Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez, Debra Winger, Dennis Lehane, and L. Lee Lowe: Four Authors Interviewed About their New Best Sellers

Alisa Valdes-Rodriquez

Dirty Girls on Top

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago.

Now she's back with a sequel, Dirty Girls on Top,which follows Lauren, Usnavys, Rebecca, Amber, Sara and Elizabeth as they navigate through marriage, kids, careers and boyfriends during their mid-30s.

It's easy to want to call the breezy, sexy book a Latina version of Sex and the City. But Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez says she doesn't like that comparison.

"It's good; it's just very different from what I do," she said recently. "With the first Dirty Girls, I was the Latina Terry McMillan. And with the second one, I'm the Latina Candace Bushnell. Hopefully by the third Dirty Girls book, I can just be me."

Here's more from the 39-year-old author, who'll sign copies of the new book tonight at Borders.

Lesley Téllez

The first Dirty Girls book seemed to end on a pretty final note. Why did you want to write a sequel?

I did leave some story lines open, actually, by design in that book. I didn't feel like I was finished with those characters. I felt like I could just keep writing. I immediately wanted to do the sequel but was advised by my publisher to do a few books in between. Which in retrospect, I'm not sure was the best choice. Read more about Alisa and Dirty Girls on Top here.


Debra Winger

Undiscovered

Debra Winger's new book Undiscovered (Simon & Schuster, $23; with illustrations by Philippe Petit) discusses a life-changing event from the actress' youth, her work with movie legends like Bernardo Bertolucci and Jack Nicholson, motherhood and the choosiness with which she approaches film roles.

The three-time Oscar nominee from Irvington - star of "Terms of Endearment," "An Officer and a Gentleman" and many other films - Winger will discuss her career with critic and writer Janet Maslin on Thursday at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.

You note in Undiscoveredthat you've been writing for many years. When and why did you decide to collect your thoughts and experiences in a book?

I have been writing for as long as I can remember, but these essays began to take shape about 10 years ago when I was approached by a wonderful freelance editor by the name of David Outerbridge. I can't say why, but he had decided I should collect my thoughts - he had asked to see things I had written after reading an interview I had given in a newspaper - and that he would help me put a book together. He did that, although I don't think I operated at the speed he would have liked! We weeded a lot out (pun intended) and sorted through the rest. I took the finished product to Simon & Schuster. Read more about Debra Winger and Undiscovered here.


Dennis Lehane

The Given Day

LOS ANGELES - Until now you’ve been able to find Dennis Lehane’s work in two places: the mystery paperback shelves, where his superbly crafted novels have been confined to a sort of genre fiction ghetto, and the multiplex, where filmmakers have converted his cinematic prose into movies such as "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone."

The film streak won’t stop with The Given Day,Lehane’s epic historical novel built around the 1919 Boston police strike. Columbia Pictures has already snapped up the rights, and Sam Raimi is expected to direct. But when the book hits stores in September, you can expect to find it in the literature section - where, some might argue, Lehane’s work has belonged all along.

"He’s always been a literary writer, but The Given Dayis much more ambitious," says Claire Watchell, Lehane’s longtime editor at HarperCollins. "It deals with bigger issues and much broader themes. I’ve known him since his very first book, and there’s been such a huge quantum leap. Not just in terms of writing; he’s always been a good writer, but in the depth of his characters. He really goes down to the core." Read more about Dennis Lehane and The Given Day here.


L. Lee Lowe

Mortal Ghost

L. Lee Lowe is an American-born novelist living in Germany and working on her second novel. By itself, that’s not very unique, but what caught my attention about Lowe is how she publishes her novels: via blog. Lowe’s first book, young adult fantasy novel titled Mortal Ghost, was serialized via blog last year with great success. The book is still being downloaded at a rate that would make most self-published authors green with envy.

Lowe put up a preview of her second book, Corvus, last summer after the weekly chapter-by-chapter publication of Mortal Ghost had concluded, and plans to publish it in the same manner later this year. Lowe’s blog serialization is an interesting way to get long tail, long form content out to the reading public and start building a base of true fans, which I would venture to to say she has accomplished.

We sat down with Lowe for an interview about the ins and outs of this unique self publishing format.

SitePoint: How did you decide to push out your work this way? Did you look into traditional publishing or query any publishing firms or agents?

L. Lee Lowe: Once upon a time in fantasyland I wrote a novel and then a synopsis, read up on the internet how to do these things, and sent my half-dozen manila envelopes off to publishers and another half-dozen to agents. Within a month or two I had a collection of rejection slips, one potential agent, and one actual one. It seemed too good to be true. And when things seem this way, they usually are.

Good writing is essentially rewriting. It had taken me two years and considerable rewriting and revising to produce the novel which gained me an agent’s contract. Six months and one major agent-prompted rewrite later, it began to dawn on me that I didn’t want to be told how to write — at least not by an agent, no matter how reputable, whose main objective is to produce a saleable manuscript. Perhaps it’s that I’m too old to desire any sort of literary career. More likely, I’m too ornery.

And there was the internet, willing to take me exactly as I am. Or so I thought. Now, three years on, I know better. Everywhere there are gatekeepers and power brokers and commercial interests, and the lit bloggers, many of whom are awfully keen to make the bestseller lists themselves, have little interest in the true indies — the writers like myself who have no interest in an editorial stamp of approval. Read more about L. Lee Lowe and Mortal Ghost here.

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