The making of a writer Ruskin Bond's first full-fledged autobiographical book covers his -formative years,' till the age of twenty-one. The world of Anglo-India, with all its conflicting pulls, comes alive as he tells his story. His earliest memoirs are bitter-sweet, and relate to Jamnager where he lives till he is six. The happy hours spent in exploring the Ram Vilas Palace grounds and playing with his younger sister Ellen and the palace children are overshadowed by the acrimonious relation between his parents. Their estrangement while he is still a child leaves him with a life-long sense of insecurity. His unhappiness is exacerbated by the untimely death of his father " his emotional anchor when the author is just ten. Forced to stay with his mother and his stepfather, both of whom are absorbed in their own worlds, he tries to fend off his loneliness through books and the company of a few friends. Left for the most part to himself, the gentle dreamer realizes very early as -a pimply adolescent' his calling as a writer. His first book, The Room on the Roof, materializes in England, the land of his forefathers, where he is sent to make a career for himself. Despite the unexpected success of his novel, which wins a major British literary prize, the author's yearning for India is too powerful to let him remain abroad for long. He returns and begins a writing career which has spanned four decades, and earned him a place in the pantheon of great Indian writers.

The inner workings of a writer’s life, the interplay between experience and writing, are brilliantly recounted by a master of the art. Gay Talese now focuses on his own life—the zeal for the truth, the narrative edge, the sometimes startling precision, that won accolades for his journalism and best-sellerdom and acclaim for his revelatory books about The New York Times (The Kingdom and the Power), the Mafia (Honor Thy Father), the sex industry (Thy Neighbor’s Wife), and, focusing on his own family, the American immigrant experience (Unto the Sons). How has Talese found his subjects? What has stimulated, blocked, or inspired his writing? Here are his amateur beginnings on his college newspaper; his professional climb at The New York Times; his desire to write on a larger canvas, which led him to magazine writing at Esquire and then to books. We see his involvement with issues of race from his student days in the Deep South to a recent interracial wedding in Selma, Alabama, where he once covered the fierce struggle for civil rights. Here are his reflections on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last fifty years, and a striking look at the lives—and their meaning—of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He takes us behind the scenes of his legendary profile of Frank Sinatra, his writings about Joe DiMaggio and heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, and his interview with the head of a Mafia family.But he is at his most poignant in talking about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to his most memorable work. In remarkable fashion, he traces the history of a single restaurant location in New York, creating an ethnic mosaic of one restaurateur after the other whose dreams were dashed while a successor’s were born. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation.In these and other recollections and stories, Talese gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story. He makes clear that every one of us represents a good one, if a writer has the curiosity to know it, the diligence to pursue it, and the desire to get it right.Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned—a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man’s life, and of writing itself.

Ruskin Bond's first full-fledged autobiographical book covers his 'formative years, ' till the age of twenty-one. The world of Anglo-India, with all its conflicting pulls, comes alive as he tells his story. His earliest memoirs are bitter-sweet, and relate to Jamnager where he lives till he is six. The happy hours spent in exploring the Ram Vilas Palace grounds and playing with his younger sister Ellen and the palace children are overshadowed by the acrimonious relation between his parents. Their estrangement while he is still a child leaves him with a life-long sense of insecurity. His unhappiness is exacerbated by the untimely death of his father -- his emotional anchor - when the author is just ten. Forced to stay with his mother and his stepfather, both of whom are absorbed in their own worlds, he tries to fend off his loneliness through books and the company of a few friends. Left for the most part to himself, the gentle dreamer realizes very early - as 'a pimply adolescent' - his calling as a writer. His first book, The Room on the Roof, materializes in England, the land of his forefathers, where he is sent to make a career for himself. literary prize, the author's yearning for India is too powerful to let him remain abroad for long. He returns and begins a writing career which has spanned four decades, and earned him a place in the pantheon of great Indian writers. 'Ruskin Bond has a magnificently simple and immensely moving style, compassion and a love and reverence for life.' --Indian Express 'With a subtle sense of irony punctuated by his own inimicably pungent humour, Bond masters the art of conveying the drama and pathos of ordinary lives.' --The Telegrap

Learn how to take your work to the next level with this informative guide on the craft, business, and lifestyle of writing With warmth and humor, Paulette Perhach welcomes you into the writer’s life as someone who has once been on the outside looking in. Like a freshman orientation for writers, this book includes an in-depth exploration of all the elements of being a writer—from your writing practice to your reading practice, from your writing craft to the all-important and often-overlooked business of writing. In Welcome to the Writer’s Life, you will learn how to tap into the powers of crowdsourcing and social media to grow your writing career. Perhach also unpacks the latest research on success, gamification, and lifestyle design, demonstrating how you can use these findings to further improve your writing projects. Complete with exercises, tools, checklists, infographics, and behind-the-scenes tips from working writers of all types, this book offers everything you need to jump-start a successful writing life.

Whether a side-street skirmish or an all-out war, fight scenes bring action to the pages of every kind of fiction. But a poorly done or unbelievable fight scene can ruin a great book in an instant. In Fight Write you'll learn practical tips, terminology, and the science behind crafting realistic fight scenes for your fiction. Broken up into "Rounds," trained fighter and writer Carla Hoch guides you through the many factors you'll need to consider when developing battles and brawls. • In Round 1, you will consider how the Who, When, Where, and Why questions affect what type of fight scene you want to craft. • Round 2 delves into the human factors of biology (think fight or flight and adrenaline) and psychology (aggression and response to injuring or killing another person). • Round 3 explores different fighting styles that are appropriate for different situations: How would a character fight from a prone position versus being attacked in the street? What is the vocabulary used to describe these styles? • Round 4 considers weaponry and will guide you to select the best weapon for your characters, including nontraditional weapons of opportunity, while also thinking about the nitty-gritty details of using them. • In Round 5, you'll learn how to accurately describe realistic injuries sustained from the fights and certain weapons, and what kind of injuries will kill a character or render them unable to fight further. By taking into account where your character is in the world, when in history the fight is happening, what the character's motivation for fighting is, and much more, you'll be able write fight scenes unique to your plot and characters, all while satisfying your reader's discerning eye.

A writer, editor, publisher, and teacher, Sloane presents his ideas on writing and on teaching the craft of writing in chapters derived chiefly from lectures presented at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK • 2022 INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR FICTION FORECAST: Storm clouds are on the horizon in L.A. Weather, a fun, fast-paced novel of a Mexican American family from the author of the #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller Esperanza’s Box of Saints. “There’s a 100% chance you’ll be paging through this book to uncover the secrets and deception that could potentially burn everything down!”—Reese Witherspoon “This is by far one of the most endearing L.A. novels in recent memory.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A lively and ambitious family novel."—New York Times Book Review Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants a little rain. L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and he’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters—Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers—are left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way. With quick wit and humor, María Amparo Escandón follows the Alvarado family as they wrestle with impending evacuations, secrets, deception, and betrayal, and their toughest decision yet: whether to stick together or burn it all down.