Postscript

I seem to have spent the whole day narrowly avoiding a minor meltdown, for no evident reason, though I definitely wasn't feeling well yesterday either - and have made myself feel very bad by skipping the workouts I should have done, which is doubly foolish because doing at least one of them would almost certainly have made me feel better! The weather in New York right now is not conducive to bike-riding, it must be said, though I intend to get out for my long run tomorrow afternoon even if it is snowing...

But now that the short list has been announced for the Young Lions Fiction Award, I am free to say that this was the award I was reading for earlier in the year. I won't say anything about books I read and didn't like (I have studiously avoided mentioning them here!), and the structure is such that one hasn't necessarily read all of the finalists, so I can only say that the two I did read from this list of five, John Brandon's Citrus County and Patricia Engel's Vida, were both highly worthwhile (my personal preference was slightly for the latter, but both are really worthy of recognition). And the book that I was startled didn't make it onto the short list (but it is the nature of group decision-making and consensus that things go this way) was one that I truly loved, Rosecrans Baldwin's You Lost Me There. Highly recommended!

Postscript

(I was going to write in my last post, of Caroline Carver, Why have I not heard of her?, in mild outrage, but figured I must just have been too triathlon-obsessed over last few years to have picked up all thriller/crime recommendations. Now, though, at her website I see she has been rebranded as C. J. Carver. I have seen these books around - will definitely get them - but I am not truly a fan of the author renaming thing, though I understand it is sometimes practical.)

The author's lament

At the Times, Jennifer B. McDonald ponders the wonders of Jennifer Egan's website.

Hmmm, I really want to read her new book, in fact between that and the Franzen (though I think that is not yet in stores) I discern a minor Books & Books spending spree in my near future - but a story like this also makes me really grumpy.

It is the tyranny of modern authorship!

How much does it cost to have a website like that made? I really have no idea - $5000? Couldn't really be less than that, I'd guess - might be more - this is aside from the time the author has to put in making content (in this case, Egan was obviously interested and excited about it - I had an idea of that vague general sort for my last novel that I would have liked to execute, involving putting bits and pieces of alternate history excised from earlier drafts and maps and so forth on a website, but was stymied by logistics and cost issues - and really my talents just don't lie in that direction). That money comes out of whatever the author receives as an advance, it is not paid by the publishers - it is the rare author whose finances truly can permit that sort of investment of cash up front, though I quite see that it is worthwhile, when truly building a career as author, to make that sort of investment (just as I quite see that it is worthwhile to hire an independent publicist, though it is not what I have done thus far).

Sometimes it seems hardly worth the trouble of writing the books in the first place when there is all this dreadful need for follow-through (at a time when one would really prefer to be writing a new book instead!)...