Author Ryan Schneider's Blog

Photo Credit: Dennis Mathis This Author Spotlight features Eric Olsen, author of We Wanted to Be Writers  and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Eric Olsen was born and raised in Oakland, California, loves the Oakland A’s, and has seen "Moneyball" 147 times (actually, I added that; he's only seen "Moneyball 146 times). Eric started college as a pre-med student at UC Berkeley, like all ambitious young freshmen at the time. His interest in medicine lasted about half-way through his first quiz in “orgo.”  He finished college many years and false starts later with a BA in Comparative Literature (Classical Greek, a long story and we won’t get into that here).  He got his MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1977.  With Glenn Schaeffer, he co-founded in 2000 and then directed the International Institute of Modern Letters, a literary think tank that helped writers who were victims of censorship and persecu...

In case you've not yet heard, Twitter has filed a lawsuit in its efforts to combat spam on Twitter. From a good article by Mark Raby at Slashgear.com , I extracted the following: "Those named in the lawsuit are TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, Garland Harries, and James Lucero. “By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services at their disposal. With this suit, we’re going straight to the source,” Twitter wrote in a public blog post. The company wants you to know it’s as annoyed by these spammers as you are." "Nevertheless, Twitter doesn’t want these guys to go to prison. It just has to prove that they are violating its terms of service and willfully damaging the site. Of course, it will most likely get settled out of court." How exciting! Actually, this whole thing is retarded. Basically, of the 140-million-whatever Twitter users, probably, what, a few hundred thousand use software like ...

This Author Spotlight features Los Angeles-based thriller writer Douglas Wickard. Douglas is the author of A PERFECT HUSBAND (see above). He lived in New York for many years, writing plays, screenplays, and teleplays. He is a world traveler, a veteran, and submitted his first short story to Reader's Digest  at the age of twelve. 1. How did you get into writing? I have always been a storyteller and kind of a geek. The first money I received for a Christmas gift I ran out and bought a dictionary… I know… I always felt safe around books, words and creativity. It was an escape. 2. What do you like best (or least) about writing? Character development. To me, the process of creating living, breathing, jump off the page characters is what it’s all about. Finding the honesty, that hum underneath all the pleasantries and developing that relationship with them. The least thing I like about writing is the procrastination factor. Once I’m on the saddle I’m good to go...

This Author Spotlight features romantic comedy novelist Bonnie Trachtenberg. Bonnie is the award-winning, bestselling author of  Wedlocked: A Novel  (see above). She writes a monthly relationship and advice column for LoveaHappyEnding.com. Bonnie was senior writer and copy chief at Book-of-the-Month Club and has written seven children’s book adaptations. She has also written for three newspapers and penned countless magazine articles. She lives on  Long Island  with her husband, four cats and a dog. 1. How did you get into writing? I started writing screenplays after college and for a long time wrote them on my personal time while holding down mostly unappealing and unrelated jobs. Then, in 1990, I got my first article published in a national magazine and my writing career snowballed from there with all kinds of freelance work. In 1994 I got my first full-time writing job as staff writer for a community newspaper and from then on, all my jobs were, t...