Washington Post Best Books 2009

Angels of Destruction is on the Washington Post's list of Best Books of 2009! Scroll down to Fantasy & Science Fiction, though of course, the novel is neither, but who's complaining?

Just in time for the holidays, and Amazon is offering a threefor special. You can get Angels, Stolen Child, and Audrey Niffenegger's new novel Her Fearful Symmetry for around $35.

More Internetavision

Fast Forward TV has an interview up on Angels of Destruction.

Pretty cool stuff, and you could easily get lost in the archives of interviews.

Book Studio

Book Studio interview is now online at www.keithdonohue.com. It's television on the Internet. It's Internetavision.

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

On my website, www.keithdonohue.com, I've got a new series called "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel" which has some tips for aspiring novelists, drawn from the F. Scott Fitzgerald conference and a writers' workshop.

The Stolen Child: The Film

Marc Platt, the producer of such films as “Nine” and “Rachel Getting Married,” has purchased the film option for The Stolen Child. I’m over the moon and am looking forward to the adaption.

Richard's Poor Almanack

From time to time something truly funny turns up in the Washington Post. Usually it is a Richard Thompson satirical cartoon. Like this Literary Calendar.


Richard Thompson is also the artist behind the fabulous Cul de Sac strip and blog. He's got a new book out, a collection of the best comic strip going, called Children at Play.

Angels have landed

Angels of Destruction has landed in bookstores today, with the mysterious girl in the woods and the lovely green cover. Stock up today for the holidays.

Children's Book Review

A Sterling 'Book' of a Golden Age is my review of A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, nominated for this year's Booker Prize. The winner will be announced the evening of October 6.

It was a great treat to review this novel, and in another decade, the whole thing will probably end up on Masterpiece Theatre as a six-week saga. But read the book first. It's always best in the imagination.

Paper Angels

You have been waiting. The paperback edition Angels of Destruction arrives October 13, just in time for you to pass out copies to all the Trick or Treaters.

The British Are Coming

Washington Independent Writers Conference

The American Independent Writers 30th annual conference is June 13 at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and I will be giving the keynote address.

The theme of this year's conference is "The Business of Writing in a Changing World," and if you want to write and publish, or if you already tweet, blog, and tell stories in print and electronic media, this is a wonderful opportunity to meet and network with agents, publishers, and other writers.

Included on the program are:

• Michael Shilling, author of Rock Bottom, a novel to give the plenary speech
  
• Authors from around the region and across the country
  
• Top freelance journalists
• Leading literary agents
• 16 How-To panels with more than 80 presenters

Hope to see you there and that you'll stop by after to pick up a signed copy of my novels. More info at www.aiwriters.org.

Fiction Nation

They say you never forget your first time. Or your 100th.

My first radio interview was with Kim Alexander and "Fiction Nation," and it turns out Angels is the subject of her 100th show. Where does the time go?

All you Satellite radio listeners, tune in to Book Radio, Sirius 117 and XM 163 for Kim Alexander and Fiction Nation, with yours truly.

And if you don't have one, get yourself a satellite radio. And don't forget to pick up a good book for Mom for this Mother's Day.

Nether, netherland

The internets are abuzz that President Obama is reading, of all things, a literary novel--Joseph O'Neill's Netherland.

Things are going to get better.

Wheaton Hills Book Club

The Rivards hosted the dinner, and the neighborhood came out in full force for the Wheaton Hills Book Club discussion of Angels of Destruction last night, the birthday of William Shakespeare, Shirley Temple, and my dad. These are the folks who see you out mowing the lawn, walking the dog, or cracking crabs on a hot summer day, and so it is passing strange to switch identities and be writer and readers for a few hours. But these conversations are often the most interesting part of the whole publishing process, the chance to hear others' reactions and questions, and to realize the great leap from imagination to the page. What begins as a stray thought turns into a very public display, one that is slightly uncomfortable yet gracious and warm and downright neighborly.

Robert Frost famously said that fences make good neighbors, but perhaps books can sometimes hurdle fences?

Thanks to one and all.

Book Jackets

photo Bodelian Library, University of Oxford
Since they're running out of the hardcover edition of Stolen Child, I've put up the paperback over there. In so doing, I got curious about the whole history of dust jackets. Seems the first one - dating from 1829. More info from the blogs of the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Phantastische

A magazine from Germany -- Phantastische -- arrived yesterday with an interview and a review of The Stolen Child. The German paperback comes out in May. One of the fun parts of the whole publishing experience is seeing the different interpretations by cover designers.

Madrid in New Mexico

A couple of years ago I revisited the little town of Madrid, New Mexico with my sister, and we walked down to the old ballfield. The grandstand was in danger of collapsing in on itself, cacti grew in the outfield, and the bones of some mice littered the floor of one of the stone dugouts. I had known that the field once was home to the Madrid Miners, a farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1920s and '30s. Standing out on the empty field, you could almost see the ghosts of the ballplayers running across the diamond.

I stumbled across Midori Snyder's blog The Labyrinth the other day and was pleasantly surprised to learn about the archives of Pinky Werner, whose grandfather ran the Madrid Coal Mine. Photos of old Madrid, the Miners, and the ballfield in its heyday!

Part of Angels is set in the little town, and one of the characters has a Madrid Miners jersey framed in her living room. Now I know what they look like.

Strange and Dubious Angels

A lot of people (well, one person) have been asking about the origins of the strange and ambiguous angels in Angels of Destruction, and several works were the inspirations for the book.


There are the angels in the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the transcendental moment in Emerson where, when crossing a bare common in the snow, he becomes one with infinite space, and the thing with feathers in Emily Dickinson's poem.


Late in his life, the painter Paul Klee also did a series of very unusual angels which strike me as charged images. And the song "Strange Angels" from the album of the same name by Laurie Anderson with the angels who "clean out the refrigerator..." Note the resemblance between one of Klee's angels and Ms. Anderson.

Is it about a bicycle?

April 1 is the day of fools, but also the feast day of the late St. Myles na gCopaleen, AKA Flann O'Brien, AKA Brian O'Nolan, who passed through the mortal veil on this day in 1966, leaving the world a sadder place. Myles is the patron saint of acerbic alcoholics, the nom de guerre of the author of "Cruiskeen Lawn," a daily column that ran in the Irish Times for a quarter-century, and the person responsible for Flann O'Brien. Quite possibly the funniest writer going, he can be reached through his three classic novels: At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, and The Poor Mouth (available in The Everyman's Library edition) or through the The Best of Myles, a collection of his newspaper columns.

I spent a lot of time with Myles in the 1990s, working on my dissertation, and this blog is named after a character in The Third Policeman, and it isn't often that one can refer to a bicycle as a character, having a discernible personality and so forth, but there you go. Myles is a funny fella and a damned fine writer.

Lift a glass in his honor down at the snug, for his like will not be seen again.

A Virtual Reading

Rick Kleffel, out in Northern  California, runs one of the most interesting websites and does  just a wonderfully thoughtful job at interviewing, that the whole experience becomes like a virtual reading.  In his Agony Column, Rick reviews Angels.  The first section is a reading from the novel--the same chapter I read in bookstores--and the rest is an intelligent chat about the book, the writing process, and the meaning of it all.