Category: Novel
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The F Words: Anglo-Saxon Origins
When I see high school students raising protest signs and chanting in support of their teachers, as in the strike (earlier this year) by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, I’m heartened. And when I see that the student chants are poetic in form (We ain’t shy./We ain’t timid./We are angry./We are livid.) I’m more than […]
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My Writing Life: 9
When the new century arrived, I was busy working on children’s books, both fiction and workbooks. The fiction consisted of two early readers, Waltur Buys a Pig in a Poke (Houghton, 2005) and Waltur Paints Himself into a Corner (Houghton, 2006). Early readers, as I’ve written about before in “Early Readers: A Short Phase,” are […]
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The F Words: Following the F Words
It stands to reason that, before I sat down to write a YA novel titled The F Words — in which a teen who tags his high school wall with the F word is required to write two poems a week, each about a word that starts with the letter F — I would make […]
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The F Words: October Rules
In September of 2022 The F Words moved from a frontlist book to a backlist book. A publisher’s backlist consists of all the books it still carries that were published a year ago, or longer. Some books a publisher carries go out of print. Others stay in print forever, bringing in revenues to the publisher […]
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The F Words: The Power Of F
On November 5, 2022, I will be one of several presenters at the Plainfield (Illinois) Public Library’s day-long event for writers, running from 10:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. You can read about the individual events, and register for them, by clicking here. As you can see, my presentation is titled The Power of F Words. […]
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My Writing Life: 6
In 1977 Contemporary Books published my first novel, She’s on First. I’ve published a lot of books since, but you need not fear that I’m going to write a blog about each of them. That would take me to something like “My Writing Life: 147,” and I suspect I would lose many (if not all!) […]
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The F Words: Interview with Tamara Rolan, Book Reviewer
Two months ago a wonderful five-star review of The F Words appeared on GoodReads. After I shared this review on Facebook and Twitter, I learned that several people (who had somehow resisted buying The F Words up until this time) were so swayed by the review that they bought my book. Well, I thought: this […]
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My Writing Life: 2
After that initial short story I wrote in high school, my next foray into fiction came about fifteen years later, when I decided to start writing novels. I had plenty of plots in mind and just needed to decide which one to start with. At the time I was working as a typesetter for the […]
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The F Words: Minor Characters
I often enjoy minor characters in literature, and as a writer I thoroughly enjoy creating minor characters. In literature minor characters play a variety of roles. One of their major roles, of course, is to help move the plot forward. If they weren’t there, then the major characters would have no interaction with anybody but […]
Barbara Gregorich 