Has your book group read (or is planning to read) The Gods of Heavenly Punishment? Don’t have a book group, but still want to talk about the book? Interested in the book even if you haven’t read it yet, and wondering what others are saying about it? Join me and groupsourcing super site Togather.com August 20 for an intimate yet electronically-expansive (...)
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Last month, I had the honor of being featured on Largehearted Boy, David Gutowski’s inspired music blog. The quest: to come up with a playlist for The Gods of Heavenly Punishment. No easy task–but after much ruminating and iTunes-searching and all-around musical procrastination I managed to compile one. Here is the result: The Gods of Heavenly Punishment is a novel (...)
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When asked about who or what I find inspiring as a writer, I tend to find myself floundering. An obsessive reader who consumes three or four novels at a time, the term “inspiration” evokes not one source for me, but a whole tide of them; fluid and intermingled, perpetually fed by the towering piles on my nightstand and the (...)
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One of the most frequent questions I get as a historical novelist is: “How much of what you write is really history?” It’s a good question. And an important one, I think–especially given how discomfort-making the blending of fact and fiction can be. It’s sort of the literary version of mixing beer and liquor: for some people, even the idea (...)
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“If everyone could be there just once, to see for themselves what white phosphorous does to the face of a child, or what unspeakable pain is caused by the impact of a single bullet or how a jagged piece of shrapnel can rip someone’s leg off – if everyone could be there to see the fear and the grief, just one time, then they’d (...)
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