I’m in a Book About Writing Books

I’m so honored to be one of eleven featured authors in Behind the Book, compiled by fellow Midwesterner Chris Jones.

Built around interviews with eleven authors—Clara Bensen, Cynthia Bond, Delilah S. Dawson, Author Zetta Elliott, Alan Heathcock, Edan Lupacki, Rebecca Makkai, Courtney Maum, Eric Smith, Monona Wali, and myself—Behind the Book offers loads of insight into the many, many paths writers can take toward writing, selling, revising, publishing and promoting their first books. And man, I don’t think I’ve ever read a craft book like this. It manages all at once to be super-informative—lots of info about finding agents, figuring out book structure, geeking out on revision—and surprisingly personal, with every writer laying bare their particular confusions, insecurities, and facepalm mistakes. And it’s just a ton of fun to read, thanks to the hard work of Chris Jones, who took a whole bunch of rambly interviews and wove them together into a well-structured page-turner.

I’m thrilled to share the page with so many great writers, and overall I’m just so impressed by what Chris put together. For anyone out there who’s writing a book, or thinking of writing one, or thinking of thinking of writing one—or if you just want to read me saying some pretty embarrassing things about my shamble of a “writing process”—this is a fantastic resource.