Category: review
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Writing Book Review: Mike Ventrella wants to prevent common mistakes
Lord knows authors don’t get much say over design, so let’s turn to some of my favorite chapters: “The Secret of Success,” “You are not in Competition with other Writers,” “Joining the 1%,” “What kind of ‘Person’ are you?,” and “Basic Reasons Why Your Story May Get Rejected.” Even in…
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The Velvet Spine
Yesterday, my art director and I took a mini-road trip to The Velvet Spine in West Reading, Pa. The bookstore specializes in “books for a darker state of mind” in the genres of horror, thriller, dark romance, true crime, and fantasy. Gayle and I were wonderfully surprised to see a busy and vibrant downtown…
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Writing Craft Book Review
I first heard of Joe on TikTok. This is not the criteria one normally uses to find writing craft books. But I was curious. Joe has compiled these essays from his newsletter of the same name, which he used to attract and retain freelance clients. The book is beautifully laid…
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Exercises in Short Memoir
July 23 is Nancy Scott’s birthday, and we have a tradition of general silliness around birthdays. This year, we read several chapters from Lita Kurth’s small but mighty memoir book, Writing Memoir in Flashes: Creative Ways to Tell Your True Stories, One Memory at a Time. We recommend Writing Memoir in Flashes to writers who struggle…
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Gayle’s Top 5 Type Designers (before 1950)
Gayle Hendricks is the art director at Parisian Phoenix Publishing. So here we go, chronologically… My Five Favorite Typeface Designers, Before 1950. These are the old white European men that made me fall in love with typography. Trigger warning: Listing Eric Gill in 2026 is problematic. A 1989 biography published by Fiona MacCarthy…
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Thoughts on Farenheit 451
“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to love on flowers, instead of growing on good…
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On Epic Novels of the Past
I am a sentimental soul but not prone to fits of nostalgia. Something random triggered my memory of thick novels I read in my teen years, most of which I never owned but borrowed. Now, my two recent reading “rabbit holes,” to borrow an internet term, have been disability philsophy/theory/experience…
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As we end Disability Pride Month…
Reflections on Failing Bodies I think I’ve finished my recent reading binge of disability nonfiction, which coincidentally overlapped with Disability Pride Month and the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed on July 26. I read Johanna Hedva, Kim Nielson, DeAnna Quietwater Noreiga, and Julia Watts Belser. I summarized my thoughts on a recent…
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Maternal Instinct, Part 2
SPOILER ALERT Yesterday I talked about a brief reaction to the Netflix documentary Maternal Instinct and I didn’t want to spoil the surprise… Here are all the details. Those poor people. Taylor Parker had a history as a chronic liar and manipulator. She had two children at the time she…