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Late Last Night Books

because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours

Late Last
Night Books
because so much reading, writing, and living happens after-hours
Since 2013
Gary Garth McCann, founder and managing editor
an ad-free magazine about fiction by authors Terra Ziporyn * Sally Whitney * Eileen Haavik McIntire * Gary Garth McCann * Peter G. Pollak * Garry Craig Powell * Jenny Yacovissi * Lily Iona MacKenzie * Todd S. Garth * Daniel Oliver
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Can Fiction Writers Stem the Tide of Barbarism?

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GARRY CRAIG POWELL

Author of  Stoning the Devil

26 AUGUST 2021 Can Fiction Writers Stem the Tide of Barbarism?

The barbarians are no longer at the gates, but inside them – and I’m not talking about invaders from other cultures, but homegrown barbarians who are either ignorant of the glories of Western culture, or actually despise it and want to destroy it. Anyone who supports cancel culture, for a start, which may mean the majority of the people you know, if you’re an educated person in the liberal professions – is a barbarian, someone with a medieval mindset who not only believes in strict orthodoxy, but wants to enforce it through ostracization. And the publishing industry is peopled almost entirely by these latter-day Goths, Vandals, and Huns.

This is all obvious to anyone who’s paying attention. The problem is that most writers have not been paying attention.

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CARELESS LOVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE ZETTLER

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TERRA ZIPORYN

Author of The Bliss of Solitude, Time’s Fool, Do Not Go Gentle, and the new novel Permanent Makeup as well as many nonfiction works including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases.

4 AUGUST 2021 CARELESS LOVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH STEVE ZETTLER
Steve Zettler
Steve Zettler, author of the new novel Careless Love

Steve Zettler, the author of the recently published novel Careless Love, is a professional writer, actor, and photogapher. His earlier works include the international thrillers The Second Man, Double Identity, and Ronin, as well as the Nero Blanc Mystery Series, which he co-authored. Steve has also had a long career as an actor on the stage of both New York and regional theaters, as well as appearances on countless television shows and feature films.

I had the privilege of interviewing Steve Recently about Careless Love¸ which was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “powerful tale of the many ways love can go wrong.” Here’s what he had to say.

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How Weird is That?

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TODD S. GARTH

The Self of the City: Macedonio Fernández, The Argentine Avant-Garde and Modernity in Buenos Aires (2005);  Pariah in the Desert: The Monstrous and the Heroic in Horácio Quiroga (2015).

15 JULY 2021 How Weird is That?

Literary scholars recently seem to think they’ve invented a new genre: weird literature. It’s partly an outgrowth of the increased popularity of science fiction, dystopic fiction and zombie stories–that sort of thing. Scholars also point to the restitution of the writing of HP Lovecroft (USA, 1890-1937), which seems to define this genre. I don’t have a problem with any of this (having been asked to contribute to a volume on the subject), but it’s worth pointing out that weirdness in narrative is nothing new, dating back at least to Cervantes’s Don Quixote, credited with kickstarting the modern novel in 1605. Don Quixote’s problem (the character’s “real” name was Alonso Quijano) was his inability to disentangle reality from fiction and his insistence on attacking the world as if it were an adventure tale from the chivalric tradition of “knight errantry.”

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WRITERS AS READERS: READING THE WRITER’S LIBRARY

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TERRA ZIPORYN

Author of The Bliss of Solitude, Time’s Fool, Do Not Go Gentle, and the new novel Permanent Makeup as well as many nonfiction works including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases.

4 JULY 2021 WRITERS AS READERS: READING THE WRITER’S LIBRARY
The Writer's Library offers an intimate and fascinating glance of writers as readers.
The Writer’s Library offers an intimate and fascinating glance of writers as readers.

What is your favorite book? As a writer, this is the most common–and most dreaded–interview question I get. I know writers are supposed to be readers, and I am one. But my mind always goes blank.

In The Writer’s Library, literary mavens Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager ask this question of a slew of prominent authors. And these people know how to answer. This fascinating book is filled with 23 interviews with authors including T.C. Boyle, Michael Chabon, Jennifer Egan, Louise Erdrich, Madeline Miller, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Donna Tartt, and Ayelet Waldman on books that “made them think, brought them joy, and changed their lives.”

Books that Change (Writer’s) Lives

This is a book you’ll want to keep around just for the lists at the back of every chapter naming the most influential authors and books each author cites.

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Roz Morris Talks to me about her new novel, Ever Rest

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GARRY CRAIG POWELL

Author of  Stoning the Devil

26 JUNE 2021 Roz Morris Talks to me about her new novel, Ever Rest

Roz Morris

I’ve just had the pleasure of interviewing Roz Morris, who is English and the author of three novels, a travel memoir and a series for writers. She once had a secret career as a ghostwriter, where she sold 4 million books writing as other people, but is now obeying the commands of her own soul, which are to write literary fiction with a  strong sense of story. She is also an editor and writing coach, and has taught masterclasses in Europe and for The Guardian newspaper in London.

We mainly discuss Ever Rest, (Spark Furnace 2021), her just-published novel. The premise:

     Twenty years ago, Hugo and Ash were on top of the world. As the acclaimed rock band Ashbirds they were poised for superstardom.

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Are Gardens for Real?

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TODD S. GARTH

The Self of the City: Macedonio Fernández, The Argentine Avant-Garde and Modernity in Buenos Aires (2005);  Pariah in the Desert: The Monstrous and the Heroic in Horácio Quiroga (2015).

15 JUNE 2021 Are Gardens for Real?

Ask any gardener. We’ll tell you that gardens are real enough–made of tangible living material and soil. But they are also products of the imagination, like any art form. And they are cultural products. Just compare the typical American garden–diverse, open, slightly wild–to the gardens characteristic of (in order of increasing formality) England, France, Italy, or Japan, respectively. Each culture imbues its gardens with its own peculiar approach to managing reality.

Because, after all, that is what a garden is–managed reality. A constant balance between the natural and the synthetic, between what we infer the natural world to be and what we want it to become. Between the ungraspable chaos of the natural universe and the aspirational coherence of our human minds.

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LOOKING FOR AUTHORS (AGAIN)

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TERRA ZIPORYN

Author of The Bliss of Solitude, Time’s Fool, Do Not Go Gentle, and the new novel Permanent Makeup as well as many nonfiction works including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases.

4 JUNE 2021 LOOKING FOR AUTHORS (AGAIN)

If have written a book lately (or not so lately), we’re still looking for authors to be interviewed on Late Last Night Books!

Writers Wanted

A publicity opportunity

Once again, I am looking for authors who want help publicizing their books or writing project in future blog posts. In my experience, getting your name and work “out there” is the most painful part of being a writer. I’m hoping this blog can help make that process a little less painful for others–especially writers (and that’s most of us) who don’t have well-funded publicity machines working on our behalf.

In the past this offer has brought forth many talented writers, including Todd London, Harriet Arden Byrd, Bill Woods, Nancy Burke, Lila Iona McKenzie, Anna Marsh, and Michael J.

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Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat

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GARRY CRAIG POWELL

Author of  Stoning the Devil

26 MAY 2021 Tolstoy’s Hadji Murat

Leo Tolstoy – the greatest novelist of all – and yet lots of readers, even serious ones, have never read him. Why? Partly it’s because his two most famous works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are on the long side. That’s true, but even so, if you read just an hour a day, and typically read a short novel in a week, it might take a month to read Anna Karenina, and six weeks or two months to read War and Peace. Not that long. And you’ll probably read them faster, because they’re so good you’ll find yourself reading more at weekends and on evenings when you have time. But let’s say you’re really busy, and intimidated by these monuments of Russian literature.

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My Excuse . . .

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

22 MAY 2021 My Excuse . . .

for not posting a book reivew this month is that I haven’t fallen in love with any of the books I’ve been reading lately. Of course, I don’t always post reviews of books I’m positive about, but the book needs to have sufficient substance to do a review.

One of my problems is I don’t get review copies of books and therefore have to rely on recommendations of others. That limits my ability to read books that are pre-press or have just come out. I’m not complaining . . . just explaining.

So, until next month, keep reading and if there’s a book you’d like me to read and review, email me.

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Probable versus Plausible—Realism’s Duplicity

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TODD S. GARTH

The Self of the City: Macedonio Fernández, The Argentine Avant-Garde and Modernity in Buenos Aires (2005);  Pariah in the Desert: The Monstrous and the Heroic in Horácio Quiroga (2015).

9 MAY 2021 Probable versus Plausible—Realism’s Duplicity

I recall years ago reading about the success formula for television sitcoms: the plots can, and often should, be completely implausible, but they must be probable. In other words, the situation and actions can be as weird as you like—the weirder, the funnier—but the sequence of events has to make sense within that weird context. Lucy wandering lost in the New York City subway with her head stuck in a mammoth loving cup was perfectly acceptable, and hilarious, so long as Ricky didn’t suddenly materialize inexplicably out of nowhere to rescue her.

This formula makes me think of my favorite movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. To me, it represents the culmination of Hitchcock’s genius: a realism so rarified that it presents completely unbelievable situations in ways that make them seem perfectly natural.

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CHILDREN’S SERIES: KICKING OFF A LIFETIME OF READING

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TERRA ZIPORYN

Author of The Bliss of Solitude, Time’s Fool, Do Not Go Gentle, and the new novel Permanent Makeup as well as many nonfiction works including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases.

4 MAY 2021 CHILDREN’S SERIES: KICKING OFF A LIFETIME OF READING

Last month I reflected on on how Beverly Clearly‘s death brought back cherished memories of childhood reading. Most especially, it reminded me of the many children’s series that kicked off a lifetime of reading for me: Cleary, Carolyn Haywood, Madeline L’Engel, Sydney Taylor, and Noel Streatfeild among them.

I asked if others had similar memories, especially about series I may have forgotten.

Nancy Drew and Judy Blume Books

I was surprised to get so few responses. Perhaps I had done a better job than I thought remember. Perhaps I was a broader reader than I remembered. But there were a few obvious series I had embarrassingly overlooked:

  • Nancy Drew
  • The Bobbsey Twins
  • Nancy Drew
  • The Bobbsey Twins
  • Little House on the Prairie
  • Judy Blume books
  • The Littles

How could I have forgotten?

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Is This the End?

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GARRY CRAIG POWELL

Author of  Stoning the Devil

26 APRIL 2021 Is This the End?

For months, I’ve been contemplating giving up—not just this column, but writing. Altogether. I hope this won’t sound like a long whine, whinge, or worse—the dreaded ‘mansplaining.’ But for a long time, there has been no interest in my work from the industry, even though I’m fairly sure I write better than I did fifteen years ago, when there was a lot of interest. Some of that, I suspect, is because of the current ‘woke’ moment—what a ‘vile phrase’ that is, to quote the Bard. But I’ve moaned about that before so I won’t now.

            It could also be because my writing simply isn’t engaging a new, different audience: one that is not only ‘woker’ (presumably, if we can trust the media), but one is that is doubtless younger, and suffers from a shorter attention span.

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Vietnam: The Story that needs to be told over and over gets its due

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

23 APRIL 2021 Vietnam: The Story that needs to be told over and over gets its due

Jerry A. Rose & Lucy Rose Fischer, The Journalist (Spark Press, 2020)

She probably doesn’t remember, but Lucy Rose Fischer attended my birthday party at my house in Gloversville, New York when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I remember visiting their house probably for a reciprocal activity. I also knew about her older brother Jerry’s being a reporter covering Vietnam and his dying there in 1965. For that reason and because of my interest in Vietnam, I wanted to read Lucy’s book that honors Jerry and shares his story.

I would recommend The Journalist even without a personal connection as a way to keep alive the sad story of America’s involvement in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries post-World War II.

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BEVERLY CLEARY AND A LIFETIME OF READING

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TERRA ZIPORYN

Author of The Bliss of Solitude, Time’s Fool, Do Not Go Gentle, and the new novel Permanent Makeup as well as many nonfiction works including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases.

4 APRIL 2021 BEVERLY CLEARY AND A LIFETIME OF READING

The death of Beverly Clearly last month immediately brought me back to the Evanston Public Library cerca 1966. I saw my 8-year-old self scouring the shelves for every book I could find about Ramona, Ribsy, or Henry Huggins. I limited myself to 5 books per check-out. But I loved that I could come back for more.

My heart beat fast every time I returned to the library for another fix. It beat even faster when I carried my cache home and dove into the stories. My goal was to read Cleary’s entire oeuvre.

A Serie-ous Habit

I was only busy clearing out the Cleary collection because I had read my way through every one of Carolyn Haywood‘s series.

That habit had started the day I discovered Betsy’s Little Star on the shelves of the Washington School library.

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A Very Different Diverse Voice: The Leopard by Giuseppe Lampedusa

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GARRY CRAIG POWELL

Author of  Stoning the Devil

26 MARCH 2021 A Very Different Diverse Voice: The Leopard by Giuseppe Lampedusa

We’re all being urged to read ‘more diverse voices’ these days, although you may have noticed that almost all of the writers you’re being told to read write in English, live in the United States or England and have been to top-tier universities. Curiously, they’re also nearly of the same currently fashionable ethnicity, and the majority of them are of the same sex, or gender if you prefer. Odder still, the stories resemble each other: nearly all are victim narratives, ‘heartbreaking’ stories of loss, oppression, repression, cruelty, violence and slavery. And there’s a bogeyman (I choose the gender deliberately here) common to all these novels too. You know who that is.

            Let me state categorically, for anyone who doesn’t know my views, that I am not defending the hegemony of the white male, and welcome diverse voices, provided they are talented, and provided they are—well, diverse.

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Silva does it again; a novel of such complexity that we cannot wait for the 2021 sequel

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PETER POLLAK

Author of Missing (2019);  Inauguration Day (2017);  The Expendable Man (2011); Making the Grade (2012); Last Stop on Desolation Ridge (2012); In the Game (2014); & House Divided (2015)

25 MARCH 2021 Silva does it again; a novel of such complexity that we cannot wait for the 2021 sequel

Daniel Silva, The Order (2020)

If there were an award for the best opening chapter of a fiction, including characterization, dialogue, plot and theme, the first chapter of The Order would be in the running. Daniel Silva, after all, is no amateur in beginning a novel that feels that it has been recorded by cameras, microphones and probes into each characters mind. The initial scene in The Order suggests something tragic has happened at the Vatican. The chapter’s main character, Archbishop Luigi Donati, fears the worst. It turns out his mentor, Pope Paul VII, is dead and the circumstances are suspicious.

Thus begins a narrative featuring the Church of Rome and the Church’s most trusted Jew––Gabriel Allon. The complexity, including a fictional account of the origins of the Church, is portrayed realistically, with verve and in a tasteful manner, considering Allon’s role, must represent a heresy to millions.

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Book Review: The Hare

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JENNIFER YACOVISSI

Author of Up the Hill to Home

21 MARCH 2021 Book Review: The Hare
The emotionally engaging story of a naive young woman trapped in a dangerous relationship.

On Poetry, Performance and Amanda Gorman

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TODD S. GARTH

The Self of the City: Macedonio Fernández, The Argentine Avant-Garde and Modernity in Buenos Aires (2005);  Pariah in the Desert: The Monstrous and the Heroic in Horácio Quiroga (2015).

16 MARCH 2021 On Poetry, Performance and Amanda Gorman

Recently I attended a lecture about Irish “occasional poetry.” This doesn’t mean poetry written now and again; it means poetry written and performed for special occasions: holidays, commemorations, funerals and the like. The most obvious of these that comes to mind is “The Hill We Climb,” the poem commissioned for, written and performed by Amanda Gorman at President Biden’s inauguration.

I won’t get into a critique of the poem, except to say that I liked it on the whole, and that, like most people, I admire Ms. Gorman’s talents. Nor will I comment much on an infamous precursor, “Praise Song for the Day” by Elizabeth Alexander, performed at President Obama’s first inaugural in 2009. (Suffice to say that at the time I had a good rant about it with my favorite poet, Alexandra Burack, who also happens to be my cousin.)

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THE DIALECT DILEMMA: LISTENING TO THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE

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TERRA ZIPORYN

Author of The Bliss of Solitude, Time’s Fool, Do Not Go Gentle, and the new novel Permanent Makeup as well as many nonfiction works including The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health, Alternative Medicine for Dummies, and Nameless Diseases.

4 MARCH 2021 THE DIALECT DILEMMA: LISTENING TO THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE

I’ve gone on and on about accents and dialect in audiobooks. They often drive me nuts as a listener. But I’ve never been as nuts as I became listening to Abi Daré’s The Girl with the Louding Voice.

Here the problem wasn’t just the dialect and accent, which I found hard to understand. It was the voice.

Distracting Dialect

This gripping and heart-wrenching story is told through the narrative voice of Adunni,  a 14-year-old girl from a small rural village in Nigeria. She speaks in what I believe is a version of pidgin English, which struck me as similar to the speech of many non-native English speakers. Many listeners praised this “Nigerian accent” in Amazon reviews.

I’m all for dialect, too.

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Zooming with a World Famous Editor and a Debut Author with a Seven-Figure Advance

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GARRY CRAIG POWELL

Author of  Stoning the Devil

26 FEBRUARY 2021 Zooming with a World Famous Editor and a Debut Author with a Seven-Figure Advance

Let me say first that this was a large Zoom group, and the editor and author are both alumni of Selwyn, one of the colleges of the University of Cambridge, as I am. I did manage to ask one question. Since it was a private group I shall not name the figures, though you may be able to guess who they are, particularly the editor.

The editor founded one of the largest independent publishers in the world in the eighties, and has published Booker Prize winners and Nobel Prize winners. He also discovered JK Rowling–to whom he offered the princely advance of £1,500 for her first novel. (Her agent persuaded him to raise the offer to £2,500!) Many people in the meeting asked questions about how to find a publisher, whether an agent was necessary, and so on.

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