Inspired by her relationship with murderer Robert Weeks, Rose Marie Kinder spun real life into elegant fiction. A noted story collection author, Kinder’s debut novel about the life of a genteel serial killer Arthur Blume unraveling. The author and I chatted about Arthur Blume - a man who loved his Victorian furniture and meditations on the animal kingdom - a quiet man who had committed monstrous crimes. We discussed the great serial killers, Othello, heavy-handed Gothic’s and how to avoid their narrative pitfalls, the consideration of time, compartmentalizing it, Faulkner as an influence, the predatory-prey relationship between mother and offspring in the animal kingdom, Arthur’s mother who we first meet as a wild creature - part Medusa, very much Medea, and his relationships with two key characters: Nada, the 70ish aspiring poet who is a sweet, maternal figure, and Grace, his pill-popping colleague and lover.

Click here to listen to our chat and enter the mind of a serial killer and the author who created him.

We’re off next week (your host will be shamelessly promoting her forthcoming memoir at NAIBA), however, join us on Oct. 21 as we chat with John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road

Online dating - passion or peril? You be the judge. This week I had the pleasure of chatting with Virginia Vitzthum, author of I Love You, Let’s Meet: Adventures in Online Dating. We chatted candidly about our forays into online dating, how Virginia moved from writing for Salon.com to developing a full-length book which examines the culture of dating online. We talked about the key players in the marketplace (and are we now to call online dating sites a “marketplace” - shopping for potential partners much how we’d select books to read or outfits for work or gadgets for our car?) and how their business has evolved over the years, the PROFILE and how many people use it as a means of reinvention rather than a vehicle for finding a partner. Is dating a numbers game? Does online really work? Have people found true love? On today’s show, Virginia Vitzthum and I dissected the commonplace act of meeting people via computer.

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

*Join me next week as I chat with David Matthews, author of the memoir, Ace of Spades.

This week I had the great pleasure of chatting with Karen Abbott, author of the exhaustively researched and elegantly written book, Sin in the Second City*: Madames, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul. We chatted about the infamous Everleigh sisters and how they operated their palatial and decadent bordello for over a decade, the other brothels on the street which were rampant with beatings and disease, sex & the Victorian era - brothels were necessary evils because men needed a place to release their sexual urges and it would inevitably protect women from “unpure” sex and rape, brothels being a catalyst for change in the sexual culture at the turn of the twentieth century, the Everleigh sisters’ rivals (other madams, politicians and evangelical reformers) and their constant attempts to rid Chicago of the club, the politics of the day, the Marshall Field shooting, the art of rebirth and reinvention, white slavery narratives (porn for puritans) and the brilliant propaganda, the subversive politics of the Levee district, the downfall of the brothels and the sisters, could the sisters operate today?, and much, much more?

Missed the show? No worries! Click here to listen to the podcast.

*available in bookstores July 10. If there is one book you should read this summer, it should be this!

Next week I’ll be chatting with Virginia Vitzthum, author of I Love You, Let’s Meet.

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.

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.

Hot Tips:

Another terrific show! Joshua Ferris and I talked about office life and how it’s possible that the people we spend 9-12 hours a day with, how we know all these incredibly personal things about these people, we may not actually really know these people at all. We talked about groupthink and how it was essential that varying characters emerge from the “group” so we get to learn about them all, so there is more authentic truth of how offices really work and how we are all really distinct from one another.

Also discussed: boundaries at work, workers and are they office property, Chris Yop and the chair, Tom Mota’s rants, is the office their home? the furniture really theirs? the need for truth, the anxiety of layoffs, hysteria in the workplace, and why we call conversations in the office ‘gossip’ rather than communication and dialogue. Also, although the office can be rote and soul-sucking, it can also be a refuge, a place that some could call home.

Click Here to Purchase Joshua Ferris’s When We Came to the End

Michelle Goodman jumped in and we chatted immediately about how she left the 9-5 world and how she escaped being a wage slave. She offered great tips on how to make the leap and change your career:

1. Calm Down. Don’t Jump off the Ledge
2. Do Your Research. Don’t just browse the web and read books. TALK to people in the field in which you want to enter. Pound the pavement
3. Get Real with Your Finances and set realistic financial goals and budgets for yourself
4. Learn More about Business. Take classes, learn online, immerse.

We also chatted about how to find the career you’re passionate about, how to deal with procrastination, how to work at home and not go crazy, and how to make the leap from one industry to another…

Key websites to visit:
-score.org: great info for small business owners, learn about and take affordable classes
-anti9to5guide.com - Michelle Goodman’s website. Read the stories of other women who made the leap, how they did and how you can too.
-nolo.com: all the scary legal stuff translated to a language you can understand
-mediabistro.com: terrific resource for freelance writers

Click Here to Purchase Michelle Goodman’s The Anti 9-5 Guide

Missed the show? Click here to listen to the podcast of Writers Revealed.

If you missed out on yesterday’s Writers Revealed show, feel free to click here to listen! Leslie Bennetts and I chatted about the perils of economic dependency and how stay-at-home mothers (through rigorous and sound financial and career planning) can keep current while out of the job force (and the startling statistics that reveal, after only a year, how a woman’s earning power can sharply decline). We discussed how The Feminine Mistake is not another salvo at the Mommy Wars but more that it raises awareness and criticism of U.S. policy issues - why aren’t women’s choices equally rewarded? Why don’t we provide financial security for women who choose to remain at home? We talked of the marriage dynamic when there is a soul breadwinner (after me having screened Todd Field’s Little Children that afternoon) and how that can possibly change the relationship from one of a partnership to a parent/child dynamic. Bennetts addressed her critics who spoke of her narrow demographic (the educated, affluent Northeast) and we discussed statistics that show children of stay at home mothers fared no better than children of working mothers.Want to listen to the show? Click here! And thanks to all who submitted terrific questions!!! I used a great deal on the show and I’ve contacted those who will receive their copy of Leslie Bennetts’s book.

This Week on Writers Revealed (6.10.07) Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to The End

Feel free to check out the latest podcast of my new show, Writers Revealed, by clicking here. This week was all about family, particularly the notion of the “bad mother” and I chatted with authors Elissa Schappell (Use Me), Liesel Litzenburger (Now You Love Me), Sabina Murray (A Carnivore’s Inquiry) and Victoria Redel (Loveryboy). After we chatted about their individual books and the mother characters in each, we delved into discussion about what makes a good mother, can we define it? is it a mother who’s fascinating or a good caretaker? is Dina Lohan a bad mom? How do parents shape their children? Challenges that today’s mothers face, including raising children in this age of influence (internet, tv, movies) and influential marketing, and we also discussed choice feminism in Leslie Bennetts’ The Feminine Mistake and have we back-peddaled on feminism?

And we talked about the soccer mom and Michael Apted’s documentary 7Up.

And I said “sort of” (oh wait, not true. GODDAMN) and “interesting” less this time - thank god! But listening now, I’ve discovered the word “fascinating” - who knew such a word existed? I have to say that I have the utmost respect for folks who produce podcasted/radio shows. It’s tough, but this journey is incredibly amazing. I hope you’ll keep tuning in!

Next week (6/3, 7pm EST) I’ll be chatting with Leslie Bennetts (The Feminine Mistake) and I’ll be taking live calls. Got a question for Leslie (because, hey now! i’ve got books to give away)? Leave them in the comments field below.

Click here for my previous posts on Bennetts and her book.

About the Book: It would be easy to dismiss this as yet another salvo in the mommy wars-—the debate over women opting out of careers to be stay-at-home moms. But Bennetts, a longtime journalist and writer for Vanity Fair, is more interested in investigating what she sees as the heart of the matter: economics. Through impressive research and interviews with experts and with real women, Bennetts shows that women simply cannot afford to quit their day jobs. Long-term loss of income has a cascading impact in areas such as medical benefits and retirement funds, not to mention a woman’s sense of autonomy, derived from financial independence. Further, a career supplies a woman with a measure of security for herself and her children in the event of unexpected sickness or divorce. As any woman who has tried knows, returning to the workforce and finding a well-paying job after an absence of years, or even decades, is difficult. Not so long ago mothers would pin a dollar bill to their daughters’ underclothes when they went out on a date in case, for some reason, they needed carfare home. Those mothers knew all to well that without money of your own it’s easy to be left stranded. As Bennetts expertly shows, it’s still true. - PW review

Bio: Leslie Bennetts has been a contributing writer at Vanity Fair since 1988, writing on subjects that have ranged from movie stars to U.S. anti-terrorism policy. Before joining that magazine, she was the first woman ever to cover a presidential campaign for The New York Times. Bennetts lives in New York City with her husband and their two children.