It was 2015 by the time I sat down to write the book that would eventually become my first published novel ( The Intern , TouchPoint Press, April 13, 2020) a solid twenty years after meeting the twelve-year-old boy who inspired me to write his story. Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” and she was dead on, because I can’t remember many of the things he said and did, but I can remember, with complete and absolute clarity, the way he made me feel, the punched-in-the-gut feeling that has stayed with me all these years. It was the spring of my internship, April, 1994, and the skies in Syracuse, New York were leaden and grey, doing nothing to improve my mood which had become dour with the long hours, lack of sleep and the never-ending scutwork. I was on Pediatric call for the weekend, meaning that the never-ending scutwork had now been multiplied by four, and I’d just...
It is my great pleasure today to bring you an interview with my literary agent, Liz Kracht of Kimberley Cameron & Associates. I want to keep my introductory remarks brief--because you all have heard much from me before and you are reading this because you want to hear from Liz--but suffice it to say that Liz is an author's literary agent (kind of like a player's manager in baseball): approachable, witty, realistic yet hopeful (tough combo in this gig), loyal (let me stress how important this is), and reliable. Enjoy the interview. Peter Hogenkamp (PH): What is the biggest misperception today about writers and/or publishing? Elizabeth Kracht (EK): I think one of the biggest misperceptions I’ve seen—concerning both writers and publishing, plus media coverage—is around highly publicized “overnight” success stories. I don’t believe there are overnight success stories. I think we like to believe there are, because it gives hope and feeds our fantasy life, ...
It's Father's Day and, as usual, that means I think about my late father, and wish he was still with me. So, this year, I have decided to put my thoughts to words and publish them in my blog, if for no other reason than writing about him is the best way for me to spend some time with him, and I would give anything in the world to do that. My father was a deliberate and methodical person; when he used a particular word in a certain circumstance, it was because he had thought about the context, mulled over the way the word sounded, and considered the possible interpretations of the word by his audience before uttering it. (No, he was not given over to quick responses.) And if he couldn't think of the exact word he wanted, he would ruminate about it until the perfect word became clear in his head. If rumination didn't work, he even stooped to research--his favorite book was Webster's Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (you know, that massive thing you see in...
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