It’s been a minute (more than a month) since I went to Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities for a week-long writing residency. If you’ve been around, you might recognize that place or even that sentence, because it was my fourth residency there (and my fifth residency (and one fellowship) total). What could I…
Here’s the thing: in the spirit of no spoilers, I fear the marketing and reviews of The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James are so cautious that they don’t adequately warn a reader what they are getting into. This is not a romance. This is not a light-hearted coming-of-age story. The blips out…
The genius of Jane Austen aside, I have to admit that this story held very few surprises for me. Thanks to movies, cultural allusions, and adaptations, I read this book feeling very much like I had read it already. Several times. And yet… There is a reason Austen’s six novels (she died too early!) are…
Full disclosure: I read this book as part of a pre-release group. I had already pre-ordered a copy for the January 24 release date when I was rushed a copy in early January to participate in an online discussion with the author. There is more to disclose. I went to college with author Sara Billups.…
The idea behind “fast-drafting” is to prepare yourself ahead of time so that when you get to the point when you are ready to write your first draft, you can just buckle down and fly through it. You don’t work backwards, revise, edit, or get distracted. You don’t even worry all that much about quality.…
(There are some other books titled After. This should not come as a surprise. I’m not talking about those books.) After by Bruce Greyson, M.D. is nonfiction. It is a sort of recounting of Greyson’s decades studying NDEs (near-death experiences), from his first encounter and complete dubiousness to many serious studies, research, and affiliations to…
I know I read a lot. I still get intimidated by big books. Funnily enough, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo is not even 500 pages (similar to the second book, Crooked Kingdom), but the book itself—perhaps because of paper type?—feels bigger than that. And, honestly, I wasn’t that into if for the first quarter…
I’ve run into K. M. Weiland several times on the internet and, I think, in Writer’s Digest. She has an award-winning website for writing help and I believe I have subscribed to her emails in the past. I think that some of this happened years ago when I was self-/indie-publishing, so I still associate her…
I really just do my own thing, don’t I? Let’s be direct: I begin every single book I read desiring to enjoy it (and eventually review it favorably). I would like every book to blow my socks off. Alas, reality. For a little while it seemed I rated every book I read highly. But lately?…
Note: I don’t know why I was holding this review, exactly, but here it is. Probably I was too busy writing the great American novel (or an awesome, best-selling YA fantasy trilogy). I knew that for this year’s National Novel Writing Month (November), I wanted to write a novel I had in my head which…
I know you probably didn’t come to The Starving Artist for movie reviews and, well, my expertise is in literature and not movies. But I am a very opinionated movie-viewer, and I often tie movies to books as an experience. However, none of the movies below are related to books or to the writing life.…
I have been handed books by my (now-eighteen-year-old) daughter a couple times (right after she read them), and she has handed me a couple that I loved (like We Were Liars). When I walked in her room several days ago she was balking at the final pages of The Silent Patient. When I said, “What?”,…
I was so busy Nanowrimo-ing and having holidays, that I never read the Thanksgiving book that I had slotted for this year. Yes, there are some Thanksgiving books, though so far (the past two years) I have found them to be a stretch. This year, however, the book is clearly a Thanksgiving book while also…
THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER I have tried to read and review a children’s picture book each Christmas along with a novel and a nonfiction book. This year I chose The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter. I have never been a big Beatrix Potter fan (I can’t say I’m not a Potter fan because, well,…
For National Novel Writing Month (November) this year, I was working on a YA fantasy adventure trilogy. It was a new project to me, and I admit to not being as versed in YA or speculative fiction as in some other genres. In the past, I have made playlists to get in the writing mood…
I thought I had won Nanowrimo before. Officially, according to their website, I haven’t even won Camp Nanowrimo (during which you set your own word goal in the summer), but I had come ridiculously close (less than 2000 words) to winning Nano the year I started The Journey of Clement Fancywater (in 2014). Well then,…
So, this is one of those best of lists that is strangely particular. However, it is possible that you are also looking for a list like this one. Perhaps you, too, are suddenly curious about steampunk. A sort of mashup of fantasy and science fiction (though really science fiction), it’s not the world’s largest subgenre,…
I read this book because it is on “the” list of best Christmas books. Note: there are not that many books on this list. I have read one or two each holiday season since I started this list, and, quite frankly, it has not been full of winners. Yet. There is still hope. Which means,…
If you have not read this novel (and/or seen the movie), perhaps you are a little out of the loop or a little old? It is a modern manifesto of the teen life, since the late 90s but still extremely loved and adopted by each decade of teens since. The Perks of Being a Wallflower…
I have not finished this book yet. It is a daily reading, but I wanted to get the review on The Starving Artist now (December 5th) so that if you are interested in reading it, you won’t miss Advent this year, entirely. I will update the review after I read it all, but I don’t…
the starving artist 