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Guest Blogger Kelly Ann Jacobson

9/29/15 – Preview of October Guest Blogger Kelly Ann Jacobson

In today’s world of publishing, genre can be crucial. Readers use it to select new books and publishers use it to decide how to market and pitch new fiction. But what happens when a work of fiction crosses over? Of when it’s not easy to decide whether a novel is best described as, say, a romance or women’s fiction? That’s the topic that guest blogger Kelly Ann Jacobson will explore on Oct 1. Kelly is a fiction writer, poet, and lyricist who lives in Falls Church, Virginia. She received her MA in Fiction at Johns Hopkins University and is an Adjunct Professor of English. Kelly is the author of the novels Cairo in White and The Troublemakers, as well as several other books of poetry and prose.

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Tell, Don’t Show

9/26/15 – Tell, Don’t Show

Show, don’t tell is such an axiom of creative writing programs, and indeed of advice given to writers in general, that it is rarely questioned. The most recent author to visit the university program where I teach, for example, gave this advice to our students—and of course it’s sound, especially for the beginning writer, who is much more likely to err on the wrong side, of summary and exposition, including so few scenes that the writing remains dull. No less a master of fiction than Joseph Conrad said that the novelist’s task was to make the reader see, and who can doubt that that entails writing dramatic scenes most of the time? All the same, I have been pondering this question a good deal lately, and would like to share my reflections on why “show, don’t tell” has become such an unchallenged axiom—indeed an almost sacred Commandment—particularly in the United States, and what interesting alternatives to this strategy there might be.

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9-23-15 YOUR TEST OF CHARACTER

9-23-15 YOUR TEST OF CHARACTER(S)

This is only a test—a test of characters. There’s only one question with multiple answers to chose from. I hope you’ll have to think about your answer before you read mine. The question: Can you name a novel that has only one character? Choose one answer from among the following:

1. Life of Pi by Yan Martel

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe

4. The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

5. Downtown by Ed McBain

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JOYCE RENWICK, IN PRAISE OF WHAT PERSISTS

9/20/15 REVIEW OF JOYCE RENWICK’S IN PRAISE OF WHAT PERSISTS “I kept finding the goat wandering in the dining room, or standing on the front room fireplace mantel just like she was wild on some mountainside… Pie Face was just an ordinary American mongrel milk goat, mostly black with white wedges under her eyes that gave her the name…[She] weighed about a hundred pounds and would chew or lick anything in sight that might contain minerals. She bit me every time I milked her so I’d gotten to expect it.”—from “The Goat” in the posthumous collection In Praise of What Persists.

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Stereotypes – Not So Believable

9/17/2015 Stereotypes–Not So Believable Anymore

In my writers’ critique groups, someone’s draft characters or plot will sometimes be criticized as “unbelievable” or “unrealistic.” Sometimes that may be the writer’s ineptness, but since just about anything can happen on this planet, the criticism is more an expression of a lean toward assumptions and stereotypes.

Fifty years ago, a Harvard-educated African-American would be considered “unbelievable,” ditto a mountain-climbing woman or a marathon-running 100-year-old. Anyone who grew up in the fifties might remember how stereotypes were common and drove the plots in the movies

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A Dialogue on Historical Fiction

9/13/2015 A Dialogue on Historical Fiction

Three authors join me this month to discuss their thoughts on the genre of historical fiction. They are: Louise Colln, author of Woman of the Land: Mary, Mother of the Christ, and The Women of Rogers Street; George Spain, author of Lost Cove, Our People: Stories of the South, and The Last Giant, and Come Sit with Me…and Listen…; and John Neely Davis, author of The Sixth William, and Bear Shadow.

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THE PRIVATE AUTHOR—GOOD OR BAD?

9/10/2015. THE PRIVATE AUTHOR—GOOD OR BAD?

Once upon a time authors were mysterious people, stereotyped as starving artists scratching with their pens or pecking on their typewriters in lonely garrets. William Shakespeare, for example, is a shadowy figure. We know about the times he lived in, but not a lot about him personally. The best insights we have about him lie in the words he wrote—his plays and poetry. Then came newspapers, radio, and television, and authors had the opportunity to reveal more of themselves to their readers. Today with the internet and social media, authors can share everything—in real time, even—if they want to. But as a reader, how much do you really want to know about the authors of the novels you read?

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Review: Rachel Joyce’s The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

9/7/15 – Rachel Joyce, Harold Fry and Queenie Hennessey

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of sequels, and even a few prequels, because I’m working on a sequel of my own. I’ve also been reading a lot of books with older protagonists because my main character is in his seventies. So it was no surprise that I picked up Rachel Joyce’s The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, a follow-on to her enchanting best seller of 2012, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The principal characters are the same and the new novel is in many ways another chapter of the story, but it is neither a prequel nor a sequel. It’s an “equel.”

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INTERVIEW WITH TESSA BRIDAL, AUTHOR OF RIVER OF PAINTED BIRDS

9/4/15 – INTERVIEW WITH TESSA BRIDAL, AUTHOR OF RIVER OF PAINTED BIRDS

Called a “fresh voice in Latin American literature” by the New York Times for her debut novel TheTree of Red Stars, Tessa Bridal is about to enter new territory with a second novel, River of Painted Birds. Slated for release in mid-October in both English and Spanish language versions, this new novel follows the adventures of an 18th century Irish woman who marries an abusive husband at fifteen and boards a ship westward-bound ship after accidentally killing him six years later. Rather than landing in Boston as expected, she ends up in the country known today as Uruguay where she joins forces with a wealthy half-Indian smuggler and a renegade priest determined to save the native people from slavery.

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GUEST BLOGGERS HARRISON DEMCHECK, PALLAS SNIDER ZIPORYN, ERIC D. GOODMAN, CLIFFORD GARSTANG, TOM WOOD, NANCY LYNN JARVIS, JOSEPH D. HASKE, JOHN VANDERSLICE, LEE SUMMERALL, PETER GORDON

WE CELEBRATE LATE LAST NIGHT BOOKS’ 2-YEAR ANNIVERSARY WITH A REVIEW OF THE PAST YEAR’S GUEST BLOGGERS.

10/1/14 GUEST BLOGGER HARRISON DEMCHICK

FOR LOVE AND MAGIC.

There was a time when I determined, with absolute certainty, that I would never seek publication for my novel, The Listeners.

It wasn’t always that way. I was still in eighth grade when it clicked with me that writing is something one can do for a living, and from that moment on it was more than anything else what I wanted to do. (Continue reading)

11/1/14 GUEST BLOGGER PALLAS SNIDER ZIPORYN

Author of the recently published serial novel A Cappella Drug Lord – sometimes described as a cross between “Glee” and “Breaking Bad” – as well as the non-fiction book, The International Student’s Guide to American Colleges.

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The Seven Basic Plots

The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker
Review by Garry Craig Powell

Subtitled Why we tell stories, this book, which took the author 34 years to write, is not only Booker’s magnum opus, but one the great works of contemporary criticism. Building on Jungian archetypal psychology (and who isn’t a Jungian?) Booker’s thesis is that we read stories because we need to, in order to make sense of our lives, and more specifically because stories provide us with a blueprint for what Jung called individuation. For this reason, he contends, stories from all over the world, whether folktales or highly refined literary forms such as epic poetry or the modernist novel, or for that matter lowbrow entertainments like the James Bond movies, all tend to follow one of seven basic plots.

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8/23/15 WORDS OF POWER

8/23/15 WORDS OF POWER. Words are the struck notes of the writer’s composition. Consider: “It is all excessive, violent, and at the same time full of tenderness.” These words appear on page twenty-four of To Live Within. Excessive. Violent. Tenderness. The words resonate individually and as a powerful chord hinting at the essence of being alive in Lizelle Reymond’s 1969 memoir.

In a book published last year, Robin Black plucks a power cord. “I always wanted to be powerful. In this decade, finally, I look powerful. I feel powerful. And I feel alone.” The repetition of the word establishes strength before the counter melody intrudes in Life Drawing: A Novel.

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Katie Gilmartin, Lambda-award Blackmail, My Love

8/20/15 INTERVIEW WITH KATIE GILMARTIN, AUTHOR OF BLACKMAIL, MY LOVE In my review last month of the 2015 Lambda Award-winning mystery Blackmail, My Love, I said that as I read Gilmartin’s account of gay life under 1950s police and societal brutality, I realized she was also in effect writing about what it’s like to be a member of the wrong party under a totalitarian government, where people are persecuted for being who they are, for thinking what they think, and for wanting to meet and interact with other like-minded people. Today I have a chance to ask author Gilmartin what inspired her writing.

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The Scarpetta House

8/17/2015 – The Scarpetta House

If you read best-selling author Patricia Cornwell’s forensic mysteries, you are familiar with her fictional character, Dr. Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner in Richmond, Virginia, and her tech-savvy niece Lucy and fellow investigator Pete Marino.

Cornwell sold her first Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, while working as a computer analyst at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Virginia. Postmortem would go on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards as well as the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize – the first book ever to claim all these distinctions in a single year. To date, Cornwell’s books have sold some 100 million copies in 36 languages in over 120 countries. She’s authored 26 New York Times bestsellers.

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A Review of the Works of Tana French

8/13/15 A Review of the Works of Tana French

It’s one thing when a writer wins a book award for a novel, especially if it is their first novel. But when the same writer wins awards for her subsequent novels, particularly if the novels are part of a series, you know something special is happening.

In 2008 Tana French’s debut novel, In the Woods, walked away with just about every major award for the “Best First Novel,” the Edgar, the Anthony, the Macavity, and the Barry Award. The novel was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 2012, her third novel, Faithful Place, won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Broken Harbor, her fourth novel, won the Irish Book Award for Irish Crime Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the Mystery/Thriller category.

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8/10/2015—INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP CIOFFARI, AUTHOR OF DARK ROAD, DEAD END

8/10/2015—INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP CIOFFARI, AUTHOR OF DARK ROAD, DEAD END

Philip Cioffari’s novel Dark Road, Dead End, which I reviewed here last month, piqued my interest in illegal animal smuggling so much that I couldn’t wait to ask Cioffari how he came up with the topic and what strategies, in both research and writing, he used to make the novel so compelling. His sense of the atmosphere of southern Florida and the good and evil that battle there had me hooked on the first page. Cioffari’s answers to my questions appear below.

A multi-talented author, Cioffari has written novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His previous fiction works include Jesusville, A History of Things Lost or Broken, and Catholic Boys, all published by Livingston Press/University of West Alabama.

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Love Those Reading Lists

8/7/15 — Love Those Reading Lists!

Some of my favorite reading comes from lists. With enticing names like “Best,” “Great,” or even “Chosen,” they promise new discoveries and hours of entertainment. I know not everyone feels this way—Washington Post book critic Carlos Lozada criticizes summer reading lists as stress inducers—but to me, reading lists actually remove the stress. Someone else has done the hard work of getting the goodies together, and I get to pick and choose what I want and ignore the rest. (I’ve even offered a few lists of my own in this space.)

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TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO WRITE

08/04/15 – TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO WRITE

When I’m not writing, I spend much of my time as a sleep evangelist, leading a nonprofit (Start School Later) dedicated to school hours in sync with sleep needs. In that role, I’m always looking for ways to persuade people to value sleep—and it struck me that I could almost certainly call on the writers of the world for some pithy, poignant, and mellifluous thoughts on the subject.

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FIVE TIPS FOR MARKETING YOUR POETRY

08/01/15 – FIVE TIPS FOR MARKETING YOUR POETRY

“I wrote this for myself. Would you mind taking a look at it?”

One of my students at a poetry workshop asked me that recently. I asked, if she wrote it for herself, why did she care what I thought? She said, “Well, I might publish it someday.”

There are as many reasons to write poetry as there are poets. I’ve heard people say they write to express their inner feelings. Some say they write to “deal with” their depression, or understand their romantic relationships, or to heal after a loved one’s death. What I rarely, if ever, hear, is that their goal is communicate these feelings to readers.

When I started to write poetry in earnest a few years ago, I found many wonderful books filled with great advice about how to write better poetry, but none about what to do with your poetry once it was finished.

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PREVIEW OF OUR AUGUST 1 GUEST BLOGGER, POET PETER M. GORDON

07/29/15 – PREVIEW OF AUGUST 1 GUEST BLOGGER, POET PETER M. GORDON

Prizewinning poet Peter M. Gordon, our August 1 Guest Blogger, offers five tips for marketing your poetry in the August 1 version of Late Last Night Books. His poems have appeared in Slipstream, 34th Parallel, the Provo Canyon Review, 5-2 Crime Poetry, Cultural Weekly, and several other magazines and websites. He’s President of the Orlando Area Poets and teaches in Full Sail University’s Film Production MFA program. His collection, Two Car Garage, was published by CHB Media and is available on Amazon.com and other bookselling sites.

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