by William Kenower

September 2014

In October of 2008 I shot an interview with Somaly Mam following the release of her memoir The Road of Lost Innocence. I had never heard of Ms. Mam or her organization. I was the Editor-in-Chief of Author, then a fledgling online magazine for writers and devoted readers, for which I conducted three to four interviews a month. Her publicist called me directly and asked if I could fit her into my schedule. I had already booked my interviews for that month, but, after hearing the skeleton of her story, agreed to squeeze her in.

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by Kristen Lamb

September 2013

It's never necessary for a writer to have multiple blogs. Can we choose to have them? Sure. Is it a good use of time? Nope. We need that time and word count for the most important aspect of our author platforms:

More books.

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Pamela Moore Dionne

I’ve been thinking about Snow White and the Wicked Queen a lot lately. Or maybe it’s the apple that Snow White bites into that really has my attention. Some gifts should not be taken at face value. Often those gifts come disguised as advice.

In 2004, I founded Discovery Bay Games, a company that became quite successful. We started out with a different corporate name and face-to-face games.

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by Pamela Moore Dionne

I guess you could say I’ve had a checkered past. At least you could if you mean that I’ve tried a lot of different avenues to get where I am now – with one published book and two more on the way. Actually, when I picture this trajectory in my mind’s eye I see something resembling a long column of those zees Zorro used to carve into other people's jackets. The question is, why have I lived my life as though some errant folk-hero left his mark all over it?  

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by Bill Kenower

When Author was still in its infancy, I had the chance to interview the novelist Alice Hoffman. I mentioned that I had just listened to an interview with Meryl Streep in which the actress discussed her doubt that anyone would still want to cast her in a movie. Hoffman, who has had a long, prolific, profitable, and decorated career, said she felt much same say.

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by Bill Kenower

This month in Author we are featuring interviews with two non-fiction authors, both of whom, I believe, are carrying a useful and timely message. 

Daniel Pink’s book Drive takes a scientific look at motivation. What he found, lo and behold, was that people are ultimately less motivated by money and safety than they are by an internal desire for mastery and progress. Sound familiar? While his book is aimed theoretically at the business world, I chose to interview Daniel because I felt his work and all that he has learned is directly applicable to writers.

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by Bill Kenower

I always ask the writers I interview their advice for beginning writers, and often the advice they give boils down to this: it’s about the process. Not the publishing, the process. When I was younger and angrier I would hear this advice and think, “And when I’m published I’m sure it will be all about the process for me too.” 

I am older and happier now and find myself in complete agreement with these men and women. The siren song of writing is publishing.

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by Bill Kenower

One of the first pieces of advice a writer looking to find an agent will receive is to pay very close attention to the beginning of his or her novel. If the opening doesn’t grab the agent it won’t grab the editor, and it probably won’t grab the reader. So polish and polish those first five pages, we are told, and then scrub that first paragraph until it blinds you with its reflection.

Yes, yes, and yes. You must have a grabber opening, whatever that means for your particular genre. The opening is your invitation to the reader, so it needs to be as accessible and interesting as possible.

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by William Kenower

A quick update on one of Author’s many authors.  Here’s a great story from Diane Hammond who appeared in our October issue. 

When Hannah's Dream was about a month from its release of September 2, 2008, I was in a whole-body, cold sweat, certain I'd be the laughing stock of the literary world. My first editor (Random House) had flatly refused to publish HANNAH, my agent's enthusiasm was so tepid that she delicately suggested I could shelve the whole thing, and only one publisher wanted the book enough to make an offer.  

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by Bill Kenower

This article’s titular advice is not a warning to which I would have paid much heed until very recently. How recently?  Saturday, July 19, 2008, at approximately 5:30 PM, on the third floor of the Seatac Hilton, on the second-to-last day of the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference—to be exact. 

But let me backtrack a bit. In January ’07 I left a job I’d been meaning to leave for about the last fifteen years. Having already tried martyring myself for a couple decades, I decided I would not rush into any sort of work that did not thrill me.

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by Bill Kenower

Once upon a time, long before Author, I was a wine steward—or a sommelier, if you’re feeling snooty. It was during this period that I came to fully understand the difference between what I think of as real hands-on, experiential knowledge, and that other shallower, text book version. It’s all very well and good to get your issue of Wine Spectator every month and read up on what why California chardonnay isn’t as hot as it used to be, but quite another to have to recommend a good zinfandel to six Japanese businessmen on a hectic Saturday night.

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by Bill Kenower

Until recently, I had never liked the idea that you’ve got to do “whatever it takes” to get where you want to go.  I was profoundly suspicious of the “whatever” part of this maxim, especially as it applied to those in the arts. It suggested that life was too short and too lean for anyone to hang onto anything as encumbering as ideals. Reality, this notion seemed to say, required steep compromise, constant sacrifice, and an overall willingness to go where you would have otherwise thought undesirable.

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by Jeff Ayers

It was during the height of my mid-life crisis that I heard the voice. Due to a departmental reorganization, I had just lost my dream job and went from being a supervisor to a clerk, pay cut and all. I was depressed and felt alienated at work, and my family and friends were both confused and alarmed.  

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by Bill Kenower

It’s not often as a writer that you get a chance to watch another writer, let alone a celebrated writer, wrestling with a story, but that is just what you will be treated to if you pick up F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon (or The Love of The Last Tycoon, as it was renamed by Mathew Bruccoli in his updated 1994 edition).

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