Author Tracker
DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR FAVORITE AUTHOR IS?
We asked each of our authors to update us this week by answering a few thought-provoking questions. Be sure to click on each author to read their interview and learn more about them! Enjoy!
WALTER BENNETT, Bozeman, MT.
Author of Leaving Tuscaloosa
Check back soon for more updates!
MOLLY BEST TINSLEY, Ashland, Oregon
Author of Broken Angels, Entering the Blue Stone, and coauthor of Satan’s Chamber
1. Where are you right now?
At home in Ashland.
2. What is the most interesting thing you read this week?
An article about the complicated situation in Ukraine. Both the government and the rebels are equally suspect. The government is controlled by neofascists, but the United States is so reflexively anti-Russian, anti-Putin that we throw the government our support and condemn the rebels.
3. What is your best tidbit of advice for a beginning writer?
Allow yourself to enjoy the writing process as a high form of play. Forget about “discipline.”
4. What was your favorite book growing up?
I loved a series of eight baseball stories modeled on what were then the Brooklyn Dodgers. They were by John Tunis, who wrote a sports column for the New Yorker, and their success helped create the juvenile fiction book market in the 1940s! (I just googled all this. Pretty interesting.)
LARRY BUCHANAN and KAREN GANS, Ashland, Oregon
Coauthors of The Gift of El Tio
Check back soon for more updates!
ADDIE GREENE, Ashland, Oregon
Author of How the Winds Laughed
1. Where are you right now?
Ashland, Oregon
2. What is the most interesting thing you read this week?
Rereading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road after having first read it in college.
3. What is your best tidbit of advice for a beginning writer?
Read the best books in your genre, write, and join a critique group.
4. What was your favorite book growing up?
I loved The Wizard of Oz series.
5. When is your next book event?
September 20 at the Ashland Book and Author Festival.
KARETTA HUBBARD, Harpswell, Maine
Coauthor of Satan’s Chamber
Check back soon for more updates!
KATHLEEN JABS, Virginia Beach, VA
Author of Black Wings
Check back soon for more updates!
AIDAN PATRICK MEATH and JASON KILLIAN MEATH, Washington, D.C.
Coauthors of The Pepperoni Palm Tree
1. Where are you right now?
Jason: We are back at our home in Washington, D.C. after a very fun summer traveling to the beach.
Aidan: I’m back at school starting the sixth grade.
2. What is the most interesting thing you read this week?
Aidan: I read the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio and really enjoyed it. I would highly recommend it.
3. What is your best tidbit of advice for a beginning writer?
We always tell people to follow their dreams, do what comes naturally to you. That means write what comes naturally, from your experiences in life or what seems to pop into your imagination. Once you have it on paper, be open to suggestions and criticisms. While you may not need to take every piece of advice, sometimes it can improve your work if you adopt it and assimilate it into your vision.
4. What was your favorite book growing up?
Jason: I loved 1984 by George Orwell (probably because I read it in 1984!) and most Stephen King books.
Aidan: The Harry Potter series by J.K Rowling and A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.
5. Did you receive a compliment on your book this week? If so, please describe.
We received a stack of original artwork by third-graders in Norfolk, Virginia who read our book. They drew their own adaptations of Kirk Parrish’s incredible illustrations from The Pepperoni Palm Tree—what a compliment!!
SARAH PLEYDELL, Washington D.C.
Author of Cologne
1. Where are you right now?
In my Adams Morgan home in Washington, D.C.
2. What is the most interesting thing you read this week?
The Circle by Dave Eggers
3. What is your best tidbit of advice for a beginning writer?
Keep writing.
4. What was your favorite book growing up?
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
MARK SAUNDERS, 20°54’51″N 100°44’37″W
Author of Nobody Knows the Spanish I Speak
Check back soon for more updates!
JAMES SULZER, Nantucket Island, Massachusetts
Author of The Voice at the Door
1. Where are you right now?
I am in my house on Nantucket, Massachusetts with my wife, Barbara Elder. Our three grown children Will, Rob, and Kate are visiting. Will was married earlier this summer and his wife, Amita, is of course here with him.
2. What is the most interesting thing you read this week?
Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey, which is a journal about living in the Utah desert for six months. The author is cranky and opinionated, but his description writing is gorgeous, and he captures the soul of the southwest, I think.
3. What is your best tidbit of advice for a beginning writer?
Write a lot; think about your favorite books and ask what it is about them that you like so much; and share your writing with friends.
4. What was your favorite book growing up?
Hmm … probably a tossup between The Lord of the Rings (the trilogy) by J.R.R. Tolkien and Middlemarch by George Eliot. When I was very young I loved Homer Price by Robert McCloskey.
NATALIE WEXLER, Washington, D.C.
Author of The Mother Daughter Show
Check back soon for more updates!