by Jamie Chavez | Mar 5, 2018 | Authors & Other Writers, Books You Might Like
I read a lot of great books last year, as you know. It’s interesting to look at my list from each year; I can see things like what I was working (editing) on and also things that were troubling me, or how stressed I was. Just a little review of my life, you know? And...
by Jamie Chavez | Feb 11, 2017 | Authors & Other Writers
Do you love to go to book fests and fairs and meet your favorite authors? I know I do. Now that I’ve been editing for some years, I’ve actually been fortunate enough to hang out with authors whose work I admire. One of those is Sarah Loudin Thomas, the author of about...
by Jamie Chavez | Sep 17, 2016 | Authors & Other Writers
I’ve been following Catherine Ryan Howard’s blog for some years. It’s almost been like watching her “grow up” right in front of me—from a sweet, sassy, opinionated self-taught self-publisher to a woman who’s gone back to college and finally attained her dream of being...
by Jamie Chavez | Jun 30, 2016 | Authors & Other Writers, The Book Biz
Book reviews and book reviewers don’t require any appearances or performances from the author (unless, like Norman Mailer, you show up at newspaper offices to pick a fight with the book review editor—how many of those are left now?). But reviews definitely contribute...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 28, 2016 | Authors & Other Writers
Once, in a New Yorker article, [John Updike had] quoted the German philosopher Theodor Adorno: “In the history of art, late works are the catastrophes.” But the poems he was writing were good. He knew the poems were good. Before he got sick, Updike had been afraid...
by Jamie Chavez | Apr 21, 2016 | Authors & Other Writers, The Writing Craft
Flannery O’Connor wrote in “The Nature and Aim of Fiction” that most people who write “are more interested in being a writer than in writing. They are interested in seeing their names at the top of something printed, it matters not what.” This, I realized once I’d...