1. I have the flu. Feel sorry for me.
2. A wonderful site Snowflakes in a Blizzard is featuring Close this week. It has a little interview with moi (pre-fever) as well as the first chapter of aforementioned novel. The goal of the site is to introduce readers to writers in a personal-slash-accessible way. Snowflakes recognizes the flip sides of the democratization of publishing:
a. The gatekeepers have been overrun
and
b. The gatekeepers have been overrun
In other words, the beautiful profusion of books via untraditional routes (including indie publishers like Harvard Square Editions which put out Close) makes a potential reader’s job of choosing a novel overwhelming. (Kind of like when I was a kid and a group of us talked the local firemen into opening a hydrant for us to cool off in and I tried to take a sip. )
3. In other literary news, Keith and I are listening to the third book in the Cormoran Strike series by Richard Galbraith (aka JK Rowling). The reader is great and the writing is phenomenal. Some authors are as prolific as Rowling–but rarely are they as consistently good. (In fact, some have made me wonder if their editors were on vacation.)
4. Back to a guiltless nap.
ps Both Relative Strangers and Mommy, Would You Like A Sandwich, the other family books featured this week look really interesting.