Money, Me & THE WIDOW OF WALL STREET

Money. It’s our last taboo. People spill seamy details about their sex lives before talking about their finances, salary, or savings accounts. And yet, despite this curtain of silence, money is not only (supposedly) the root of all evil, it’s at the heart of relationship battles, shattered dreams, and midnight wakefulness. Money (sadly) is often … Read more

Love me! Read me! Buy me! Writer’s Fear-Clenching Book Launch Thoughts

  Book launch day shoots towards me like an asteroid. Three weeks. Not ready. Almost-final drafts of essays surround me. Fear, sleeplessness, and worry consume me. I won’t get reviewed. I will get reviewed—but they will all hate me. I have nothing to wear to events. Okay, I do have stuff to wear, but nothing … Read more

KISS Rules: Balancing Vigilance, Work & Life

I write novels. Stories. I’m not a journalist.I work at separating my writing life and political views. But, having grown up with stories of the Holocaust, with family who left (were chased from) Germany and Romania because of politics, I know that there are times when art and life collide. We are all children of … Read more

Likeability Laced With Betty Crocker Syndrome (In Real Life & Fiction)

  A few years ago, when speaking with a reporter about my then-just-released novel, Accidents of Marriage, she mentioned how surprised she was by her negative reactions to the main character—how the character ‘provoked’ her husband. The reporter sympathized with the husband’s anger. The next day, participating on a book panel, the moderator spoke of the husband … Read more

Tethered: A novel by Amy Mackinnon

Death is the last frontier in so many ways. In my circles, even friends who talk about sex, politics, and that most forbidden of topics, paychecks, rarely talk about the nitty gritty of death. That’s something we save for our own private hells or heavens. “I plunge my finger between the folds of the incision, … Read more