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One of the best things about living in the Bay Area of San Francisco is that I get to meet and mingle with some of the most talented artists in the world: Amy Tan standing six feet away from me, singing “These Boots are Made for Walking” with the band, Los Train Wreck, as I sit drinking cheap wine at El Rio in the Mission; Robin Williams winking at me as he sits with fellow cyclists, when I get my morning coffee at Read the full article »

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San Francisco Writers Conference February 2010

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It’s that time of the year again – when San Francisco, CA., hosts one of the best writers conferences in the industry- The San Francisco Writers Conference. It will be held in the beautiful Mark Hopkins Hotel on February 12- 14 and our editor-in-chief, Patricia V. Davis, will be one of the fabulous line up of exciting guest speakers. Her session is titled, Bestseller! What You Need to Know for a Knock-Out Writing Career.

Lots of important information…

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Like a number of other wonders now in my life, I came late to appreciating the importance of scientific knowledge for the common person. In high school, my lack of such was stupendously appalling. In 1970, when I was a freshman, I had a crush on a boy who came to class one day in April, quite upset over some astronauts being “stuck” up in space. I didn’t know much about that, so I repeated what I’d assumed was an intelligent remark an adult family member had made about the situation, “What possible reason…

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Joyce Maynard has a big mouth. It’s either that, or she has too much integrity to lie about anything, despite the fact that telling the truth often gets her into trouble.

When you hear our podcast interview, you decide which it is.

I first met Joyce Maynard when I signed up for one of her writing critique classes which she conducts here in the Bay Area of California. I’d written my first full-length work ─ a memoir ─ and had signed with a literary agent within six months of actively looking…

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Check back for many new and exciting podcasts, which will include interviews with:
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Joyce Maynard

Joyce Maynard has been a reporter for the New York Times, a magazine journalist, radio commentator, and syndicated columnist, as well as the author of six novels, including To Die For. Her best-selling memoir, At Home in the World, has been translated into nine languages. She appears regularly as a storyteller with The Moth in New York City. Joyce’s new novel, Labor Day, will be in stores July 2009.

David Harris

David Victor Harris is…

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I don’t know why I’m so smitten with the independent filmmakers, Noah and Logan Miller.

Maybe it’s because they finish each other’s sentences and often speak in stereo.  Maybe it’s because when they refer to each other as ‘Bro’, as in, “Bro said …”

Or, maybe it’s because they’re identical twins, like my own twin stepsons, and that, also like my twin stepsons, the only way one can tell them apart is that one has a ‘beauty spot’ on his left cheek. (That would be Logan.)

Or it could be because, just to be kind…

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Jane Friedman is the Publisher & Editorial Director at F+W Media, which is the parent company of Writers Digest. Intelligent, dedicated, hard-working, and charming, she’s right on the pulse of everything that’s happening in the chaotic and transforming cosmos that the publishing industry has become.

And because Jane is all she is, she’s a big part of what’s keeping her division of F&W thriving, while other publishing giants are being felled by Web 2.0 and new publishing technologies in the same way that David…

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I left Kay Andreas after our interview for this month’s podcast feeling the way you might when a delivery of flowers shows up unexpectedly and the card is written out to you ─ surprised, delighted, and rather special.

It’s hard to explain why talking with Kay made me feel all these things, but that’s part of her charm. Another part of Kay’s appeal is her very evident enthusiasm for simply being alive, something that most people never think about. Nothing prevents this delightful human being from doing the things she wants to do…

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The first word that comes to my mind to describe David Corbett is, “depth.” That shows through in his writing and in the man himself.

A reader will get the sense from his descriptions of complex characters in his three crime drama novels, The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime, and Blood of Paradise, that he isn’t just telling stories ─ somehow he knows that the gradations between what makes a human being a law-abiding citizen, a convict, or a villain, can be very thin.

And know that, he does. Because…

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(Sigh) One of the things I think about sometimes is whether or not, at the end of my life, I’ll feel I’d done all I should have to make the world a better place, (or at least, my little corner of it,) and if I’d lived my life as fully as I could have.

Barry Hessenius should have no such thoughts. His interview was one of the most intriguing I’ve ever had the fortune to conduct. The former legal representative for entertainment greats like Creedence Clearwater and members of the Jefferson Starship, Barry…