A few pieces of good news today, all leading up to some additional news about my writing life that I’ll announce later this week: ♦ Living Arrangements was named a category finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. ♦ I will be heading to one of my favorite places — Portland, Oregon — for a week [...]

Any writer who’s ever entered a writing contest has experienced it: the dreaded contest winner notification email, which is undoubtedly going to celebrate a winner who is anyone but you. But sometimes when you open this email, you might get more than the standard bio of the lucky winner and an invitation to enter again [...]

“Dear Dan Chaon: You must never let anyone tell you what you want to be. If you want to be a writer, be a writer. It’s that simple. When I was your age, I wrote every day of my life, and my stuff wasn’t half as good as yours. Quality doesn’t count, to begin with, [...]

Last night I was on my way out the door to meet my writing buddies when UPS delivered a package from my publisher. Inside, I found this: My gold IPPY medal for Living Arrangements. I had never seen an IPPY medal in person and assumed they were tiny, like the kind you could sew on [...]

Tomorrow evening I’ll be on a plane to Sacramento, where I’ll leave behind all the busyness and mess involved with the house and my hectic work schedule and the fact that I have to learn to do things like stand on a ladder and apply primer to a second-floor porch. Standing on ladders and painting [...]

Today was the first day in weeks that I had a free evening to myself, and it was all thanks to a canceled writing group meeting. As much as I love a good critique session, this cancellation allowed me to 1. actually enjoy some time outside after work and 2. catch most of the live [...]

My last bit of good news for this week is that Living Arrangements won a National Gold award in the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards) in the short fiction category. Living Arrangements tied for gold with Knuckleheads by Jeff Kaas (Dzanc Books), which I’ve had on my reading list for a while now. [...]

I just made what I affectionately refer to as a “stress list” to better outline all the projects, responsibilities and events I somehow have to handle between now and mid-May. There’s a little bit of everything on this list: work responsibilities, writing-related tasks and deadlines, travel, freelance work, multiple Living Arrangements events, bridesmaid duties … [...]

June 10, 2007 Hi Laura, I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you for some time to let you know that I would really like to exchange work over the summer… So began the first email I received from Huda Al-Marashi, a writer I initially met at a 2006 public fiction workshop. At the [...]

I have a confession to make. I’m getting a little burnt out taking pictures of my cats with publications. It might be because I’m always rushed and don’t take the time to wait for the perfect photo opportunity. Everyone knows you can’t dictate a cat’s schedule. Even so, I tend to do something stupid like [...]