Earlier today, my writer and publisher friend Michael Seidlinger shared a Slate article on Facebook: “You Can Write a Best-Seller and Still Go Broke.” The piece is part opinion on the state of publishing today and part review of a new anthology, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living.* The Slate piece opens with quotesContinue reading “How much is your book worth?”
Author Archives: Samuel Snoek-Brown
Booklist 2016 and my reading goals for 2017
It’s been another slow year in reading. I could make excuses — I spent the early part of the year mourning my grandfather’s death, and then we moved in the middle of the year, and I’ve been writing full-time since fall, and the election knocked the wind out of me — but they’re just excuses.Continue reading “Booklist 2016 and my reading goals for 2017”
“We have no time for sorrows”
Like most straight guys my age—and, I’d be willing to wager, a great many people of all genders and sexualities—I first fell in love with Carrie Fisher in her role as Leia Organa. And it wasn’t because she was a princess. It was because she was a fierce, determined fighter, an independent woman with theContinue reading ““We have no time for sorrows””
Ruining a box to extract a treasure
Okay, that title is dumb. I didn’t ruin the box at all. (My wife even complimented the pretty shipping label!) But I did cut the box open, and there’s a story there. When my first book, Box Cutters — also a chapbook of short fiction — came out and I received my first copies in theContinue reading “Ruining a box to extract a treasure”
Bodhisattvas amid the ruin, and the treasure you can give
At my old Buddhist community in Portland, tonight would have been Bodhisattva Night, a social gathering (mostly for the kids, but definitely for the young at heart as well) in which the sangha comes together and talks about what it means, this time of year in the West especially, to give of oneself, wholly andContinue reading “Bodhisattvas amid the ruin, and the treasure you can give”
Here Is My Ruin / Here Is My Treasure
The title of my new chapbook, from Red Bird Chapbooks, is Where There Is Ruin. It’s a title I borrowed from a line by Sufi poet Mevlana*: “Where there is ruin, there is hope of treasure.” When I told my mother the title, she thought it sounded awfully bleak, and indeed the stories in this collectionContinue reading “Here Is My Ruin / Here Is My Treasure”
Cover reveal for Where There Is Ruin!
It’s almost here! My new chapbook, Where There Is Ruin, will be out from Red Bird Chapbooks later this week! And today I’m revealing the cover! The cover image is actually a detail from the painting Peace — Burial at Sea, by J. M. W. Turner (1842) (yes, that Mr. Turner). It’s a perfect example of the MevlanaContinue reading “Cover reveal for Where There Is Ruin!”
Holiday shopping, literature, and a thousand lights in the coming night
Usually, around this time of year, I tell you all the books I’ve been reading, or all the books I’ve been buying, or all the books in the past year or so by friends of mine, and I suggest you make your holiday shopping list from it. It’s a way to support literature and my literaryContinue reading “Holiday shopping, literature, and a thousand lights in the coming night”
On NaNoWriMo and writing the end
The first novel I ever finished was my undergraduate thesis. We English majors were supposed to write a 30-page scholarly essay, like a shorter version of a masters thesis, but I talked my mentors into letting me write a 300-page comedy novel instead, mostly because I figured the only way I’d ever finish a book wouldContinue reading “On NaNoWriMo and writing the end”
Some observations as I enter my final week of NaNoWriMo 2016
When I began the first version of this novel a few years ago, I thought it was about one man, a character I named Sergeant Tom Cleaver. My mother-in-law had sent me a book of obscure Texas histories and real-life wild characters, and I read about one crazed man so violent and so charismatic thatContinue reading “Some observations as I enter my final week of NaNoWriMo 2016”
Samuel Snoek-Brown 