There are so many ways you can tune into Writers Revealed! Next show is this Sunday, at 7pm EST/4pm PST

1. Click here to listen to the live show
2. Missed the show? No worries. Click here to download the podcast
3. Want to call in and chat with our guests? Call (310) 984-7600
4. Want to chat with us? We’ve got a live messageboard

Want more reading material?

Check out Time Out Chicago’s Review
Read an excerpt from the book
Chicago Sun Times Review

Enjoy!

*image courtesy of Chicagomag.com

Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom’s work–her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart–come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable.

Amy will be participating in our monthly Virtual Book Club. On Sunday, October 28, you’ll have the opportunity to chat with the author about her latest book, Away. But you’ll have to sign up for our Virtual Book Club! Joining is easy. Simply send an email to writersrevealed -at- writersrevealed -dot- com with VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB in the subject line, or you can leave a comment here. Either way, we’ll fill you in on all the details.

Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history—and a catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. Operating in Chicago’s notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Club’s proprietors, two aristocratic (or so they said) sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, attracted the elites of the world with their opulent parlors and stunning courtesans. While lesser whorehouses specialized in deflowering virgins, beatings and bondage, the Everleighs spoiled their harlots with couture gowns, gourmet meals and extraordinary salaries. Not everyone appreciated the sisters’ attempts to elevate the industry. Rival madams hatched numerous schemes to ruin the Everleighs, including attempts to frame them for murder. But the sisters’ most daunting foes were the Progressive Era reformers, who whipped the entire country into a frenzy with lurid tales of “white slavery.” It was a furor that shaped America’s sexual culture and had repercussions all the way to the White House, even leading to the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With a cast of characters that includes Jack Johnson, John Barrymore, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Theodore Dreiser, William Howard Taft, and Al Capone, Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbott’s portrait of the maverick Everleigh sisters, their world-famous Club, and the perennial clash between our hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots.

Karen Abbott worked as a journalist on the staffs of Philadelphia magazine and Philadelphia Weekly, and has written for Salon and other publications. A native of Philadelphia, she now lives with her husband in Atlanta, where she’s at work on her next book for Random House, a portrait of Gypsy Rose Lee and Depression-era New York City. Visit her at www.sininthesecondcity.com.

Want to score a free copy of SIN? Simply leave a question for the author in the comment field and if we use it on the air, you’ll win a free copy!

This week I chatted with the contributors of the anthology, When I Was a Loser. Hair fiascos (the beginning of the end), equating sports with coolness, the senior prom and did we go to our reunions?!, kids who weren’t brave, the internet and how it’s changed the high school experience, and why we affectionately embrace the geeks, underdogs and losers in books and film - this week we recounted our humbling and humiliating high school experiences with absolute and utter humor and talked about kids today.

Missed the show? Click here to listen to the podcast.

And we’ve got winners! Thanks again for sharing your tales of woe and loserdom. Check your inbox, you may have won a copy of When I Was a Loser.

*Next week we’re chatting with Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City.

There are so many ways you can tune into Writers Revealed! Next show is this Sunday, at 7pm EST/4pm PST

1. Click here to listen to the live show
2. Missed the show? No worries. Click here to download the podcast
3. Want to call in and chat with our guests? Call (310) 984-7600
4. Want to chat with us? We’ve got a live messageboard

Enjoy!

Have you thought about joining a book club but grew tired of the drama, the scheduling, the shrieking: I HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK YET!? Afraid to commit to a monthly book club but want to check out a few new books? Want to chat with today’s most buzzworthy authors, LIVE? From the comfort of your own home? Well, pull up a chair, put on a pot of tea and charge your phone, because Writers Revealed will launch the WR Virtual Book Club.

Each month you’ll have the opportunity to chat live with one of our authors and score a free book in the process.

We’re kicking off our Virtual Book Club on August 5, 2007 with Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map and in September, we’ll be chatting with Dani Shapiro (pictured left), author of Black & White

There is no commitment to the club - you pick and choose which live chats you want to participate in, and we’ll send you a copy of the book a month in advance of the chat date.

Interested? Leave a comment here or send an email to writersrevealed -at- writersrevealed -dot- com with the subject line: VIRTUAL BOOK CLUB. We’ll fill you in on all the details.

Update: Our club for 8.5.07 (Meredith Hall) & 9.30 (Dani Shapiro) are currently closed (and thanks!! for the overwhelming amount of requests!!!), however, do email us (or comment here) to get information on how you can join the WR Virtual Book Club and updates on future virtual book clubs.

Who’s teenage years weren’t terrible? Remember the scary older kids? The sadistic gym teacher? The smelly kid who sat next to you in science class? Your first fumbling kiss? That time you threw up in the cafeteria? Your first attempt at putting on a condom? The period that arrived unexpectedly? That awful fight with your parents? The first time you got drunk? That note you wrote that you shouldn’t have written? The day you forgot to zip your fly? That monster zit? When, you wondered, would it all end? In When I Was a Loser, John McNally, author of the novel America’s Report Card, assembles twenty-five original essays—often hilarious, sometimes tenderhearted, always evocative—about defining moments of high school loserdom. You think you had it bad in high school? These authors had it so much worse!

On 6.24.07, we’ll chat with Julianna Baggott, Owen King, Timothy Schaffert, Kelly Braffet, and John McNally about their stories of angst, humiliation, heartache, and other staples of teen life.

Have you got your own hilarious or horrifying high school story? The publisher was kind enough to pony up five free books for our readers. Leave your comments here and my top five picks will receive a copy of the book. Read more about their guests and their stories after the jump.

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What do vampires, books, moms and drag queens have in common? Well, this week on Writers Revealed four authors, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Kevin Smokler, Andi Buchanan and Dave Wellington, all revealed how they have successfully marketed themselves online: from virtual blog tours to blog outreach to posting one’s entire book on the web (and this does not, DOES NOT cannibalize book sales - it only gives you a wider audience and makes a reader’s purchasing decision that much easier) to MySpace marketing to the power of community - these authors have redefined guerilla marketing.

Missed the show? Click here to listen to the podcast.

We chatted about blog outreach and how it’s not just a numbers game, the importance of offering up exclusive content, how “viral” (the buzz word in the industry) videos really work, and most of all - how marketing yourself and your book is really about building your readership and relationships in an organic way.

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