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 Independence Day, and that has me thinking about the state of our nation. Almost 250 years into our nationhood, the United States of America is mired in a morass of massive proportions. It would be nice to say that the morass is of a strictly political nature, but it would be inaccurate. Our morass is political—let there be no doubt—but it is also physical, ethical, academic, economic, social and environmental. (Add just about any other adjective here.) As we approach our sestercentenial, our roads, bridges and cities are in an appalling state of disrepair; a significant number of our elected officials (on both sides of the aisle) are either under investigation for ethical breaches or have already been expelled; our primary and secondary schools are failing at an unprecedented rate and our colleges and universities—although still strong—are prohibitively expensive. Worse still, the disparity between rich and poor grows daily, and our leaders (wor...
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