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The Happily Ever After
- A Memoir of an Unlikely Romance Novelist
- Narrated by: Dustin Rubin
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
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Publisher's Summary
A memoir about writing a novel about searching for love.
Is romance dead? Is that why there are so many vampires in today's romance novels?
When Avi Steinberg's love life took a grim turn, he did what he always does: He consulted his old books, the usual cast of great (very serious, usually male) authors. And he immediately realized that these books were part of the problem. Instead, he began to read romances, the books he - like so many of us - have been conditioned to dismiss as "trashy". What he discovered was a genre that was tremendously diverse and daring, along with a vast network of innovative writers who were keeping the novel as alive as ever. His own relationship problems, he realized, came down to a failure of his imagination. And so he set out on a quest to write and publish a romance novel and to find real-life love.
A hybrid of memoir, travelogue, and critical essay, The Happily Ever After chronicles an adventure in a brave new world of literature. Steinberg offers a report from the trenches of romance, moving between major industry conferences and writing groups at the local bar as he works and reworks his romance novel idea. He reveals the inside scoop from a major romance publishing house, crisscrosses the country meeting mysterious ghostwriters and Fabio's great unsung rival, and offers a running take on the fascinating history of romance writing, the genre that invented, and continues to reinvent, the modern novel. Along the way he meets many readers, each of whom sheds light on why we are so fascinated by - and phobic of - romance fiction and what the vitality and fractiousness of our biggest genre says about us.
With quirky wit and disarming honesty, Steinberg captures an often misunderstood literary culture and learns, from its devoted practitioners, how to take The Happily Ever After seriously in his own life.
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,430
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 1,304
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,291
An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that informs his fiction. Now The View from the Cheap Seats brings together, for the first time ever, more than 60 works of his outstanding nonfiction on topics and people close to his heart.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The very best View is from the Cheap Seats
- By Jessica on 06-20-16
By: Neil Gaiman
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I, Asimov
- A Memoir
- By: Isaac Asimov
- Narrated by: Jon Lindstrom
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 57
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Arguably the greatest science fiction writer who ever lived, Isaac Asimov also possessed one of the most brilliant and original minds of our time. His accessible style and far-reaching interests in subjects ranging from science to humor to history earned him the nickname "the Great Explainer". I. Asimov is his personal story - vivid, open, and honest - as only Asimov himself could tell it.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This great book is now an unabridged release!
- By NM on 12-16-20
By: Isaac Asimov
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Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer
- The Artistry, Joy, and Career of Storytelling
- By: J. Michael Straczynski
- Narrated by: Joe Hempel
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 58
Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer includes Straczynski's unique, tried-and-true methodologies that will help storytellers sharpen their work so that it's polished and ready for publication. Part toolbox and part survival guide, this book will be an indispensable guide throughout your entire writing career, offering fresh and practical insights every step of the way.
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5 out of 5 stars
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My New Favorite Book
- By Jake Marley on 07-08-21
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Pity the Reader
- On Writing with Style
- By: Kurt Vonnegut, Suzanne McConnell
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 78
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 62
Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he's given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Unlistenable
- By Grant Swalwell on 01-06-20
By: Kurt Vonnegut, and others
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Write Your Novel from the Middle
- A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone in Between
- By: James Scott Bell
- Narrated by: James Scott Bell
- Length: 2 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 316
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 270
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 267
what if it's not the beginning or the end that is the key to a successful book? What if, amazing as it may seem, the place to begin writing your novel is in the very middle of the story? According to writing teacher James Scott Bell, that's exactly where you'll find your story's heart and heat. Bell's "Mirror Moment" is the secret, and its power is available to any writer, at any stage of the writing process...Bell presents a truly unique approach to writing a novel, one that will stand the test of time and serve you all your writing life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Bell's excellent advice, less well conveyed
- By Jennifer on 09-14-20
By: James Scott Bell
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Fiction Attack!
- Insider Secrets for Writing and Selling Your Novels & Stories For Self-Published and Traditional Authors
- By: James Scott Bell
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 42
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4 out of 5 stars 36
Learn the inner secrets of selling fiction to an ever-increasing audience of readers! Bestselling author and writing coach James Scott Bell brings you powerhouse techniques and strategies in this collection, much of which is from his popular posts at The Kill Zone blog. If you're serious about selling your fiction, Fiction Attack! is your battle plan for breakthrough.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent Delivery
- By WordMage on 09-12-15
By: James Scott Bell
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A Marvelous Life
- The Amazing Story of Stan Lee
- By: Danny Fingeroth
- Narrated by: Danny Fingeroth
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 65
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 65
Danny Fingeroth’s A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee is the first comprehensive biography of this powerhouse of ideas, who, with his invention of Marvel Comics, changed the world’s ideas of what a hero is and how a story should be told. With exclusive interviews with Lee himself, as well as with colleagues, relatives, friends - and detractors - Fingeroth makes a doubly remarkable case for Lee’s achievements, while not ignoring the controversies that dogged him his entire life - and even past his death.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Detailed and Personal Look at Stan the Man
- By G. Hernandez on 07-29-20
By: Danny Fingeroth
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The Stephen King Companion
- Four Decades of Fear from the Master of Horror
- By: George Beahm
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper, Claire Christie
- Length: 24 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 63
The Stephen King Companion is an authoritative look at horror author King's personal life and professional career, from Carrie to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. King expert George Beahm, who has published extensively about Maine's main author, is your seasoned guide to the imaginative world of Stephen King, covering his varied and prodigious output: juvenalia, short fiction, limited edition books, best-selling novels, and film adaptations.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Kingopedia: Books, Movies, Bio and Art
- By tru britty on 02-28-16
By: George Beahm
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Changing My Mind
- Occasional Essays
- By: Zadie Smith
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 66
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Story4 out of 5 stars 51
Split into five sections - Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering - Changing My Mind finds Zadie Smith casting an acute eye over material both personal and cultural. This engaging collection of essays, some published here for the first time, reveals Smith as a passionate and precise essayist, equally at home in the world of great books and bad movies, family and philosophy, British comedians, and Italian divas. Changing My Mind is journalism at its most expansive, intelligent, and funny - a gift to readers and writers both.
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5 out of 5 stars
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There may be truths on the side of life
- By Darwin8u on 02-18-20
By: Zadie Smith
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 100
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 83
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 82
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser
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Good Prose
- The Art of Nonfiction
- By: Tracy Kidder, Richard Todd
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 30
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Good Prose is an inspiring book about writing - about the creation of good prose - and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship. The story begins in 1973, in the offices of the Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him, and from that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Tendentious
- By Despair at the State of the Republic on 05-15-23
By: Tracy Kidder, and others
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Philip Roth
- The Biography
- By: Blake Bailey
- Narrated by: George Guidall
- Length: 31 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 22
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 22
"I don't want you to rehabilitate me," Philip Roth said to his only authorized biographer, Blake Bailey. "Just make me interesting." Granted complete independence and access, Bailey spent almost 10 years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and listening to Roth's own breathtakingly candid confessions. Tracing Roth's path from realism to farce to metafiction to the tragic masterpieces of the American Trilogy, Bailey explores Roth's engagement with nearly every aspect of postwar American culture.
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5 out of 5 stars
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moved
- By Michael on 08-18-21
By: Blake Bailey
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Languages of Truth
- Essays 2003-2020
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Raj Ghatak, Salman Rushdie
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 27
Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
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4 out of 5 stars
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SALMAN RUSHDIE
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 07-24-21
By: Salman Rushdie
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Avid Reader
- A Life
- By: Robert Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Robert Gottlieb
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 180
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 167
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 164
After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other best sellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré - not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Lifetime of Reading and Editing
- By David P on 12-06-16
By: Robert Gottlieb
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Million Dollar Outlines
- By: David Farland
- Narrated by: Gary Johnston
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 203
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 174
In this audiobook, Dave teaches how to analyze an audience and outline a novel so that it can appeal to a wide readership, giving it the potential to become a bestseller. The secrets found in his unconventional approach will help you understand why so many of his authors go on to prominence.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good book about writing but...
- By Erin on 07-15-14
By: David Farland
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Never Say You Can't Survive
- By: Charlie Jane Anders
- Narrated by: Charlie Jane Anders
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 35
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 35
Things are scary right now. We’re all being swept along by a tidal wave of history, and it’s easy to feel helpless. But we’re not helpless: We have minds, and imaginations, and the ability to visualize other worlds and valiant struggles. And writing can be an act of resistance that reminds us that other futures and other ways of living are possible. Full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish during the present emergency, Never Say You Can’t Survive is the perfect manual for creativity in unprecedented times.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A must-have for any creative writer
- By P.J. Powell on 09-13-21
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Capote
- A Biography
- By: Gerald Clarke
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
First published in 1988 - just four years after Capote's death - Clarke paints a vivid behind-the-scenes picture of the author's life, based on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with the man himself and the people close to him. From the glittering heights of notoriety and parties with the rich and famous to his later struggles with addiction, Capote emerges as a richly multidimensional person - both brilliant and flawed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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the brightest stars can self destruct
- By Jared_S on 09-22-21
By: Gerald Clarke