Expansion of the Memoir Universe

Where else could you find Audre Lorde rubbing elbows with John McCain?

Everywhere I turn memoirs are falling out of the sky. Not that this is exactly a new phenomenon. In 1998, in his book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, William Zinsser observed that the last decade of the twentieth century--a decade graced by the publication of Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Pete Hamill's A Drinking Life, Mary Kerr's The Liar's Club and Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life--was "the age of the memoir."

If Zinsser could claim then that "Never have personal narratives gushed so profusely from American soil as in the closing decade of the twentieth century," how much greater is that geyser of narrative now, facilitated as it is by the word processor, desktop publishing, CreateSpace, etc., etc., etc.

Publication or Bust: On Contracts, Publicists, and Other Loose Ends

Setting out on the last stretch toward the land of milk and honey (i.e., the book in hand!)

What happened to October? They must have skipped it this year. At any rate, despite my galloping rate of jotting here once a moon, I got in nary a post the whole month.

So, what's the jig scribbler?

Naturally I assign blame to the nearest culprit, the BOOK. Though I shouldn't malign it so; it has been the source of my continuing enlightenment in the field of publishing.