by Virginia Lloyd | Oct 3, 2009 | Blog, Improve your writing
Here’s a beautiful Pablo Neruda poem I heard for the first time this weekend at a friend’s literary gathering in Sydney. It’s an untitled work from the volume Absence and Presence, translated by Alastair Reid and featuring photographs by Luis Poirot,...
by Virginia Lloyd | Sep 15, 2009 | Blog, Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement
The promotion for the paperback of The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement is underway now that I’m back in Sydney and calibrated to local time. I am doing some radio interviews tomorrow, with ABC Central Coast and ABC Alice Springs, the latter for whom...
by Virginia Lloyd | Aug 28, 2009 | Blog, Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement
Illustration by Richard Tuschman The New York Times ran an interesting article yesterday about the current prevalence of dreams about homes. The article, “The House of Your Dreams”, claimed that “Americans aren’t just living the real estate...
by Virginia Lloyd | Aug 25, 2009 | Blog, Improve your writing, Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement
My memoir, The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement, is now available in paperback (in Australia). It has been included in the 2009 Books Alive! campaign, which means the cover features a sticker declaring it to be “One of the 50 Books You Can’t...
by Virginia Lloyd | Aug 23, 2009 | Blog, Improve your writing
In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Kurt Vonnegut lists these rules for writing a short story: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Give the reader at least one character he or she can...
by Virginia Lloyd | Aug 10, 2009 | Blog, Pianos and pianists on the stage and the page
Look at these gorgeous paintings by Evan B Harris. Their whimsical beauty appeals to me. I bumped into them online while searching for something else. (As it is in life, so it is online.) I find particularly moving his literal intertwining of musician, instrument,...