Author Archives: andy

Would you be willing to pay eighteen dollars for an e-book? How about a new one from J.K. Rowling? To the delight of millions, Rowling pioneered an entirely new subgenre of young adult fiction with her Harry Potter series. Very soon now she’ll be publishing her first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy.  The plot details of the book remain tantalizing vague but it has been loosely categorized as a crime or mystery novel. Will lightning strike twice? Will Rowling’s …

Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of writers, musicians, and artists have discovered a goldmine of new contacts and sales online. From iTunes to ebooks, as barrier after barrier for Internet commerce and social networking has continued to fall, many have found a following. Some have even moved on to fame and fortune, and better yet, the free flow of ideas and artistic creations has never been higher. Now all of this is under threat. But the culprit …

I love it! Friend and fellow writer Charlotte Crystal forwarded  a great article from a recent boston.com that nicely summarizes ongoing research into the personal and societal benefits of reading fiction.  In a nutshell, as the novelist George Elliot so succinctly put it, one of the many purposes of fiction is “to enlarge men’s sympathies.” No matter what your perspective, empathy for others is almost always a good thing. In fact, as the piece points out, fiction often has a greater …

I wrote my first “book” in 8th grade English class. Bound between purple construction paper covers, it came complete with glossy paper photos cut and pasted from popular magazines. (This was before the personal computer when “cut and paste” was still a literal term.) The title of my literary masterpiece? Jerry West: The Eternal Quest. Jerry West, for those who may not be familiar, starred for many years in the NBA (He is the silhouetted player in the NBA logo) …