Recently, I attended a genocide conference that included a film called Beyond the Deadly Pit, produced and directed by Rwandan genocide survivor Gilbert Ndahayo. It documents confronting his father's killer during gacaca, the traditional court used to try "lesser" perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Ndahayo said, "If one wants to be healed from the sickness, he must talk about it to the world. For 12 years, I lived with the remains of about 200 unpeaceful dead in my parents' backyard." I found the film so profoundly moving that I could not rise from my chair. Even now, writing this, I cannot prevent the tears. During the post-film q&a, I asked Ndahayo if making the film had facilitated healing. He said simply, "No."

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What's the best Christmas present you've ever received? One lonely Christmas - stuck in New York City and unable to get home to Alabama to see her family - Harper Lee spent the holiday with friends... and received a Christmas gift that would end up being a present to the entire literary world. In the short story "Christmas to Me" (McCall's Magazine, 1961), Lee writes about her experience:

...Our Christmases together were simple. We limited our gifts to pennies and wits and all-out competition. Who would come up with the most outrageous for the least? The real Christmas was for the children, an idea I found totally compatible, for I had long ago ceased to speculate on the meaning of Christmas as anything other than a day for children. Christmas to me was only a memory of old loves and empty rooms, something I buried with the past that underwent a vague, aching resurrection every year.

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Most book trailers are, frankly, dull but occasionally one comes along that breaks the mold such as this one for Machine Man by Australian author Max Barry:

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"Thanks to art, instead of seeing only one world and time period, our own, we see it multiplied and can peer into other times, other worlds which offer windows to other lives. Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.

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The New York Times reviewed Rebecca Hunt's novel, Mr. Chartwell, in the Sunday Book Review on March 13. Since I reviewed the book for BookBrowse not long ago, I was interested to see what the Times thought of it. (My review is only available to BookBrowse members at this time. Here's a PDF of it for those who are not members.)

Tadzio Koelb's review took a snarky tone from the start, and not just in reference to Mr. Chartwell, but to readers in general (who are apparently too stupid to know what good books are). My blood didn't really start to boil, however, until Mr. Koelb condescended to reveal the obvious truth about Rebecca Hunt's novel, the glaring fact that those of us who liked the book sadly missed:

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I love this cautionary tale from husband and wife writers John Yunker and Midge Raymond - a 'must view' for any author who's ever checked their Amazon rankings!

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Sometimes interviews are a great thing. They actually make you think. One interviewer asked me if being a psychologist for 25 years had anything to do with the fact that I wrote a few memoirs. I said that it made me less afraid to write the truth about myself and my feelings no matter how bizarre or unflattering they might be. After delving into the unconscious of others for so long I realized that we are all pretty much the same. The difference between a murderer and a nun is really very little. Usually it is only one moment in time that differentiates the two. Both people have the same unconscious instincts or desires that they have had to repress--primarily sex and aggression. Freud isn't famous for nothing. Just look at TV that only has various forms of sex or aggression blasting on 400 channels to know that Freud was no amateur. Sometimes people say to me "Oh I was so shocked you were involved in a murder trial and were investigated by the FBI." Really they had thought or probably did the same things I did but didn't get caught. I know that and they know that.  Realizing we are all on a level playing field is freeing and I felt I could write what I wanted so my pen just danced across the page.

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If you are an author, published or not, there are two new Twitter hashtags that you'll likely want to follow: #waystoimpressbooksellers and #dearpublisher. The latter will probably be of passing interest to many book lovers as well, as will the often funny #bookstorebingo.

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Is it just me, or does there seem to be a wave of "intersecting lives" novels lately? I'm talking about novels which are structured around characters and place and which move forward episodically, rather than via a driving, suspenseful plot, a genre which is also sometimes called "a novel in stories." Two of the most decorated books of recent years fall into this category: Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Other recent entries include A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, and the forthcoming The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse.

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Within minutes of becoming a grandmother at 58, I realized that my take on my new role in no way resembled a Hallmark greeting card. I didn't know exactly what sort of grandmother I would be, but I was fairly certain that I would not turn into some sweet, silly, sexless, cookie-baking, compulsively knitting stereotype.

Because I'm a writer and and writing is how I make sense of my life, I started taking notes. There was plenty to write about. For one thing, I had no idea how I fit into the new order. It seemed as if my newborn granddaughter, Isabelle Eva, was mine but not mine--emphasis on the not. I knew her parents loved me, but how much did they want me around? How much did I want to be around? And how best to cope with the five other grandparents, all vying for the attention of one small infant?

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