I met Meg Wolitzer in Iceland. (How great is an opener is that sentence? I could hardly have invented better words to pass myself off as some sort of globetrotting, namedropping force.) I am going to have to tarnish the portrayal of my image a bit by fessing up that I didn’t just serendipitously encounter her traipsing up an Icelandic glacier or pounding bourbon in a Reykjavík bar; Meg was mentoring a group of aspiring writers at a conference, one of whom was me. But still. W

I am having all kinds of success with my author interviews lately. This week is another biggie: Catherine McKenzie, who I met at the Writer’s Digest Conference in NYC a few years ago when she was a presenter. Catherine’s previous books have been highly acclaimed bestsellers, and her latest, The Good Liar, is no exception: named by Goodreads as one of the hottest thrillers of 2018, it’s been busy racking up starred reviews and killer sales since its release in April. I asked M

I’ve been a fan of Chris Bohjalian for years, so having the opportunity to ask him questions was the literary equivalent of my soccer-obsessed son getting to interview somebody on the FC Barcelona team. In case you’re not already familiar with him, Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of 18 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Sandcastle Girls, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, as well as Midwives, which was a No. 1 New York Times

Most of the time—to my surprise—I look forward to writing my weekly post for The Debutante Ball. This week, however, I dreaded it. This was for two reasons: first, last week’s post on the differences between the expectations and realities of publishing a novel completely drained me; and second, on today’s topic, I got nothing. Well, almost nothing. We are supposed to be writing about research: how much we did, how much wound up in our novels, what sources we used. I did minim