I always write authors after I read their books. I’ve been doing it for years. I write a formal letter and send it to them in care of their agent. My mother always taught us to write thank you notes, and if an author puts themselves out there, they like to hear that their book connected with someone.
If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.
As an author of narrative history, I read a lot of history books.
I have no problem selling books to media franchises and we do it all the time. The author must understand that he/she is a writer for hire and has no control over copyright or over editorial changes made to the text.
An author needs to be in the market. He or she needs to come out with a new book every year. That keeps you alive in the public mind and gives a push to your older books.
There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.
The world of fiction is a sovereign world that comes to life in the author’s head and follows the rules of art, of literature. And that is the major difference that is reflected in the form of the work, in its language and its plot. An author invents every aspect of a fiction, every detail.
I grew up in L.A., and I worked for ‘The Hollywood Reporter.’ I knew enough about the business to know that the usual role of the author on a movie is to get out of the way and not say anything.
Gone are the days when a publisher could take out an ad, count on a few reviews, and have an author do a couple of signings. Nowadays, readers want to feel a connection with an author.
In Endless Quest books, you start the plot, and the character has to make choices. Then you have to write one choice over here, one choice over there. The author might get one or two choices out.
My job as an author – at least the way I think of it – is to make a story that is coded and puzzling enough to entice conversation and interpretation, but also to do the opposite: to make some things clear so that it is meaningful in some way, not just a random assemblage of ideas.
Being a best-selling author doesn’t make you a millionaire. It’s not like Stephen King.
According to my parents, I was supposed to have been a nice, churchgoing Swiss housewife. Instead I ended up an opinionated psychiatrist, author and lecturer in the American Southwest, who communicates with spirits from a world that I believe is far more loving and glorious than our own.
If the day gets really bad, I can always pull out fan mail. Who else gets mail where kids write to you and say, ‘Dear Mr. Scieszka, we were supposed to write to our favorite author, but Roald Dahl is dead. So I’m writing to you.’
I’ve read enough dreary campus novels to know more than I ever wanted to about the punctured Oxbridge academic psyche, and feel as if I’ve been through a mid-life crisis dozens of times, purely because I’ve foolishly grabbed a paperback by an author I’ve vaguely heard of.
My daughter has seen the transition from struggling screenwriter to successful picture book author, and she’s enjoyed it very much because she’s a wonderful little kid. And she’s always believed in her daddy.
I don’t have to mumble something under my breath when someone asks me what I do anymore. I can just say, definitively, ‘I’m an author.’ And the best part? That’s not a myth. That’s just the truth.
In every author let us distinguish the man from his works.
The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it’s time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.
Every author has to eventually write a food book.
If you have some natural talent and really want to write, you should read the books of someone who’s very successful in your genre. You don’t want to plagiarize, but you want to learn from that author.
When I was young, I loved a series of books by an author called Maud Hart Lovelace and the series, which is still around, I’m happy to say, is – they’re the ‘Betsy-Tacy’ books.
I’m a computer scientist by training. I’m also the author of three books, all of which endorse the use of biotechnology to improve the human condition. In the most recent of these, ‘The Infinite Resource,’ I talk about the power of innovation to save the world.
When I was a UA student, I was given the ultimate runaround when my student group wanted to bring author and activist David Horowitz to speak on campus.
Most people will pay tribute to Anthony Bourdain as a chef, as the author of ‘Kitchen Confidential,’ and as the host of several food and travel shows – most recently, ‘Parts Unknown’ on CNN.
The way a book is read, which is to say, the qualities a reader brings to a book can have as much to do with its worth as anything the author puts into it.
I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.
If you steal from one author it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many it’s research.
The author always knows more than the reader does at the start of a novel, and gradually, they share that knowledge with the reader – that’s storytelling.
As a journalist, I’m not supposed to be the subject, but as an author, I’m fair game – another ingredient in the media soup.
As a girl, I sat awestruck at the feet of Harriet Ne, author of ‘Tales of Molokai’. It was she who used to say, ‘I myself have seen it,’ after telling a particularly hair-raising ghost story – a phrase that I borrowed for one of my titles.
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.
I feel that historical novelists owe it to our readers to try to be as historically accurate as we can with the known facts. Obviously, we have to fill in the blanks. And then in the final analysis, we’re drawing upon our own imaginations. But I think that readers need to be able to trust an author.
I really believe we read differently when we know even the most banal facts of an author’s life.
I am a conventional science fiction author. But that said, once your work is published, it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the readers and they will derive all sorts of interpretations.
When I was a very young author, I knew I needed to build myself a tower outside of Europe. Like when you’re a hunter, and build towers to watch the animals move. I knew I would never understand the world without that perspective. I came to Africa for that rational reason, although I love Mozambique now.
I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.
An author’s life is different, complex, and ongoing, while a character’s remains frozen in one little story.
A fortunate author can write maybe twelve novels in his lifetime.
I was shy. Bookish. The kind of 13-year-old girl who, instead of having a boyfriend, would have a crush on a dead, 19th-century author!
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.
My life as an author has always been about brilliant, odd people.
I want to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actress, a mother, a wife, a children’s author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president.
There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author’s permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.
The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This intimacy – the words on the page being sent back and forth from engaged editor to open author – is unique in my experience.
Generally, if you preface an interview request with, ‘I’m an author writing a book,’ for some reason, that seems to open a lot of doors.
The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.
When ‘The Awakening’ was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author’s home-town library, and she herself was barred from the Fine Arts Club in the same city. What the novel has to offer, among other things, is honesty.
I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author’s view, and I think that’s terribly dangerous.
I love going through fashion magazines, love to read – Paulo Coelho is my favourite author.
When the happy era shall arrive for the emancipation of nations, hastened on as it will be by the example of America, shall they not resort to the Declaration of our Independence as the charter of their rights, and will not its author be hailed as the benefactor of the redeemed?
I just love doing different things, which is what being a working author is like.
My personal interest in IVF led me to author two reports into the availability of treatment on the NHS.
