Category Archives: BLN Classics

All posts prior to 7 June 2011 are the collected and archived posts from the original BOOKLIFE website.

Every Day Is Different: Andrew Vietze on Freelancing

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Andrew Vietze spends half the year as a seasonal park ranger and the whole year as a freelance writer.

A former managing editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Vietze has written for such magazines and online venues as Time Out New York, The New York Times’ LifeWire, Weather.com’s Forecast Earth, AMC Outdoors, Explore, Offshore, Big Sky Journal, and Maine Times.

Earlier this month, Vietze’s fifth book, Becoming Teddy Roosevelt: How a Maine Guide Inspired America’s 26th President, was named a finalist for the 2010 Book of the Year Awards in the Biography category.  It’s an honor well deserved.  Becoming Teddy Roosevelt tells the story of a Maine woodsman and a sickly future president—a story of wilderness, friendship, and mentorship.  Vietze’s writing is engaging, beautifully efficient yet layered.
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A Month of Writing the West

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My mother has lived her adult life surrounded by books. She is a folk artist who married into a family of writers and teachers. Books lined the walls of her married life and, therefore, of my childhood. Just as my wife’s family, all professional musicians, speaks a language filled with references to musicals and operas, rehearsals and performances, my family speaks in an odd code of fictional characters and storylines.
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More Ways than Ever: Tor/Forge’s Justin Golenbock on Promoting Your Book

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Justin Golenbock’s job is to promote books, assist authors in promoting books, and to strategize ways to better promote books.  He is a book advocate, a writer’s advocate, and a publisher’s advocate.  He’s also a guy who loves books so much that he’s made a career out of telling other people about them.

Golenbock is a senior publicist at Tor / Forge / Orb / Starscape / Seven Seas. He’s worked in the book publishing industry for five years.  He’s been at Tor/Forge for just over two years.

Golenbock is one of the publicists I work with often.  I contact him to request review copies, to arrange interviews, and to brainstorm.  Just last week we carved out a list of Tor Fantasy authors who would make an interesting mix for a round-table interview.  He’s not a smarmy salesman who’s in it for the sale and nothing else.  He gets to know the authors he represents, studies media outlets, and is open—eager—to explore new marketing and PR approaches.
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Perfect Characters Are Boring: Larry D. Sweazy on Character

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There are characters, and then there are characters.  Sometimes you read a book and can’t keep the protagonist’s name straight let alone his personality or motivations.  Other times you read a few lines, a paragraph or two, a half a page, and the lead character jumps out of the book, slams into your chest, and walks beside you for a long, long while.

I prefer the latter type of character.  Josiah Wolfe is one of those characters.  He walks beside me.  I don’t care if that sounds over-stated or cheesy.  It’s personal and I mean it sincerely.

I’ve spoken with Larry D. Sweazy, Wolfe’s creator, a number of times here at Booklife.  We’ve talked about setting, freelancing, story, and character.  Whatever the topic, our conversations always seem to come back to character.

For me, our conversations stem from a single moment standing in the local Barnes and Noble, a split second when Josiah Wolfe came alive while I read the prologue to The Rattlesnake Season, Sweazy’s first novel.
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