Playwright, novelist, public radio essayist, and popular culture scholar Gary Earl Ross is a professor emeritus at the University of Buffalo. His work includes the award-winning plays Matter of Intent and The Guns of Christmas and the novel Blackbird Rising. His 1925 courtroom drama The Mark of Cain will be onstage this season at Subversive Theatre’s Manny Fried Playhouse in […]
This is the second in our member-written series: My Favorite Golden Age Mystery. Like many good stories, Dame Agatha Christie’s novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd developed from an idea tossed off playfully by two of her friends. The novel was published in 1926, early in her career, and was merely the third time Hercule Poirot, her Belgian private investigator,
Way back in 1930 the biggest show on the air — the radio air that is — was a show that started with the chilling refrain, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? The shadow knows . . . ” Secrets are the dark side of our portraits. First, the Dutch Masters created this nuance in oil, and
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
Nancy A. Hughes earned a Bachelor of Science in English with emphasis in journalism and advertising at Penn State, and a certification in corporate community relations at Boston College. Living in rural Pennsylvania, she started her own public relations business, followed by corporate work in media, public, and community relations. All of which she later abandoned for murder and mayhem.
This begins a new series on our blog: My Favorite Golden Age Mystery, written by our members. Her father gave her a gun. Nancy Drew, girl detective, was about to embark on the adventure of The Hidden Staircase (1930), and her father was worried. “[Y]ou’ve often said you wanted me to grow up self-reliant and brave,” she countered. And she had
This is the third in Valerie Peterson’s series on author marketing. You may want to check out her previous articles, “7 Common Mistakes of an Author Website” and “How to Create a ‘Selling’ Author Bio.” “Book discovery” is a much-used buzz-phrase of the publishing industry. In the increasingly competitive and very digital book marketplace with shrinking readerships and revenues, authors,
This is the second in Valerie Peterson’s series on author marketing. You may want to check out her previous article, “7 Common Mistakes of an Author Website.” Your bio is a marketing tool, pure and simple. Properly executed, it can help you attract an agent, editors, journalists, and readers to your work. But if your current bio has you revisiting
Your author website is the cornerstone of your media platform, and it’s the one piece of real estate that you can (mostly) control. Your author website is the thing that: 1. Validates you as a professional writer with a knowledge of the marketplace (even before you publish) 2. Substantiates your ability to draw in an audience – which is what
Lorenzo Carcaterra is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Sleepers, A Safe Place, Apaches, Gangster, Street Boys, Paradise City, Chasers, and Midnight Angels. He is a former writer/producer for Law & Order and has written for National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Magazine, Details, and Maxim. His most recent novel is The Wolf. He lives in New York
