The 83-year-old author was injured in a fall and cancelled an appearance at an Ohio library, but is recuperating at home. He tells the AP he’s working on a new novel about the U.S.-Mexican war in the 1840s. “I have every intention of completing it,” he said. “I am just sorry that I couldn’t come to Ohio during such a historic election. It was very hard to keep me away.”AP
Authors
Young Kundera an Informant?
The Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes says in a report that when novelist Milan Kundera was 21, he told police a guest in his student dorm was a spy. The NYT says: “The police quickly arrested the man, Miroslav Dvoracek, who had defected to Germany in 1948 and was said to have been recruited by United States-backed anti-Communists as a spy against the Czech government. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison.” Kundera said via a statement from French publisher Gallimard, “I object in the strongest manner to these accusations, which are pure lies.” Dvoracek suffered […]
Shorts: Follow the Money to Abu Dhabi, Sherry Jones's Next Book; Judge Rejects MISHA Publisher
Abu Dhabi’s long-planned “media zone” has enlisted participation from HarperCollins and Random House, along with the BBC, Financial Times and Thomson Reuters Foundation. The NYT notes, “the campus is intended to be an incubator that will mix Western media companies with billions in Middle Eastern oil money.” Harper “is establishing a presence in Abu Dhabi to capitalize on what the company says is growth in the sale of English-language books in the Middle East.” Spokesperson Eric Crum says they want to “explore the potential of the area and forge relationships.” The press release says that Random House “will be creating […]
New York DFW Memorial
Friends and fellow writers will speak in remembrance and appreciation of the life of David Foster Wallace in a memorial service held by Little, Brown and open to the public, scheduled for Thursday, October 23rd, at 4pm at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at NYU.
Some Author Profiles: Lippman, Funke, Vowell, and Spillane's Last Book
Laura Lippman is living her secret dream. It started in earnest when “an editor she describes as ‘a cold-blooded professional assassin.’ He told her she needed to work on her writing.” She says, “the secret, secret, almost never-stated endgame was … ‘I’m going to quit my day job and be a novelist.'” The first time she told her husband, “I told him I thought I could write full time. And I also told him that I thought I would be a New York Times best seller. I was really drunk, sitting at my kitchen table.” Last year, 10 years after […]
Authors' Earnings
Forbes has updated their annual guesses on the earnings of the most successful authors. This year’s list, covering June 1, 2007 to June 1, 2008, estimates the top 10 authors “pulled in a combined $563 million.” 1. J.K. Rowling, $300 million2. James Patterson, $50 million 3. Stephen King, $45 million4. Tom Clancy, $35 million5. Danielle Steel, $30 million6. John Grisham, $25 million6. Dean Koontz, $25 million8. Ken Follett, $20 million9. Janet Evanovich, $17 million10. Nicholas Sparks, $16 millionForbes