CJ Arlotta has a blog that exclusively caters to writer and lovers of short story collections. He conducted this nice, online interview, and he did a lot of work, read all previous interviews, and created links to so much of my work here. I am impressed.
Click here to read The Interview
My trip to Watertown, NY was magical. I love the North Country, as it’s called, especially in July with the roadside effusion of Queen Ann’s lace and chicory. Not only was I surrounded by friends, I found a writer’s haven there. The bookstore, The Reading Room, has a wall of dozens of local authors and their books which would put Greenwich Village to shame. I also got to explore a friend’s writing shed, which has sparked fantasies of having my own one installed somewhere on our property.
Chris Brock of the Watertown Daily Times wrote up a nice review of the book, and of my visit. There are a few tiny corrections I’d make if I could, but the only one that really matters is that I’m 53, not 54! Ha. Nope, none of them really matter. It’s a lovely article, and I even approve of the photograph.
I had my first TV interview while up in Watertown, NY this past weekend. It’s 12 minutes long, and well, I learned a lot about how I might approach it differently next time. Still, I love the questions that Craig Thornton asked me. He made it feel like a real discussion about writing, which made it a lot of fun for me. Here’s the link to the interview. http://www.wwnytv.com/story/35933365/craigs-to-do-list-interview-n-west-moss-author
The Saturday Evening Post has just published my short story, “The Absence of Sound.”
Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m really writing, it’s such a dream of mine. This publication is a reminder that I AM a writer, no kidding. The editor-in-chief at the Saturday Evening Post has become a friend, and what more would I want than a friend who is such a careful and generous reader? I also love that the photo they chose to use to illustrate the story is of one of the gorgeous lions who sit just outside of the NY Public Library. This whole thing is a dream come true.
I am thrilled to read this review from The Star Tribune of “The Subway Stops at Bryant Park.” They call it a “captivating collection” which is “cinematic.” This pleases me especially because, of course, I can picture these characters perfectly in my own mind, but I can only hope they come across as vividly to my readers.
It’s nice, too, to get a review a full month and a half after the official launch of the book, keeping it alive, so to speak, for the summer at least.
River Teeth is a fine journal dedicated to narrative nonfiction. If you are a writer looking for a home for your nonfiction work, they are respected, and for good reason. Below is a link to a book review that I wrote for them. I got the chance to work with the editor, Thomas Larson, and boy did he do a lot of work to help me shepherd this assignment to completion. Here, then, is my review of Writing Hard Stories.
http://www.riverteethjournal.com/blog/2017/07/01/must-hard-stories-be-so-hard review of Writing Hard Stories
David Ebenbach (who wrote a great short story collection called The Guy We Didn’t Invite to the Orgy) and I got a chance to interview one another about our writing processes for Fiction Writers Review about our 2 short story collections.
David is a good friend who is also an amazing writer, and happens to have a sense of humor. Here we talk about how we feel about our own characters, how we find them and breathe life into them, and what kinds of characters we avoid (spoiler alert – I’m not fond of show-offs).
Liz Martin of American Micro Reviews interviewed me recently about my book. I enjoyed our back-and -forth online and I am very pleased with the results. Liz is obviously a writer herself and asks insightful questions – the kind of questions that I enjoyed pondering. I learned a few things from being interviewed by her, and that’s saying something. Follow this link to read the entire interview: AMRI interview
Well, May has finally arrived. Although the book isn’t set to officially publish until May 16th, books have already started being delivered, and friends have been texting and emailing me, and posting photos of themselves with my book, which is all so sweet.
There are a lot of events coming up in May, including a reading in Garrison, NY on May 11th and the official launch in NYC on May 16th. Check out the Events tab on this site to find out about all of the upcoming events.
I’ve been teaching creative writing at Gotham in NYC and today they kindly published a 500-word excerpt from my book on their website and in their monthly newsletter. You can read the excerpt here. excerpt from “The Absence of Sound”
If you want to do something helpful, a review on Amazon for the book is always great, as is a review on Goodreads, Barnes and Noble or any other site that is carrying the book. On Goodreads you can also recommend the book to a friend if you’d like.
I hope to see a lot of you this summer, and I also hope to get a lot of writing done on my next project. So fasten your seatbelts. Here’s to one crazy month of May.
Here is the link to a lovely new review from Cliff Garstang at “Best New Fiction”. Garstang really picked up on the theme of loss throughout the stories, even more than I had noticed (or intended) myself.
Click here to read Garstang’s review Review from Best New Fiction
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