, Authors, Interviews, Movie Adaptations, Upcoming releases |

Amy Tan Speaks at Purdue University

Posted on October 20, 2006 by Aurel

“On paper, best-selling author Amy Tan’s teenage years — having graduated from high school in a Swiss resort town nestled near the French Alps — are worthy of envy.

“It sounds so hoighty-toighty. … But we got to Switzerland through a can of old Dutch cleanser,” Tan told a large crowd Thursday night at Purdue University.

The author of The Joy Luck Club, which explores the relationship between Chinese mothers and Chinese-American daughters, was relaying the story of how her mother decided to uproot the family from California to Holland.

The decision was made after Daisy Tan, described as a “germophobe” by her daughter, found the cleaner under the kitchen sink.

The tale was one of several Amy Tan shared during her talk before hundreds at Elliot Hall of Music, the third installment in the Purdue University Libraries Distinguished Lecture Series.having graduated from high school in a Swiss resort town nestled near the French Alps — are worthy of envy.

“It sounds so hoighty-toighty. … But we got to Switzerland through a can of old Dutch cleanser,” Tan told a large crowd Thursday night at Purdue University.

“The author of The Joy Luck Club, which explores the relationship between Chinese mothers and Chinese-American daughters, was relaying the story of how her mother decided to uproot the family from California to Holland.

“The decision was made after Daisy Tan, described as a ‘germophobe’ by her daughter, found the cleaner under the kitchen sink.

“The tale was one of several Amy Tan shared during her talk before hundreds at Elliot Hall of Music, the third installment in the Purdue University Libraries Distinguished Lecture Series.”

Read Sophia Voravong’s Article here.

Posted in Articles, Author Tours, Authors, Education, Events, Interviews |

PW interview with publisher Shaye Areheart

Posted on October 17, 2006 by Keren

Publisher’s Weekly has an interesting and (very) short interview with publisher Shaye Areheart, discussing debut novels and Robert James Waller.

PW: You’ve published several debut novels over the past few seasons. Do you have a special affinity for publishing first-time authors, and what are the challenges involved in that?

SA: I think because we have published so many debut novels and have had some notable success with them that agents think of us for those books. The challenge, of course, is always to make people pay attention and to get them to actually read the book. Because with a fine debut novelist you’re saying this book is great, this story is wonderful, these characters are affecting, please, please read this book. If you can get people to read something, the chances are good that they’ll say, yeah, this really is quite wonderful; or at least they’ll give it a fair chance.

Link

Posted in Book Release, Interviews, Publishers |

An Indian author writes from her roots

Posted on October 14, 2006 by Keren

 Booker-winning author Kiran Desai talks about how her Indian heritage and identity shaped her writing.

Kiran DesaiDesai, who is 35, lived in India until she was 14, when she and her mother left first for the UK and then for the US, where she has lived ever since. However, she still holds on to her Indian passport.  “Now I could become an American citizen, but then George Bush won and I’ve just been unable to bring myself to do so,” she explains, half-apologetically. “But again that’s silly because of course I pay taxes there and don’t vote, so it’s hypocritical in a way, but it held me back.”

Increasingly, too, she is unsure that she would really want to surrender her Indian citizenship. “I feel less like doing it every year because I realise that I see everything through the lens of being Indian. It’s not something that has gone away – it’s something that has become stronger. As I’ve got older, I have realised that I can’t really write without that perspective.”

Read the full interview here.

Posted in Authors, Awards, Interviews |