Goodnight Silky Sullivan

"Laurie Alberts' command of prose is exceptional, her characterizations vivid and compelling", said the Detroit Free Press of her first book. "Alberts has most certainly established herself as an author from whom great things may be expected". In this, her second book of fiction, Alberts explores the lives of a wide range of characters seeking to reinvent themselves in an effort to escape the past - or at least to understand it. In "Between Revolutions", which Publishers Weekly calls a "hapless, hopeless yet exhilarating story", Grisha, a frustrated Soviet teacher in Leningrad, is consumed by long-suppressed dreams of freedom when he begins a romance with an American exchange teacher. First drawn to her by a lust for information, he is soon consumed with desire: "He wanted to suck every drop of juice from her mysterious foreign life". In another story set in Russia, Kate, an American, is beguiled by the danger of an affair with a Russian ex-seaman that might ennoble her own humdrum existence. Not loving Kolya completely, but wanting desperately to be loved by him, Kate finally realizes that their lives and their cultures have conspired to keep them apart. In the title story of the collection, a young woman, Allie, takes stock of her life, trying to come to terms with a tough, tormented, sometimes explosive father whose only moment of tenderness is expressed by invoking the name of a racehorse as he strokes his daughter's silky mane. In the beautiful, bittersweet story "Blood Sand", a distraught investment analyst flees New York for a new and equally difficult life of poverty in a brilliantly rendered rural New Mexico. There, among the pinons and junipers, he will learn the hard lessonsof forgiveness. Whether bringing to life the quotidian details of the last days of Brezhnev's Russia, the grubby poverty of dying New England mill towns, or the brilliant, harsh sun of New Mexico mesas, Alberts writes with an easy grace that belies the depth of these compelling tales.

A novel that turns the traditional adoption narrative on its head as it explores how lies move through generations.

Write vibrant scenes and essential summaries "Show—don't tell." How many times have you heard this standard bit of writing advice? It's so common in writing courses and critiques that it has become a cliche. Writers are often told to write scenes, dramatize, cut exposition, cut summary—but it's misguided advice. The truth is good writing almost always requires both showing and telling. The trick is finding the right balance of scene and summary—the two basic components of creative prose. Showing and Telling shows you how to employ each of these essential techniques in the appropriate places within a narrative. You'll learn how to: • Write scenes and cut exposition • Compress time and summarize background information • Create graceful transitions • Effectively inject interpretation • And more! Complete with examples from bestsellers and interactive exercises, this comprehensive guide offers an in-depth look at scene development, the role of reflection in storytelling, the art of summarizing, and how to bring it all together.

A rich, multigenerational novel narrates a Vermont family's saga of suffering and survival, of loyalty to the land and escape from it.

This compelling book provides you with eighteen insightful interviews with bestselling authors, writing instructors, agents, award-winning writers and more. You'll learn how to create characters, plot more effectively, live the writer's life with purpose and abandon, and much more. Interviewees include Orson Scott Card, George Singleton, Donald Maass, Dinty Moore, Peter Selgin, James Alexander Thom, and many more. The interviews are casual, relaxed, revealing and instructive. Dig in!