“The War of Art” for-two-bucks sale is here!

I warned you last week and now it’s time. Get your credit card ready to pay a measly little $1.99 to get your electronic copy of Steven Pressfield’s phenominal book, The War of Art. It’s on sale today and tomorrow with a price spike after that so get in while the sale is good. FastPencil … Read more

Elmore Leonard’s new book, Djibouti, has arrived!

Elmore Leonard is pretty much my favorite writer ever (I say that today; tomorrow I might say Neil Gaiman, the next day I might say Walt Whitman but for today let’s stick with Dutch).

Monday was Elmore Leonard’s 85th birthday, his fortieth novel, Djibouti, came out on Tuesday, and the trailer for the second season of the FX series Justified came out Wednesday. Three great reasons to celebrate what a prolific, generous writer has gifted readers like me. Here’s the man, the book, and the video after the jump:

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“War of Art” for two bucks.

Steven Pressfield announced the eBook version of his excellent, inspiring, and challenging book on creativity The War of Art will be on sale next week, October 20 and 21, for only $1.99.  He’s working with a company called FastPencil to get the job done (while Amazon reported they sold more Kindle books than hardcover books … Read more

Michele Norris wrote a new memoir

The only thing I want more than to read Michele Norris’s new book, The Grace of Silence, is a few hours freedom to actually sit and read it. Norris relates stories of her own family’s experience to the overall backdrop of race relations in the United States, both then and now. Specifically, Norris examines how … Read more

My Ten Biggest Missed Blog Opportunities of 2009

I have a little saying around my desk that goes, “Thinking about writing isn’t writing. Writing is writing. So write.” I didn’t take my advice very well this year and ended up thinking about writing a lot more than actually doing it. Here are ten examples of how I could have written more here. These … Read more

My Summer Reading List

I have an ambitious reading list for this summer. Just like my dedication of two hours to write a day (or ten hours per week), I’m challenging myself to read for ninety minutes a day on Monday thru Wednesday plus Friday, or six hour a week. I tend to read 40 pages in an hour, … Read more

Men’s Book Club Summer Reading List

This post is mostly for my readers who are men in the Twin Cities, but if you’re having fun with a book club where you live, dear reader, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section. For the last three months, I’ve been leading a new men’s book club at my local church … Read more

Elmore Leonard’s ‘Road Dogs’ is out this week

Steady readers of this blog know I’m a nut for western-turned-crime writer Elmore Leonard. If you visit my LibraryThing profile, you’ll see that I own more Elmore Leonard books than I do any other author. This isn’t saying much because it’s easy to have a whole shelf full of his writings, considering the man has … Read more

Books I gave, books I got

Merry Christmas, dear reader. Books I received as gifts: Best American Short Stories 2008 guest edited by Salman Rushdie The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien Books I gave as Christmas gifts: Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison American Gods by Neil Gaiman The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks 1957 by Pradt & … Read more