In last week’s Substack, I reviewed the Goodreads fall fiction list and highlighted a few novels that seemed particularly interesting. For authors hoping to discover the secret of getting your next book on this list, it turns out the secret might be…having a secret.

What kind of secret? One popular secret is the family secret. In Friends and Family, “Babs and Nora have spent a decade’s worth of morning walks sharing family secrets, local drama, and advice.” In The Radiance, “What begins as a provocative portrait of academic and cultural warfare deepens into erotic entanglement, the exposure of a family secret, and the mystery surrounding the narrator’s accident—both the violence and its aftermath.” Crocodilopolis tells a story about “a dark family secret and a scandalous double crossing.” And The Birthing Tree is “an unforgettable novel of family, legacy, and the secrets that bind and endanger us.”

Secrets from the past are also prominently featured. The description of Sunrise reads, “Three lives, one hundred years, one ghost town: an explosive novel about a mysterious place called Sunrise, where the secrets of the past refuse to stay buried…Sunrise’s many secrets are like gunpowder: quiet, contained, until they encounter a spark.” In The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, “The wife of a popular and powerful megachurch pastor upends her charmed ‘rags-to-Rolex’ life when her secret past comes roaring into the spotlight.”

It’s often difficult to keep a secret, but some of these novels nevertheless involve secrets that have been held for a really long time. Between You a River is “A haunting family drama about two sisters who travel back to their family’s ancestral land in the Philippines, where long-buried secrets unfurl in the wake of their mother’s death.” Meanwhile, “Paper Ghosts will transport you to a place where old secrets echo through the years.” In Fair Ones, the main characters “wrestle with new relationships and old secrets.” You can also check out Under the Falls, “a spellbinding page-turner about a crime in a small town that exposes long-held secrets and betrayals among a group of lifelong friends.”

Secret groups are also popular. In The Witches of Cambridge, the main characters “are recruited by the Lilith Society, a secret organization of witches at Radcliffe dating back to colonial times.” Peck & Peck tells “an irresistible, delightful, and tender story about a young man whose life turns upside down when he is hired by the most prestigious, secretive, and dysfunctional poetry journal in the world.

I learned from reading these book descriptions that when secrets are uncovered, this can lead to a lot of drama. In Penegrine Hill, “When Whitten discovers the secret mother and daughter have tried to keep buried, he uses it to his advantage, threatening to expose them unless Mariah accepts his proposal.” The Spirits promises, “When a surprise guest appears at the (dreaded) Christmas Eve dinner, the family begins to open up and reveal dangerous secrets and crimes nobody is willing to face. In Odette Rising, “Odette must try and navigate the world she has hidden from for so long. In doing so, she will excavate the secrets left behind by her father and in turn, accept the shocking truth of her own identity.” And the main character in Sunlight Finds You “takes a chance that changes her life, exiling her from the family she loves and setting off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her into adulthood.”

Plus, let’s not forget about relationship secrets. In Meet Me in the Garden, “Delphine has a secret lover.” In Fair Ones, Jen and Mara “wrestle with new relationships and old secrets.” Take What You Can tells about how two characters “secretly wonder if their friendship has always worked best as a trio.” And Long Wave asks, “Is Ori’s fate—and the fate of her child—intractably tethered to the secrets of those who came before her?”

Okay, a few more: In The Three Graces of Pearl Street, “an Italian American grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter all named after the Roman myth of the Three Graces find their lives—and their secrets—colliding when, after years apart, they come to live under the same roof.” In Luna, Phoenix, Queen, “Dava and Barr Pennington, professors at a Midwestern university, both harbor potent secrets.” Female Life on Planet Earth “follows Heti as she raises teenage daughters, keeps up with client accounts, sits in LA traffic, and prepares to host the traditional anniversary memorial—all while quietly reeling with the violent secrets of the woman she thought she knew. Finally, All That is Left of Life “explores love, loss, and the secrets we carry.”

So why all these secrets? Is the dramatic secret a successful and enjoyable plot device that readers crave? It surely can be, but it also seems like we’ve maybe reached a point when it’s becoming an overused cliché that’s gotten out of control. What are your thoughts on fiction’s proliferation of secrets? If you share your opinion, I promise I won’t tell anyone.

Quote of the Week

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” - George Orwell, 1984

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Monday, September 28 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Registration is open here.

Here’s the Goodreads description:

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

This week the Goodreads fall fiction list came out: Fall’s Top Adult Fiction, from Contemporary to Historical. It features 75 new novels scheduled for publication between August and December 2026. But 75 books is a lot, and I know you don’t have time to look through 75 book descriptions. I don’t either, but I did anyway you so you don’t have to.

Below are four books from the list that caught my eye. I haven’t read most of them yet, so please don’t hold me responsible if they fail to live up to expectations. But I’m hopeful this list includes some great new books.

Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel

Goodreads description: The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.

Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.

As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.

My take: Although Emily St. John Mandel’s more recent books have justifiably received a lot of praise and attention, I also really enjoyed her earlier, pre-fame novels Last Night in Montreal, The Singer’s Gun, and The Lola Quartet. Additionally, I appreciate how some of her novels show that a story doesn’t need to be completely sci-fi just because it takes place in the future. I can’t wait to read Exit Party when it comes out in three weeks.

Pub date: September 15, 2026

Switzy by Emma Cline

Goodreads description: A mesmerizing portrait of an aging man’s last pilgrimage, from the New York Times best selling author of The Girls and The Guest.

A private plane cuts through the winter night, somewhere over Greenland. David, a retired executive, sits back in his leather seat, playing solitaire on his phone. Click. Click. Drag. Click. The notebook in his jacket pocket is filled with familiar phrases, urgent reminders to himself, but he struggles to recognize his own handwriting.

A mystery, among many mysteries. The world, once so knowable, has been rendered inscrutable.

This is what David Cody, his assistant, asleep in the seat next to him, will shepherd him along the voyage. A stopover in London. Dinner with his adult daughter. A meeting in France with an old friend, estranged for decades.

His final destination is Zurich.

David glides through hotel rooms and airports and foreign cities, running out the clock on his mortal life. His grasp on the present slips away, and the past rushes the Sunday roasts of childhood. The stiff clothes meant only for church. A summer at a school friend’s house. The losses and missteps that punctuate a life.

As David’s arrival in Zurich looms, an exquisitely rendered portrait of an unraveling mind emerges, both darkly humorous and profoundly moving. Hypnotic and startlingly original, Switzy probes the depths of human consciousness, revealing what a man is left with when the accomplishments and compromises that have defined him, and the illusions he's relied on, vanish.

My take: Last year I read Emma Cline’s The Guest, which has been profiled here and here, and it was very interesting, disturbing, entertaining, and at times darkly funny. I’ve never been one for the Hamptons, and maybe that’s part of why I enjoyed this original exposé of that scene. The Guest explores compelling themes of the transactional nature of human interactions (both sexual and non-sexual) and the challenges of trying to survive while feeling like an outsider in another world. I’m also often drawn to main characters who may be viewed as “unlikeable,” as I wrote about here. I’m looking forward to checking out her latest book.

Pub date: September 8, 2026

Breathing Under Water by Jacqueline Friedland

Goodreads description: The current is threatening to pull them under.

Berry thought she had it figured out—juggling her vice principal role while raising her sixteen-year-old autistic son, Leo. But when a promotion opportunity collides with her family's deepest needs, she must confront whether she's been fighting the wrong battles all along.

McKenna is drowning. Between caring for her grandmother with dementia, losing her swimming scholarship, and facing homelessness, the college student's carefully constructed world is crumbling. Her only lifeline? Teaching swim lessons to children with autism—including Leo.

As these two women's paths converge in the most unexpected way, they discover that sometimes the people who need saving the most are the ones who end up saving you.

My take: I'm so happy to see Jacqueline Friedland’s latest novel on this list. I just finished it last week and it more than lives up to all the advanced praise it’s received. You can learn more and read about the novel’s backstory on this previous Substack post. Definitely add Breathing Under Water to your fall TBR list.

Pub date: August 4, 2026

Agrippa by Robert Harris

Goodreads description: From the #1 internationally bestselling author of Conclave and Dictator, a gripping tale of ancient Rome’s descent into dictatorship

He was born feet first, a dangerous way to enter the world. His mother did not survive, and the nickname, Agrippa—mother killer—stuck. But the schoolyard taunting only served to harden his resolve and hone his predilection for aggression. In time, the name lost its sting and became instead a mark of his invincibility. It came to shape his destiny.

Agrippa was a mere commoner, a plebeian, his father a humble Stoic, but he earned the respect and fear of his peers. He defended a bullied young boy, Octavius, who turned out to be the nephew of Caesar himself, a chance encounter that would change the trajectory of his life. He eventually joined the ranks of the legionnaires and marched against their enemies. His prowess on the battlefield spoke for itself, and Caesar relied on him to protect his favored nephew. When Caesar was murdered in the Senate, Octavius inherited the empire in name only. To assume the mantle he would have to fight for it, and Agrippa, forever by his side, would be his closest advisor and the merciless agent of his military will.

As gripping and full of intrigue as his bestselling novel Conclave, Agrippa is Robert Harris’s monumental return to the world of ancient Rome on the precipice of dictatorship, a novel for our times.

My take: I haven’t yet read Robert Harris’ other books, but like much of the world I’ve long been fascinated by this period of time in history. I learned so much from reading I, Claudius by Robert Graves years ago, and I’m hoping Agrippa is the next great work of historical fiction about the Roman Empire.

Pub date: September 1, 2026

Quote of the Week

“If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it.” - Beverly Cleary

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Monday, September 28 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Registration is open here.

Here’s the Goodreads description:

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

I really thought I was done. I had no interest in emailing again with scammers who prey upon writers, after I already wrote about these cons here and here. It was surely a waste of time, and I felt like I had covered it all, so I began immediately deleting all the fraudulent emails I continued to receive.

But it’s also virtually every writer’s dream to have one of their books made into a movie, so when the fake CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group contacted me, she had my attention. I don’t mean to brag, but she wrote that she read my debut novel Final Table, she found it “electrifying,” and she “hadn’t stopped thinking” about it. She wrote, “If you’re open to it, I would be genuinely honored to begin a conversation about exploring a film or television adaptation of Final Table always with the goal of honoring your vision and brining this gripping story to a wider audience.”

As with other such emails, the purported sender, Pam Abdy, is a real person. And yes, she actually is the CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group. But the real Pam Abdy wouldn’t be reaching out to me directly about making Final Table into a film, and certainly not this way from a gmail address.

And her email was actually pretty lazy. It read like yet another AI-generated regurgitation of the publicly-available Final Table description. Even her declaration that the novel was “electrifying” was just taken directly from the Kirkus Reviews quote on the front cover. I mean, how difficult would it have been for her to just quickly consult a thesauraus and choose a different word?

So how should I respond? Last time I replied to one of these emails, I showed extreme gratitude and deference, playing up the persona of a naive writer who was thrilled to receive this unexpected, thrilling outreach that promised a fantasy-level, life-changing opportunity. Now I decided to take a different approach:

And Pam didn’t seem offended at all:

If you’ve read my prior Substacks on these fraudsters, you see the scam and know where this is going. They promise a huge opportunity from someone who seems legit, then they say that they just need a submission from you to move things along, then they connect you to someone who will help you properly prepare the needed content - for a fee, of course. I went deep down that road last time, so there was no need to do so again.

OMG, not only was Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group going to make the Final Table movie, but I would actually have a part in the film! However, I did have some additional demands:

Turns out I’m a pretty good negotiator. Pam was giving me everything I wanted so far. She must really, really like Final Table!

And this time Pam had really hurt my feelings with her response, so I let her know how I felt:

A Final Table movie premiere in New York! So exciting. I just had to tie up a few other loose ends first:

Now Pam was being really dismissive again, and I wasn’t going to stand for that:

Then it was time to confront Pam with my suspicions that she might not be who she said she was:

In case the holiday party invitation above is too small, here it is with a larger image:

And this was just really, really insulting. Trying to scam me is one thing, but doing so with an invitation for an “Office Holiday Party” that was scheduled to take place on Wednesday June 24, Thursday June 25, and Friday June 26 from 3:00-6:00pm each day? WTF kind of holiday party is that???

Oh, and one more thing. Check out the file name for the “Office Holiday Party” graphic:

You’d think someone who had risen to the level of fake CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group could do much better than that.

I didn’t hear from Pam again, and all my hopes and dreams of a Final Table movie disappeared, at least for now. So for any real film people who are reading this, please know that the movie rights are still available, and I welcome your calls. I’m actually pretty easy to negotiate with, and you don’t even have to put me in the film.

Quote of the Week

“I heard the phrase ‘murder your darlings’ early on and found it helpful. The idea is that whatever your work is, whether it’s a literary novel or a spy thriller or a memoir or a short story, it has to be coherent and it has to move quickly. If it plods, you’ll lose the reader. You have to be prepared to sacrifice writing that you love for the good of the larger work.” - Emily St. John Mandel

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Monday, September 28 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Registration is open here.

Here’s the Goodreads description:

Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new “emancipation” bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn’t about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a “termination” that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans “for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run”?

Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice’s shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn’t been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.

Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice’s best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice.

In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

When I attended the annual IBPA Book Award Ceremony in May, I was very fortunate to be seated next to attorney and author Andrea Leeb, whose book Such a Pretty Picture: A Memoir “explores the long shadow cast by childhood abuse and the courage it takes to step into the light.”

After meeting Andrea, I read her powerful, heartbreaking, and extremely well-written book, which I highly recommend. You can get your copy of Such a Pretty Picture wherever books are sold, such as here, here, and here.

Last week she joined me for a wide-ranging discussion about her book, the many important issues it covers, and how books and writing helped her survive experiences of trauma. You can view the interview here:

Quote of the Week

“The AI panic is silly. All writers are going to—or already do—use AI. I don’t use it but only because I’m too old and set in my ways and it confuses me.” - Nellie Bowles

(Note from Dan: I have not yet used AI either.)

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Last night I attended a fun and interesting book launch event at Bedford Books for USA Today bestselling author Jacqueline Friedland, whose latest novel Breathing Under Water is available today! You can now get Breathing Under Water anywhere books are sold, such as here and here.

This is Jackie’s sixth novel, and her previous books have all been captivating reads that I highly recommend. Here’s the compelling description for Breathing Under Water:

The current is threatening to pull them under.

Berry thought she had it figured out—juggling her vice principal role while raising her sixteen-year-old autistic son, Leo. But when a promotion opportunity collides with her family's deepest needs, she must confront whether she's been fighting the wrong battles all along.

McKenna is drowning. Between caring for her grandmother with dementia, losing her swimming scholarship, and facing homelessness, the college student's carefully constructed world is crumbling. Her only lifeline? Teaching swim lessons to children with autism—including Leo.

As these two women's paths converge in the most unexpected way, they discover that sometimes the people who need saving the most are the ones who end up saving you.

I just got my copy, and I can’t wait to start reading. For more information, see below for Jackie’s description of the novel’s backstory:

Breathing Under Water: Behind the Book by Jacqueline Friedland

I grew up watching my mother do something extraordinary. In the 1970s, when autism was still greatly misunderstood and often misdiagnosed, she began working with children with special needs, and she never stopped. Over the course of her career, she became a pioneer in the field, working to create effective intervention, education, and treatment strategies for young people with autism. She was a classroom teacher, school administrator, researcher, university professor, and president of highly regarded state, national, and international organizations. In addition to training teachers, psychologists, speech pathologists, and other professionals to teach students on the autism spectrum, she also created the nation’s first college support program for students with autism and served as the head of a large international school.

I was lucky enough to tag along during many of those years, visiting schools and programs by her side, getting to know the kids she believed in so fiercely. Her work didn’t just change their lives; it changed mine. My mother saw talent and value in every human being. She taught me that every child deserves to be seen, to be challenged, and most of all, to be respected and understood.

That early exposure shaped the way I see the world and the stories I want to tell. My previous novel, Counting Backwards, explored the tragic legacy of real-life Carrie Buck, a young woman sterilized against her will in the name of eugenics. While writing that book, I felt a deep need to push back against the idea that neurodivergence or disability should ever be seen as something to be eliminated. With Breathing Under Water, I wanted to go further, to write a story where a teen with autism isn’t sidelined or saved, but is instead at the heart of the story, helping someone else find her way.

As I developed the idea, I came across a startling statistic: nearly 8% of college students in the U.S. experience homelessness. That number stunned me, and it stuck with me. I began imagining what it would look like for two very different young people, both navigating real and invisible challenges, to find each other at a crossroads. One seemingly has everything, but is secretly falling apart. The other has faced judgment and limitation his whole life, but knows exactly who he is.

I also found myself thinking about survival skills, not just emotional ones, but literal ones. I’d read that over 40% of Americans can’t swim, and that public pools were closing for lack of lifeguards. It struck me how many basic safety skills we overlook, and how much we take for granted about who gets taught what, and why. My characters, Berry, Leo, and McKenna, came to life around all of these questions.

Breathing Under Water is ultimately a story about resilience, connection, and refusing to underestimate people, even (and especially) when they’re struggling. It’s about recognizing how much more we’re capable of when someone believes in us, and how powerful it can be when we begin to believe in ourselves.

For readers seeking more information or guidance about autism, the following are excellent starting points:

• Autism Speaks

• Association for Science in Autism Treatment

• Organization for Autism Research

• Autism Society

To learn more about athlete mental health advocacy and how to support student athletes who feel they are under too much pressure, I recommend:

• The Hidden Opponent

• Morgan’s Message

Quote of the Week

"Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” - Louis L'Amour

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

It’s the time of year for recommended summer reads, so this post will provide a few. Other summer lists often refer to suggested books as “Beach Reads” but I won’t use that term. My understanding is that a Beach Read is about a protagonist who has given up on finding love again but discovers it in an unexpected place or manner, such as with a new neighbor or mysterious stranger or a billionaire cowboy or a resurfaced person from the main character’s past who’s charming but rough around the edges and has hidden secrets or a problematic past that they need to overcome.

Will their potential love triumph over these obstacles? Yes. Will they choose to love each other, not in spite of who they are, but because of it? Absolutely. Will they engage in safe pseudo-racy depictions of socially acceptable sex replete with trite, suggestive euphemisms? Of course.

Based on that definition, the novels below are definitely not Beach Reads. But I found them all really interesting, original, entertaining, and thought-provoking. You might even enjoy reading them while lying on a beach. Nevertheless, they are not for everyone, and I know people whose reading tastes I respect a lot who strongly disliked some of them.

So here is my inaugural list of recent novels I loved that you might not like.

The Adjunct by Maria Adelmann

Goodreads description: From the acclaimed author of How to Be Eaten, a fresh take on the campus novel that follows an adjunct professor gigging her way through academia’s poor job market when she crosses paths with her old PhD adviser whose new novel might be about her—for readers of Worry, Vladimir, and Less…

With biting humor and a keen eye for detail, Maria Adelmann offers a fresh twist on a tangled #MeToo story and turns Sam’s downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream. A hilarious yet sobering look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia.

Why I loved it: This novel was an engaging, witty, and heartbreaking real-world depiction of the fallout from alleged sexual misconduct in academia, with a powerful, surprising, and authentic ending that few authors would have the guts to write. I appreciated how this novel was far from a stereotypical, cliché, moralizing account of these issues, and instead presented them with gripping nuance.

Why you might not like it: The story is dark, the plotlines lack moral clarity, and the main character’s life decisions are often infuriating. I know a lot of readers want a hero/heroine they can admire, flaws and all, and this novel does not offer that. If you’re looking for a novel that wraps up its issues in a nice bow and leaves you feeling good about the world, do not read this book.

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang

Goodreads description: A dark, magical realist debut family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate…

Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing employs a combination of stunningly rendered folklore and atmospheric prose to examine the legacy of colonialism through the eyes of three generations. Alice Evelyn Yang’s debut novel is a story of family and forgiveness, of folklore and fate, that will leave you unsettled and undone.

Why I loved it: This books jumps among different characters and timelines, and at the beginning it was a little confusing, but once it started to all come together, this novel was a fascinating portrayal of perseverance and pressure to capitulate during some of history’s worst episodes, and the lasting multi-generational consequences. The characters and writing felt vivid and real, and the author shows with creative, heartbreaking storytelling how traumatic historic injustices continued to impact the main character and her family decades later in modern-day New York.

Why you might not like it: This book has significant elements of magical realism, which is defined as, “A literary and artistic genre where the fantastic and the mundane coexist seamlessly. It sets stories in the real, recognizable world, but treats supernatural or magical events as ordinary occurrences that characters accept without question.” Many readers find magical realism to be silly and annoying - and I’m one of those readers! But this book synthesizes the magical realism elements with the novel’s other plotlines in a captivating and thoughtful way. So after really enjoying this novel and Mona Awad’s Bunny, maybe I don’t dislike magical realism as much as I had thought. But you still might...

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

Goodreads description: A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets.

Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

Why I loved it: When people ask me what genre I most like to read, I never have a clear answer. Is there a genre for novels with flawed main characters navigating dysfunctional relationships and toxic societal pressures, with a growing sense that a happy ending feels unlikely? If so, sign me up. Think My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky, Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson, Shmutz by Felicia Berliner, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, Luster by Raven Leilani, The Guest by Emma Cline, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, and I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel.

I felt invested in Ripe’s main character throughout the book, and the novel’s fast-moving depiction of problematic workplace and interpersonal situations consistently reminded me of real people and situations while maintaining a well-written and nuanced balance between darkly comic and just dark.

Why you might not like it: You want your books to be uplifting. You want your novels to be inspirational. You hope to live out your own fantasies by living vicariously through a moral and just main character who takes on the world with moral fortitude and triumphs against the odds. And you’re going to hate this novel.

The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovitz

Goodreads description: When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact, and keeps driving West.

He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he's been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class - something he hasn't yet told his wife.

So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father's grave in California.

An unforgettable road trip novel, The Rest of Our Lives beautifully explores the nuance and complications of a long term marriage.

Why I loved it: I have friends who are now confronting becoming empty nesters, and talking about plans for the rest of their lives. When they fell in love, married, and had children, they didn’t contemplate or plan for what comes next. Now they have a potential for freedom and free time that was unthinkable earlier. So where do they go from here? This book shows one person’s attempts to address the past and wrestle with newfound choices while also fearing that no good options may remain, and years of delay may have left him in a situation in which it’s just too late to live a better life. I was captivated by this story from beginning to end, and the down-to-earth writing created a story that felt genuine, tragic, and unpredictable.

Why you might not like it: This novel’s themes may feel irrelevant to many readers, and the main character is no hero. One friend told me he DNF’d this book in part because it was too unfocused and meandering at times, and while I can totally see how such meandering might be unenjoyable for some to read, I felt engaged the whole time and never lost interest. You may really like this novel, or you may decide to DNF it - I enthusiastically chose the former, but I can understand some readers picking the latter.

All Fours by Miranda July

I can’t have a list of books I loved that you might not like without including All Fours. I previously covered my thoughts about this novel here. Everyone I know who read it either thought it was a highly compelling and moving book or an irritating and unrelatable story. There seems to be no middle ground, so go ahead and read it (if you haven’t already) and choose a side…

Quote of the Week

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.” - Anne Lamott

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Thursday, July 9 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Lies We Tell About the Stars by Susie Nadler. This novel is described as, “A gorgeous debut about friendship, grief, and new beginnings set in near-future San Francisco in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and on the cusp of the first human mission to Mars.” Registration is open here.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Several organizations over the past month announced the results of their 2026 book awards competitions. The Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) held their annual conference and award ceremony in Portland, Oregon, and after they notified me that Open Bar was a finalist in the Fiction: General category, I decided to fly out and attend.

I’d never been part of an event like this before, and it was really nice to be there in person. For me, writing is very enjoyable and exciting, but it’s also full of setbacks, self-doubt, and reasons to feel discouraged. So when Open Bar was named an IBPA Silver Winner for Fiction: General, I felt very grateful and it provided much-appreciated encouragement to keep working on my next novel.

Open Bar and Final Table are both published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster, but even though it’s been almost five years since Final Table was published, I had never met the SparkPress team or their other authors in person, as our interactions have mostly been via email and Zoom. So it was a thrill to finally see many of them live in Portland, especially SparkPress and She Writes Press publisher , who a few years ago gave me the opportunity to realize my lifelong dream of becoming a published author and from whom I’ve learned so much about writing and publishing. I am forever thankful to her and her team.

IBPA also presented awards in other categories, and one memorable moment was when the Reference Book winner was announced. The finalists included a book about American sports car racing in the 1990s and another about writing resumes for federal jobs. The sports car author won, and during his acceptance speech he declared, “I’m really glad I didn’t lose to a resume writing book!”

The 20th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards were also just announced, and Open Bar was selected as the Winner for Political Thriller. Thank you so much to the NIEA for choosing Open Bar - it really means a lot to me. Open Bar was also picked as a Finalist in the Fiction (General) category, coming in behind the category winner, Louis C.K.’s new novel (*sigh*).

I’m also highly appreciative to the International Book Awards for naming Open Bar as the Winner for Fiction: General and a Finalist for Fiction: Literary, and to the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, which selected Open Bar as the 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction and for inclusion on the Grand Prize Short List. Thank you!

Meanwhile, I’m close to finishing a first draft of my next novel, In Happier Times. There’s still a ton of writing, re-writing, and editing to be done. I’m now at the point in the process during which I review one chapter and feel good about how it turned out and then review the next chapter and think, wow, this needs a lot of work.

I love meeting with book clubs, and recently had a really fun Zoom about Open Bar with the Key Women Educators Book Club, whose members are current and retired teachers from Palm Beach, Florida. They asked a lot of interesting questions about the story, characters, and writing process. One of their questions was: Why is the novel called Open Bar? I feel like I always do a bad job of explaining that, but the Kirkus Review summed it up much better than I do, so I used that in my response:

The title of the book takes on layered meaning, suggesting not just a high-society gala but also the dangers of unchecked access and what comes through when no one’s watching the door.

The open bar concept comes up a few times throughout the story, starting with Julia’s exchange with Troy about their toxic workplace while they’re both attending a fancy charity fundraiser. Troy is highly stressed and concerned about a whole host of issues, but Julia shrugs them off and proclaims that they “might as well take advantage of the open bar…”

If you have a book club or know of a book club that’s interested in reading Open Bar, please let me know, and I’d be happy to join the discussion.

Cheers!

Quote of the Week

"The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” - Terry Pratchett

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Thursday, July 9 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Lies We Tell About the Stars by Susie Nadler. This novel is described as, “A gorgeous debut about friendship, grief, and new beginnings set in near-future San Francisco in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake and on the cusp of the first human mission to Mars.” Registration is open here.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the National Indie Excellence Awards Winner for Political Thriller, the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for Fiction: General, the International Book Awards Winner for Fiction: General, and the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Welcome to the third and final post exploring one of many book promotion and publishing scams that target authors. These schemes involve online fraudsters posing as notable figures in the publishing world and falsely promising writers enhanced exposure and success in return for financial payment. (Full posts available of part one and part two.)

To recap, I received a scam email that purported to be from Jen Loja, the “President Editor with Penguin Random House.” She wrote that she had come across my novel Final Table, really liked it, and wanted to re-publish it with Penguin Random House. She also expressed a lot of interest in working with me to develop and publish my next novel. Jen then connected me via email with fake literary agent Mary Andrew and wrote, “Once representation is in place, I would be very happy to continue the conversation through your agent, should there be mutual interest.”

Mary then pretended to review the full manuscript of Final Table overnight in thirteen hours, and she offered to “fully represent” me “throughout the publishing process.” But she first needed me to work with her expert Kathryn West on strengthening my query letter. I exchanged emails with Kathryn, who agreed to perform these services for $510, and she sent me an invoice via Upwork.

So this was quite the elaborate scheme - pretending to be the president of Penguin Random House, then my new literary agent, and then a query letter expert, before finally asking for payment. Maybe authors are less likely to think this is all a con if the process takes so many steps, and writers don’t want to believe they’re being scammed after spending this much time corresponding with individuals who appear be promising (and delivering) dream-fulfilling success.

I looked at the Upwork invoice, but instead of showing the name Kathryn West, it displayed the name Jumoke Olanipekun from Ibadan, Nigeria, which is a known hub for financial and cyber fraud activities.

This seemed suspicious. Why would query letter expert Kathryn West send me an invoice in the name of another individual in a faraway country? It clearly wasn’t safe to send payment, and I wrote Kathryn to warn her about my concerns.

Was this explanation reassuring? Kind of, but I still had my doubts. I knew the best way to confirm whether this was all legit would be to have an actual videoconference with Kathryn. If this was a fraud, she would certainly not agree to that.

Now this was really concerning. Kathryn’s invoice wasn’t in her own name. She was completely unavailable to ever have a “face-to-face meeting.” Cleary, something sinister was taking place. I needed to warn my fake literary agent Mary Andrew immediately:

But Mary didn’t seem to be concerned at all:

Mary’s explanation was somewhat comforting, but I felt that with all this drama and uncertainty, a quick Zoom with my fake literary agent was needed.

There was only one logical conclusion - whoever hacked Kathryn West had gotten to Mary Andrew too! I needed to warn Jen Loja immediately:

And Jen responded very quickly:

Note the absurdity of the president of Penguin Random House scolding me for not promptly paying her recommended agent’s query letter expert. Why would someone in her position get involved in stuff like this? And how would she know the billing contact of her recommended agent’s query letter expert so well? Also, if Jen already really liked my novel and wanted to re-publish it with Penguin Random House (where she was president), why would she care about me paying to revise a query letter?

Was it possible that this was all a fraud? Could Jen Loja, Mary Andrew, Kathryn West, and all of their exciting, encouraging gmail account messages be one big scam? There was one last way to find out for sure:

And I never heard from her again. They all ghosted me - Jen, Kathryn, and Mary. They disappeared from my life, along with the hopes of working closely with the president of Penguin Random House on my upcoming projects.

Looking back on this whole adventure, I wonder how successful these frauds are. How many writers are falling prey to them? How much money are unsuspecting authors paying to faux publishers and agents? It must be a significant amount to justify such detailed and time-intensive planning.

I had been receiving these types of emails virtually every day, but since I started this Substack series, they’ve almost all stopped. It’s nice to be less targeted by scammers, but I also miss the entertainment value these emails provide. So for the fraudsters reading this, feel free to continue to write me. Not every day, but every week or so is fine. I promise to read them all, and to also periodically respond. But there’s no need to send me an invoice because that will go unpaid…unless you’re ready to jump on a Zoom with me.

Quote of the Week

"The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat.” - Robert Heinlein

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for General Fiction, the Eric Hoffer Book Award 1st Runner-Up for Commercial Fiction, the American Fiction Awards Winner in the Political Thriller category, and the Firebird Book Awards Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

This is a continuation of last week’s post, where I wrote about book promotion and publishing scams targeting authors, as online fraudsters pose as notable figures in the publishing world and falsely promise writers enhanced exposure and success in return for payment. You can read part one here.

In last week’s episode, I received an email that purported to be from Jen Loja, the “President Editor with Penguin Random House.” She wrote (using a gmail address as all real top publishing figures do) that she had come across my novel Final Table, really liked it, and wanted to re-publish it with Penguin Random House. She also expressed a lot of interest in working with me to develop and publish my next novel, which I told her was a “paranormal dystopian historical mystery zombie espionage romance novel about a half-vampire/half-Sagittarius who time traveled from the Peloponnesian War.” (And the more I think about it, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.)

Jen then offered to connect me with her preferred literary agent to represent me for these projects. She provided the email address (gmail, of course) for her “recommended agent” Mary Andrew. Jen wrote, “Once representation is in place, I would be very happy to continue the conversation through your agent, should there be mutual interest.”

So what happened next? First, I Googled “literary agent Mary Andrew,” but unlike Jennifer Loja, the Mary persona didn’t seem to be based on a real individual. Then I sent an introductory email to Mary:

Literary agents are notorious for taking a long time to respond (if they do at all), but Mary wrote back right away:

So I dusted off a 6-year-old query letter for Final Table and sent it to Mary with the full manuscript:

For those of you who have dealt with literary agents, what’s the general timeframe for them to review a full manuscript? A long time, right? Impressively, Mary Andrew was able to do it overnight in just over thirteen hours.

This was all exciting news, except for Mary’s comment that Final Table needed “some structural and developmental adjustments.” WTF? Doesn’t she follow the National Indie Excellence Awards!?

Anyway, Mary offered to “fully represent” me and she began outlining next steps, which included me working with “Expert Kathryn West” on “development and refinement” of my query letter. I didn’t really understand why I needed to improve my query letter, considering I already now supposedly had a literary agent in place and a president at Penguin Random House who wanted to re-publish the novel. Nevertheless, Mary instructed me to contact Kathryn for these services, and provided Mary’s email address, which, as you probably guessed, was a gmail address.

I then emailed Kathryn West:

Kathryn promptly responded, and we discussed her three service package options:

• Basic Package: $310

• Standard Package: $610

• Premium Package: $910

Now that we’d landed on a package, I informed my fake query letter expert that my fake literary agent would take care of the payment. They weren’t actually looking for money from me, were they?

Okay, turns out I needed to make the payment myself unfortunately. My bad. But maybe there was some wiggle room on the price?

And we moved forward with the invoice for these services:

Now I had a president of Penguin Random House, I had a literary agent, I had a query letter expert, and I had a $510 invoice. I really f-ing had it all. But sadly then the whole thing fell apart. What went wrong? I’ll explain in next week’s exciting conclusion…

(Update: check out part three)

Quote of the Week

"So where do [writing] ideas actually come from? Mostly from getting annoyed about things. Not big issues so much…as the little irritations that drive you wild out of all proportion.” - Douglas Adams

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the IBPA Book Awards Silver Winner for General Fiction, an Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize Short List selection, the American Fiction Awards Winner in the Political Thriller category, and the Firebird Book Awards Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Authors are increasingly the targets of book promotion and publishing scams, with sophisticated cons seeking to deceive authors and prey upon their dreams of attaining writing success. I recently wrote about some examples of these manipulative schemes here and here.

provided a great analysis of this phenomenon earlier this month in her Substack post, Why Authors Are Perfect Victims. And Victoria Strauss offered a concerning deep-dive into one way authors are swindled in her Writer Beware post, Watch Out For This Scam Impersonating Editors at Major Publishing Houses.

Speaking of which, last week I received the following email that purported to be from Jen Loja, the “President Editor with Penguin Random House.” She wrote about how she had come across my novel Final Table, and she complemented the book’s “authenticity and authority” and my “ability to navigate sensitive subject matter while maintaining narrative momentum.” She teased, “I would welcome the opportunity to explore how your voice and future projects might align with our publishing lists.”

Note that Jennifer Loja is a real person and the president of Penguin Young Readers at Penguin Random House, and the email signature is designed to look legit. But the actual Jen Loja would not be emailing me directly about my novel, and certainly not from a gmail address, which all these author-targeting fraudsters seem to use. This was clearly the beginning of a scam.

Nevertheless, I responded with enthusiasm:

Jen then wrote me about her favorite chapter in Final Table, which was “a chapter in middle portion of the book where the narrative really tightens around both the legal stakes and the media scrutiny in that section.” She said it “stayed” with her “because of how it captured the complexity of pursuing justice in such a charged environment.” (No, that’s not vague at all.)

Then Jen really hurt my feelings:

But she made me feel a lot better by “staying up late into the night” reading Final Table, which “genuinely captivated” her. She wrote, “I am still very interested in seeing how we can align your voice with our publishing goals” and “I would love to hear your thoughts on how we can best collaborate to bring your work to the widest possible audience.”

Exciting! We began to discuss next steps:

Since she asked me to provide details of my next project, I told her about my “paranormal dystopian historical mystery zombie espionage romance novel about a half-vampire/half-Sagittarius who time traveled from the Peloponnesian War”:

And she seemed to like it! She even offered to connect me with her preferred literary agent to represent me so Penguin Random House can re-publish Final Table and develop my “new manuscript”:

Jen then provided the email address (gmail, of course) for Mary Andrew, her “recommended agent.” She wrote, “Once representation is in place, I would be very happy to continue the conversation through your agent, should there be mutual interest.” And I jumped at the opportunity:

So this was an interesting development. Where was this fraud headed? What happened when I emailed “literary agent” Mary Andrew? And most importantly, what became of the half-vampire/half-Sagittarius who time traveled from the Peloponnesian War?

Stay tuned, as all those answers will be revealed in an upcoming Substack…

(Update: check out part two and part three)

Recent Media

I joined Surviving the Survivor to discuss the murder charges against singer D4vd. Here’s the full video:

Quote of the Week

“From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.” - Isaac Asimov

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the American Fiction Awards Winner in the Thriller: Political category, an IBPA Book Awards Finalist for General Fiction, and the Firebird Book Awards Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

When you choose to start reading a new novel, you’re deciding to commit a lot of hours, mental energy, and emotional investment in someone else’s story. You hope it will be interesting, entertaining, and thought-provoking. And not a waste of time.

I wrote recently about another important decision we make as readers - if and when to give in to exasperation, overcome your reader guilt for quitting, and banish a novel to DNF (Did Not Finish) Land. You can read the full post here.

No doubt in direct response to my Substack post, Goodreads promptly made a big splash by announcing the creation of a new DNF Shelf. So now the default Goodreads “Bookshelves” are Want to Read, Currently Reading, Read, and now…Did Not Finish.

I’ve previously wondered what to do on Goodreads with DNF books and never came up with a great answer. I generally just deleted them from my Goodreads books list, but that left me concerned that in the future I might come across the book again, not see it on my Goodreads, assume I hadn’t read it before, and try reading it once more. Then I’d have to start it all over and DNF a second time. If the book was DNF-quality but not memorable, this pattern could potentially occur every few years, with me repeatedly DNF’ing the same novel.

But now there’s a DNF Shelf to remind us all about the books we didn’t finish. And to declare to the world which novels we DNF’d. Which makes me feel guilty. Yes, a book may have been unfinishable, but do I really want to sentence it to the harsh and cruel reality of sitting on my DNF Shelf in perpetuity? I’d much rather have someone post a bad review of Final Table or Open Bar than leave it languishing on their DNF shelf until the end of time.

On the bright side for the DNF book, at least being on the DNF Shelf presumably doesn’t negatively impact the novel’s star rating. I guess exile on the Shelf is shame enough. And speaking of star ratings, a good friend recently asked me why I only give five star reviews on Goodreads, and I explained that if I think a novel is great, I give it five stars, and otherwise I just mark it completed without a star ranking. Meanwhile, before diving into a new novel, I always seek guidance from the star ratings my friends and others have given the book, so I confess to regularly utilizing this helpful information while generally not providing it.

Maybe I just need to be harsher and relegate books to the DNF Shelf that deserve to be there. Possibly I have to be more helpful to other readers and give an accurate star rating for each book I complete. These are weighty issues that I obviously must dedicate a significant amount of time to contemplate.

What’s your opinion? For those of you on Goodreads who are comfortable DNF’ing a novel you can’t bare to finish, will you now take advantage of the DNF Shelf?

Open Bar Selected as Finalist for IBPA Book Awards

I’m excited to share that Open Bar was just named as one of three finalists for the IBPA Book Awards in the General Fiction category (more info here). The Gold Winner will be chosen in May, with the other two finalists being named Silver Winners.

More about the IBPA Book Awards and the Independent Book Publishers Association can be found here.

Recent Media

I joined Surviving the Survivor to discuss the guilty verdict in the Alexander Brothers sex trafficking trial. Here’s the full video, with my part starting at the 3:15 mark:

I also returned to Law&Crime Sidebar with Jesse Weber to discuss fraud allegations in an Indiana Sheriff’s office. My interview begins below at the 20:10 mark:

Quote of the Week

“It’s fiction. Everything is true; nothing is true.” - The Adjunct by Maria Adelmann

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). Open Bar is the American Fiction Awards Winner in the Thriller: Political category, an IBPA Book Awards Finalist for General Fiction, and the Firebird Book Awards Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Last week I received an email seeking more information about my novels:

On the one hand, it was exciting to have someone express interest in reading my books. People have previously asked me which of my two novels, Final Table and Open Bar, would be the best to read first, so that question didn’t seem suspicious. However, virtually all books are easily found on Amazon and elsewhere, so it didn’t really make sense that the person would need assistance finding them. If Doreen Claire actually “came across” my novels, wouldn’t she already know how to locate them? Something about this seemed off. Nevertheless, I decided to send a polite response, just in case she was legit and not that tech savvy:

I previously wrote about all the seemingly AI-generated emails I receive attempting to lure me into book promotion scams. You can read the full post here. A brief excerpt:

With so many writers yearning for the right book promotion opportunities, authors are growing targets for book promotion scams. I receive these emails on almost a daily basis. They tell me how gripping, engaging, and compelling Open Bar is. They are almost all sent from gmail addresses, and none of the senders has an actual website or any other real footprint that can be used to assess their credibility.

These emails also appear to contain detailed, thoughtful analysis of my novel. With a quick read, they seem real. They feel real. How could a scammer know so much about my book, unless they actually read it? How could they offer such specific praise unless they really liked it?

And that’s exactly what I received next from Doreen:

So I didn’t respond to this message. Sorry Doreen!

Then, a few days later, I received another message very similar to Doreen’s first email:

Okay, so I wasn’t going to get fooled again. Especially with a subject that read “Quick question about yourLooking to start reading your work store” [sic]. Is that the best you can do, AI?

I responded to “Ennydee” and provided an Amazon link to the “novel I am most proud to have written,” which as you can see below was War and Peace:

As an aside, did you know that War and Peace was originally titled War, What is it Good For?

Anyway, I expected that my claim to be the author of War and Peace would lead Ennydee not to write again. But we then had this email exchange, in which Ennydee asked if I had “a cinematic video teaser for this project.”

FYI here’s the video I sent:

Ennydee seemed to like the video and proceeded with a sales pitch to create video teasers for my books:

Since Ennydee asked about my other “previous projects,” I responded with my other novel Anna Karenina:

The sales pitch then continued, with Ennydee offering to “develop a tailored concept that matches that tone and essence” and “create a cinematic teaser that highlights the strongest elements of your story, increases visibility, and helps attract and engage more readers.” Ennydee also noted “a fair and structured pricing option.”

Of course I didn’t click on the link, but I wrote back asking for more details of how Ennydee would tailor the video to my novel Anna Karenina:

The sales pitch and pricing then got more specific:

But Ennydee wasn’t answering my question about how the video would be specifically tailored to Anna Karenina, so I pressed for more info:

Thankfully Ennydee was finally addressing how we could successfully market Anna Karenina, so I noted another of my novels to see which was more suitable for the first promotional video:

And Ennydee provided some helpful analysis:

It was then time to move beyond Russian literature:

The email exchange then got more and more ridiculous:

At this point I felt the conversation had gone as far as it could, and I needed to move on with my life. I decided to let it end there.

What does this all mean? Successful book marketing is challenging. There are more novels being published than ever before, and it’s tough for authors without huge platforms to break through. The online world is eager to take advantage of writers’ desire for book publicity by employing increasingly sophisticated cons.

But on the bright side, with all due respect to Ennydee, these emails also eventually reveal themselves to be clumsy fraud attempts. So this exchange makes me much more confident that we have at least another couple of years before AI takes over the planet and destroys humanity. Its capabilities just aren’t there yet.

Quote of the Week

“I can't understand how anyone can write without rewriting everything over and over again.” - Leo Tolstoy

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Monday, March 30 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor. Registration is open here.

This novel was recommended by a couple of our Book Club members, and it sounds very interesting and timely. Here’s the Goodreads description:

Harvard students Zoe and Jack find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for aging.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard University. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-ageing drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

About one year ago, I was working with my publisher SparkPress and their distributor Simon & Schuster in the early stages of planning for the promotion of my second novel Open Bar, which was scheduled to be published that August. Back then, I knew very little about successful book promotion (and now I know only a little more than that). But I kept hearing over and over from authors, book publicists, and others in the publishing industry that having a Substack was an important part of establishing and growing an author platform.

What was Substack? I had no idea. But the suggestion of starting a Substack came up so many times that I decided to look into it more. And I was inspired by the informative and interesting Substacks of SparkPress publisher , friend and public policy expert , author , and others.

The more I saw, the more I liked. Substack provides a great forum for long-form expression about reading, writing, and other ideas. It also doesn’t seem to have the constant toxic negativity of other social media sites. So I decided to give it a chance, and created this Substack: Guys Don’t Read Novels. Then, one year ago this month, I sent out my first Substack post to a vast audience of eleven subscribers, all of whom were relatives or close friends. It started like this:

When my debut novel Final Table was published, a really weird thing happened. Over and over, guy friends and acquaintances said some version of this to me: “Congratulations! Your book sounds so interesting. I would totally read it if I read novels.” Another (better) male comment I sometimes received was, “I never read novels but I read yours!”

I grew up with a mother who was a high school English teacher and gave me a love of novels at a young age, then I majored in English in college with a dream of being a writer. I was constantly exposed to great books and others who loved reading so in my bubble I was completely unaware that guys don’t read novels.

I aimed to write a weekly Tuesday morning Substack post, and over the past year I’ve produced forty-two, including this one. Not exactly weekly, but close. So far I’ve posted about the fiction writing process, my personal writing journey, the publication of Open Bar, the challenges of book promotion, whether books are sexy, a lot of book recommendations, and much more. I’ve greatly enjoyed having this new forum for creative expression about all things fiction writing and reading, and sharing interactions with subscribers and others on Substack.

There’s still a lot on this platform that I haven’t taken advantage of, or figured out how to use effectively, such as the Substack Live video feature. The conversation I had with Olivia Troye was one of the highlights of the Open Bar book promotion process, and I’d like to start doing more videos with other authors and reader Q&As about our books.

It seems that other social media sites see the growing threat of Substack. When I post anything about my novels on Facebook or LinkedIn, I generally get a lot of engagement from others. But if I include a link to a Substack post on these sites with the same content, it mostly goes unseen. I guess these other sites don’t want to steer traffic to Substack. It’s frustrating, but I understand their focus on self-preservation.

In addition to creating this Substack to build my author platform, I very much wanted to create a new, fun, and interesting community for fiction readers and writers. I think it’s challenging to find others to discuss novels and writing, and this has provided a great forum. A big part of this reader/writing community is our Book Club. I introduced the Book Club a year ago this way:

Unfortunately, while my wife Jen gets invited to join book clubs, as a guy no one ever invites me join a book club. So I’m starting my own.

Why start a new book club? Well, I read a lot of novels, mostly current or recent literary fiction. Some are mainstream, but others are less well-known. For example, a few recent novels I’ve really enjoyed are All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky, All Fours by Miranda July, The Stockwell Letters by Jacqueline Friedland, Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson, My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin, Bunny by Mona Awad, Shmutz by Felicia Berliner, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Luster by Raven Leilani, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, and I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel.

I find that I rarely know people who are reading the same novels, so I hardly ever have someone to discuss them with. If you’d like to join me in reading and talking about interesting novels like those above, or would just like to attend and hear about some great books, I’d love for you to join.

The Guys Don’t Read Novels Book Club will meet via Zoom and is open to everyone. More info coming soon. If you’re interested, please respond in the comments or message me!

Since then, the Book Club has met six times and read Counting Backwards by Jacqueline Friedland, North Woods by Daniel Mason, Smokebirds by Daniel Breyer, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter, and Her Cowboy Billionaire Best Friend by … okay, we didn’t really read that last one.

(As an aside, can you believe that Goodreads shows seven different authors who have written novels about billionaire cowboy best friends? I have two questions: 1) Is there really that much to write about billionaire cowboy best friends? and 2) Why do ads for these books keep popping up on my Kindle? Also, please stay tuned for my debut novel’s upcoming sequel, Billionaire Cowboy Best Friend at the Final Table.)

But back to Book Club: we have a fun, lively, and welcoming group that has discussed a variety of great novels. More information about our next meeting is below. Hope you can join us!

Most importantly, I’d like to thank all of you so much for subscribing to Guys Don’t Read Novels, and for your comments, suggestions, and encouragement over the past year as this Substack has continued to grow - I greatly appreciate it!

Quote of the Week

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” - Earnest Hemingway

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Monday, March 30 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor. Registration is open here.

This novel was recommended by a couple of our Book Club members, and it sounds very interesting and timely. Here’s the Goodreads description:

Harvard students Zoe and Jack find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for aging.

Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard University. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-ageing drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

You’re reading a novel and it’s just not grabbing you. It’s not well written, or it feels like nothing’s happening, or a lot’s happening but it’s the same thing happening over and over. Maybe the characters are annoying, or unrealistic, or appallingly cliché.

When the book is highly recommended by a trusted friend, or it’s a big bestseller and/or very well-reviewed, you may hope the novel will get better soon, and if you just continue reading a little more, it’ll be worth it. Or you don’t want to tell your friend that you bailed on the book that they raved about.

Meanwhile, instead of reading being a relaxing, interesting pleasure, it’s becoming a chore. You repeatedly check how many pages are left in the novel and calculate how much time you’ll need to devote to reach the ending. Or maybe you just keep finding yourself zoning out.

Then it suddenly occurs to you: What if you just quit? What if you just throw the white flag, or tap out, or whatever you want to call it, as long as you don’t have to keep reading this ponderous book?

But when is the correct time to call it quits and declare that you’re just going to proclaim this novel a Did Not Finish (DNF)? I used to feel guilty just thinking about DNF’ing a novel. Guilty for what? Not sure exactly. But it was something along the lines of not wanting to be a quitter, or feeling I’m somehow a bad reader if I don’t finish what I start. Maybe it’s related to the reading guilt that Serena Stanfield experienced in Open Bar:

As a young girl and a voracious reader, every time she finished a full-length novel her parents asked how many days it had taken her to read it. She would proudly declare “four” and receive polite claps, or “three” and see their eyes light up. Even less and they would remark, “You are so smart!” or “I bet no other kids your age are reading as much as you!”

There was the time at age eleven when she was home on a snow day and raced through Wuthering Heights from dawn to her bedtime, and then announced, “I read this whole book in one day!”

The reaction was overwhelming, as her parents both shook their heads in amazement and her mom yelled out, “Unbelievable! You are incredible!” She wanted that reaction again, and again. So even now, she involuntarily focused on how many days it took her to read each book, and if a novel lingered too long from start to finish, she had a nagging feeling that she had done something wrong, disappointed someone, maybe the entire world. It just felt like some negative karma would be looming because of this failure to be efficient.

But fortunately I’ve grown out of feeling guilt about reading. And I’ve developed questions to ask myself to determine whether I should DNF a novel:

If I have a spare few minutes, do I want to quickly grab the book and read?

When I’m in the middle of a great novel, I’m looking for any opportunity to continue reading it. Sitting in the car for a few minutes while waiting to pick up one of my kids? If it’s an enjoyable read, I definitely want the book with me then. But if I have that time, and the novel is with me, and I’m thinking I don’t want to ruin this free moment by diving back into the book, I know I’m in or near DNF Land.

Do I think about the book when I’m not reading it?

When I’m really liking a novel, I’m thinking about it a lot. I wonder about the characters, the story, the language, and how it might end. The book feels like it’s present with me all day, in my thoughts as I’m going about other parts of life. Maybe it even permeates a dream. But when a book has become tedious to read, it’s pretty much out-of-sight, out-of-mind. If the words aren’t right in front of me, I’m not considering it at all. Another sign that it might be time to give up.

Am I looking forward to the book ending so I can read something else?

This is the question that keeps entering my head when reading a novel has become a chore. With a great novel, there’s the feeling of bittersweet disappointment when it nears its conclusion, because I want this story and these characters to continue to be part of my daily life. But when the book is a potential DNFer, I think about how nice it will be when I complete this book so I can read something else. And then I wonder whether these thoughts mean that I should just cast it aside and stop trying to finish it.

So what’s the answer? When should you DNF a novel?

Here’s my answer: 20%. (Yes, you can tell I’m a Kindle reader because I’m using a percentage.)

I want to give all novels I start a chance to move past a rocky beginning. But if by 20% in, I’m wondering how long it will take to get to the end, I’m finding excuses not to read it, and I’m never thinking about it when the book’s not in front of me (besides considering how I don’t want to go back to reading it), then it’s time to DNF.

I ask myself those questions, and then make the decision. And just feeling that I need to ask myself those questions is a big sign that the novel is a prime DNF candidate.

Let me know your thoughts: Do you finish all novels you start? If not, how and when do you decide to DNF and move on with your life (and your reading)?

Quote of the Week

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or ten pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing - writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.” - Lawrence Block

Book Club Tonight!

Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom tonight (Tuesday, February 3) at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Ripe by . Registration is open here.

I just finished this novel and thought it was one of the best books I’ve read recently. It may not be for everyone, though. I’m really curious to see what others think of it. There’s definitely a lot to talk about. Here’s the Goodreads description:

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets.

Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

This week I took part in a fun author Q&A with River Journal, which is available here. I’m also excited to share that Open Bar just made the Short List in the Somerset Book Awards for Literary and Contemporary Fiction (more info here).

I recently finished reading Ripe by Sara Rose Etter, which we’ll be discussing at next week’s Book Club (details below). I’m always searching for good novels to read next, and I often find helpful suggestions via Goodreads. I look at what friends are reading, check out the “Readers also enjoyed” section of books I’ve liked a lot, and search through the Goodreads periodic lists of anticipated books.

This week the latest Goodreads novels list came out: 57 New & Upcoming Debut Novels to Discover This Season. But 57 books is a lot, and I know you don’t have time to look through 57 book descriptions. I don’t either, but I did anyway you so you don’t have to.

Below are three books from the list that caught my eye. I haven’t read any of these yet, so please don’t hold me responsible if they fail to live up to expectations. But I’m hopeful this list includes some great new books.

Just Watch Me by

Goodreads description: Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption.

My take: This description had me at Fleabag, one of the best shows I’ve ever watched, and Big Swiss, a 2023 novel by Jen Beagin that I really enjoyed. How can a novel inspired by those two works not be good? It sounds timely and original, and I’m generally drawn to stories that are “darkly funny.”

Release date: January 20, 2026

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang

Goodreads description: A dark, magical realist debut family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism, and the inescapability of fate.

My take: I’ve long been fascinated by this period of history, and the tragic legacy that continues to this day. I generally don’t read much magical realism, but I’m looking forward to checking out this novel. The cover shows a mythical jackalope. Is there a requirement that all magical realism books need to involve a creature that looks like a Bunny? I’m asking any magical realism expert out there to please let me know.

Release date: January 27, 2026

Like This, But Funnier by Hallie Cantor

Goodreads description: TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children. When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it—and unbeknownst to Harry—Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher.

My take: Whenever I read a great novel, I’m always curious about the real life experiences that inspired the author to create the story. My novels Final Table and Open Bar are both drawn from many actual personal and professional events. Like This, But Funnier’s premise obviously involves improperly crossing a major line, but the idea that the most interesting fiction originates from true life occurrences definitely intrigues me, and I’m curious to see how this novel plays out. Throw in an Amy Schumer endorsement on the cover and a clever title, and I’m certainly putting this on my TBR list.

Release date: April 7, 2026

Quote of the Week

“The only thing that would ever embarrass me would be something I would write that would be badly written.” - Gloria Vanderbilt

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will be via Zoom on Tuesday, February 3 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Ripe by . Registration is open here.

I just finished this novel and thought it was one of the best books I’ve read recently. It may not be for everyone, though. I’m really curious to see what others think of it. There’s definitely a lot to talk about. Here’s the Goodreads description:

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets.

Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

There’s an old adage that “writing is re-writing” and it’s definitely true. The editing process requires a massive amount of re-reading and re-writing. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if a particular scene or line works after you’ve re-read it countless times. A line may feel great the first thirty times you read it, but it can be challenging to assess how it lands with the reader when you’re reading it the next thirty times, or the next thirty, and it’s no longer fresh to you. That’s why it’s crucial to have readers you trust review your writing and provide honest, and sometimes necessarily brutal, assessments.

One of the big challenges in writing and revising is eliminating the repetitive use of words or phrases. Sometimes I’ll re-read a paragraph I wrote that I’ve already reviewed many times, and I’ll suddenly catch that I used the same word twice or more in a short span. Or I’ll note that a line of dialogue used a specific word and I’ll do a search to see how any times it can be found in the entire manuscript, and to my horror I see it’s present an appalling number of times.

That’s why my writing and editing process involves constant use of a thesaurus. I may check for another way to say one character glanced at someone or feels devastated. And then, after I find a satisfactory synonym, I discover I’ve overused that new word already too. It becomes a frustrating game of synonym Whac-a-Mole.

I see this issue not just in fiction. In sports reporting, there are a lot of words that sports writers use repeatedly. Take the term historic. Merriam-Webster defines historic as “famous or important in history” and “having great and lasting importance.” Some examples of historic sports moments are Jackie Robinson breaking the baseball color barrier and the Miracle on Ice. Or more recently, Shohei Ohtani hitting three home runs, striking out ten batters, and pitching six shutout innings to win the pennant in the arguably the greatest baseball single-game performance ever.

But the term historic isn’t just reserved for these memorable feats. Sometime’s it’s used in situations for which I’m not sure it really applies. For example, on ESPN.com you can also read about De’Aaron Fox’s “historic Spurs debut” because it “marked the first time in franchise history that a player making his Spurs debut tallied at least 20 points and 10 assists.” Or how the Braves and Reds had a “historic eighth inning” by scoring a combined 16 runs. Or how Texans wide receiver Jayden Higgins “makes history” by becoming “the first second-round pick in NFL history to have a fully guaranteed contract.”

I mean, I love football, and history, but I don’t think I’ll be telling my grandchildren one day about Jayden Higgins’ fully guaranteed contract.

What else is historic on ESPN? Well, there’s the Guardians’ “historic surge” that led them to pass the Tigers to take first place in the American League Central. And the Celtics’ “historically bad 3-pt shooting night.” Or you can read about the University of Colorado’s “historic loss” to Utah (because it was the largest margin of victory between those two schools), or Spurs forward Sandro Mamukelashvili making “history” againt the Knicks (because he had the most points in a game when playing fewer than 20 minutes), or then-Red Sox player Rafael Devers’ “historic strikeout streak” (because he had the most strikeouts in the first five games of a season), or the Buffalo Sabres’ “historic playoff drought” (because they hadn’t made the playoffs since 2011).

I could go on and on with examples for the rest of history. Here are some more:

Francisco Lindor “makes history” by becoming “just the second primary shortstop” to have two 30-30 seasons. Julio Rodriguez “makes history” by having four 20-20 seasons to start a career. And the Philadelphia 76ers were headed for a “historic” season because they were “on track to finish as the NBA's third-largest underachiever in the 21st century” based on pre-season win-loss predictions.

I love ESPN. It’s been a huge part of my life since high school. But I don’t think any of these meet the Merriam-Webster definition of historic. And besides that, the repetitive use of the word certainly calls out for assistance. So I’m providing the following screenshot of helpful synonyms that they can use in the future:

And, in case those aren’t enough options for the massive amount of “historic” accomplishments reported by ESPN, here are a few others:

Please add your thoughts in the comments. What words do you see overused in fiction and non-fiction? For writers, how do you deal with the frustrations of repetitive word use? There’s no easy answer for this historic writing challenge.

Quote of the Week

This week I’m going with another excerpt from We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad, which is a follow-up to her novel Bunny, about a woman attending a prestigious MFA writing program who learns that others in her fiction writing cohort are engaged in some very unorthodox behavior:

“What are you working on?” Kyra asked, playing politely interested even though we knew she didn’t really care, Bunny. None of us did. We were too devastated, too vulnerable, too embarrassed for reasons we couldn’t even name. Just going through the mannerly motions of conversation now. But Ursula took her query seriously. A light in her eye brightened. So desperate are writers, all writers, to converse about their Work. It made us sad and sick even then.

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will be via Zoom on Tuesday, February 3 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Ripe by . Registration is open here.

I just finished this novel and thought it was one of the best books I’ve read recently. It may not be for everyone, though. I’m really curious to see what others think of it. There’s definitely a lot to talk about. Here’s the Goodreads description:

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets.

Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

I hope everyone was able to enjoy some good reading and/or writing time during the holidays. I’m still working on my next novel, In Happier Times. I’ve completed about two-thirds of the first draft, with a lot of writing and a massive amount of editing left to go.

I also did some fun interviews about writing and reading. You can check out a conversation with and Cathleen Watkins here, and one with Nora D’Ecclesis here.

As I continue to promote the recent publication of Open Bar, I’m constantly reminded how challenging book promotion is. There are so many novels out there, more than ever before. How does one break through? For authors without huge platforms, there’s no easy answer. I very much appreciate fellow authors who commiserate with me as we share ideas about what works and what doesn’t.

And with so many writers yearning for the right book promotion opportunities, authors are growing targets for book promotion scams. I receive these emails on almost a daily basis. They tell me how gripping, engaging, and compelling Open Bar is. They are almost all sent from gmail addresses, and none of the senders has an actual website or any other real footprint that can be used to assess their credibility.

These emails also appear to contain detailed, thoughtful analysis of my novel. With a quick read, they seem real. They feel real. How could a scammer know so much about my book, unless they actually read it? How could they offer such specific praise unless they really liked it?

The answer, of course, is AI. When my debut novel Final Table was published four years ago, I didn’t receive emails like this. Sure, I got a few sketchy-sounding emails offering miracle book promotion success in return for payment. But these emails weren’t that sophisticated.

Now, just a few years later, my book’s Amazon description and Kirkus Review are enough for AI to draft a seemingly complex, detailed, and effusive analysis of Open Bar.

Here’s one example:

Impressive, huh? Here’s another:

I knew “Debra Stephanie” was another AI-drafted email looking to take advantage of authors craving effective publicity. Nevertheless, because the (AI-generated) intro said, “Open Bar gripped me from the first line,” I wrote back simply, “Have you actually read the book?”

Here’s the response:

So, short answer: no. “Debra Stephanie” did not read Open Bar. But at least she “did spend quite a bit of time studying the blurb…”

Next, here’s an email from extremely successful and famous author James Patterson. Yes, that . I’m excited to share that he sent me the following:

Okay, so maybe this is not from the real James Patterson. What gave it away? Well, there’s the space before the comma in the email subject. There’s the fact that he used a capital “J” in “James” but a lowercase “p” in “patterson.” I’m also skeptical that James Patterson would send me an unsolicited email and write, “You can check out one of my books here.” And do famous authors feel a need to put the word “author” in their email addresses, just in case someone didn’t recognize them? So many signs this was not legit. Do better, AI!

But I decided to reply anyway:

Then “Author James patterson” ghosted me. No response. Yet another book promotion dead end.

Even more reason for me to just stick with Substack…

Quote of the Week

“The great thing about fiction of course is that you take whatever you want from reality and then fuck with it in any way you want.” -

Next Book Club Selection

Our next Book Club will be via Zoom on Tuesday, February 3 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Ripe by . Registration is open here.

I just finished this novel and thought it was one of the best books I’ve read recently. It may not be for everyone though. I’m really curious to see what others think of it. There’s definitely a lot to talk about. Here’s the Goodreads description:

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men set themselves on fire in the streets.

Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

I was at a (non-writing) event recently when another attendee came up to me and said, “Oh, you’re the writer. I read your book and it was great!” So of course this was thrilling and completely made my day.

An hour later, the same person approached me and I prepared to receive more writing compliments. He looked at me and said, “I just want to apologize because I mistook you for someone else before. I actually didn’t read your book.”

Yes, the writing experience is a rollercoaster of emotions. And I’ve always hated roller coasters. Even as a kid, when others would scream with excitement at the opportunity to ride one, I would try to find any excuse to avoid them, or go along reluctantly, counting the seconds until I would finally be off the ride and free.

Have you ridden the writing rollercoaster? Some days you have a great writing session when it’s all flowing and coming out better than you even hoped. Other days you’re continually staring at the computer screen, trying to formulate one good sentence. Or you’re writing a new scene and then reading over the day’s work and sensing that it might be bad. Like, really bad.

One moment you’re receiving invaluable words of encouragement that inspire you to keep writing. The next moment, you’re learning that someone you know well is completely indifferent to your new novel and has no interest in ever reading it (see ’s excellent analysis of this phenomenon here.)

An unexpected rise in your book’s Amazon ranking. Followed by an unexpected fall in your book’s Amazon ranking. A great review showing up on Goodreads. Then a not-so-good review suddenly appearing.

It’s a rollercoaster. So here are some recent highs from the writing roller coaster:

I had a great time at a Sexual Misconduct in Fiction event with excellent author and former sex crimes prosecutor Allison Leotta where we discussed our novels and how our experiences investigating sexual misconduct helped shape these stories, moderated by Christopher Edwards. You can watch a recording of the event here: (password: Ef03d$Gc).

I did a fun and interesting interview with Pursuit Magazine about Open Bar and Title IX sexual misconduct investigations that you can watch here. Also, they ran an Open Bar excerpt here.

The Best Book Awards just named Open Bar as a finalist in its Fiction: General category - the full awards list is available here.

I’ve enjoyed being a Legal Analyst at Law & Crime for several years. A few recent interviews can be watched here, here, and here. These videos get a lot of comments, with some providing nice feedback for Open Bar:

But this is a roller coaster, remember? There’s the inevitable sub-par rating on Goodreads, or the writing session that doesn’t turn out as well as I hoped. I know all writers experience these ups and downs and I think the most important advice through it all, no matter how high or how low you feel that day, is this:

Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing.

Oh, and by the way, the person who told me he read my book but actually hadn’t…ended up reading it afterwards and posting this Amazon review:

So I’m very grateful for this part of the roller coaster. And even if I don’t always enjoy every moment of the ride, I love writing and am committed to embracing the inevitable ups and downs without getting too nauseous.

Quote of the Week

I’m currently reading We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad, which is a follow-up to her novel Bunny, about a woman attending a prestigious MFA writing program who learns that others in her fiction writing cohort are engaged in some very unorthodox behavior. This exchange at the beginning of We Love You, Bunny had me hooked immediately:

Don’t be afraid, Mother laughed when she said goodbye earlier. It’s only an art degree, for god’s sake, Button. Just writing stories, isn’t it?

Yes, Mother, I’d said, not wanting to get into it. That it was my actual fucking soul in those stories.

Happy Pub Day for Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away

Congrats to great author and friend Reyna Marder Gentin on the publication today of her latest novel, Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away. This book has received a lot of excellent advanced buzz, and I very much enjoyed Reyna’s last novel, Both Are True. Can’t wait to read this new one!

You can learn more and get your copy here and here!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 29 at 6pm ET, I’ll be joining excellent author and former sex crimes prosecutor Allison Leotta for a discussion of our novels and how our experiences investigating sexual misconduct helped shape these stories, moderated by Christopher Edwards. Allison is the author of five great novels - Law of Attraction, Discretion, Speak of the Devil, A Good Killing, and The Last Good Girl.

Free registration is open to everyone here, and you can attend either via Zoom or in-person in New York City. Please come with any questions you have about these issues and our novels - hope you can join us!

Firebird Book Awards

I’m excited to share that Open Bar was just selected as the Fiction Winner in the Firebird Book Awards. The full awards list is available here.

Earlier this year, the American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the “Thriller: Political” category.

Quote of the Week

“I myself would rather be torn to pieces by a pack of feral cats than allow people to lay eyes on the deformed abomination that is an early draft of one of my novels.” - , Is Harper Lee Rolling in Her Grave?

Book Club Recap

Thank you to everyone who joined a very interesting, lively, and fun Book Club discussion of A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles last week. I really enjoyed this compelling and original novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel. In addition to very memorable writing and characters, this book taught me a lot about Russian history, the value of gold coins, and proper wine selection.

Info about our next Book Club selection and meeting is coming soon!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

Welcome New Subscribers!

Thank you so much for joining me on my reading, writing, and publishing journey. I welcome all of your comments, questions, and suggestions for future newsletters. If you already subscribe, please share with other readers and writers:

Share

Twenty years ago this month I had one of the most fascinating, strange, and disturbing experiences of my life when I traveled into North Korea for four days with a tour group from Beijing, where I lived while teaching law at Tsinghua University. My North Korea experience played a major role in my depiction of the fictional Kingdom in my debut novel Final Table.

I kept a blog at the time, and I’m reposting below what I originally wrote about the third and fourth days of that trip. You can also check out my posts about Day One and Day Two. I recently re-read this account for the first time in years, and I found it interesting to revisit this trip to North Korea twenty years later, and to see that, despite how much the world has changed over that time, so much has remained the same.

North Korea: Day Three (October 2005)

Monday morning I went down to our hotel lobby and saw a newspaper out on a counter - the English-language Pyongyang Times. The main news was the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea. A letter to the paper commented on the Arirang performance, saying that it was “convincing proof of unity and invincibility of the Workers’ Party of Korea.”

No news about other countries. No sports scores. No crossword puzzle.

After two days in North Korea, the restrictiveness and relentless propaganda was getting to me a little. I had expected that our trip would be that way, but it was another thing to actually experience two days in which we always had to ask permission before walking anywhere or taking a photograph and couldn’t interact with anyone other than those introduced to us. We were always in a confined area, beyond which we were not to venture.

Additionally, the intensity of the DPRK’s message was nonstop - images of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jung-il seemingly everywhere and militaristic/patriotic music playing in many locations. Korean phrases displayed with huge letters around Pyongyang seemed to almost always end with an exclamation mark. It’s not a nation of subtlety.

Virtually everything, virtually everywhere, had something to do with these two men. We were even told that there was recently a huge festival in Pyongyang that featured two flowers named - ready for this? - the kimjungilia and the kimilsungia. Really.

I’d never seen or experienced anything like it. It was tiresome. It was frustrating. It was also incredibly fascinating.

Our first stops on Monday morning were the Monsudae Art Theater and the Grand People’s Study House. We didn’t go inside either of them, but it was a great area for photographs.

Next we went to the Monsudae Grand Monument, which featured a towering statue of Kim Il-sung, erected in 1972 on the occasion of his 60th birthday. We received careful instructions before approaching it - the monument was a “sacred, holy place” and we could only take photographs that featured the full statue. Cutting off part of the statue in a photograph was considered very sacrilegious, with the worst offense being if one merely took photographs of his feet.

The statue is very dramatic, with Kim Il-sung’s left hand behind his back and right hand stretched out grandly in front of him.

One member of our group got scolded for mimicking the statue as he posed for a photo in front of it.

As people approached the statue, they generally placed flowers at Kim Il-sung’s feet and then bowed to him. A group of North Koreans stood in front for a while, staring up at the massive figure as one of them spoke in Korean. This was definitely a place of great significance.

Next, we went to a Korean War museum, called the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum. It was time to learn more history about the conflict.

A female guide steered us through the museum. She started by telling us that the U.S. invaded South Korea “under pretext” of disarming the Japanese. The U.S. then set up a “South Korean puppet army...in the name of aid.” She next said that the Americans sent the “South Korean puppet army to invade the North.” Once the North Koreans ultimately fought back and took Seoul, then the U.S. forces themselves entered the conflict.

She talked with us about how the North Koreans, under the leadership of “the Great Leader Kim Il-sung,” wanted to liberate South Korea and how they “liberated” 90% of South Korean territory and 92% of its population before the U.S. brought in more forces and pushed the North Koreans back. There were many exhibits, one with a narrator who continually referred to the “U.S. imperialist aggressors.” Another dealt with accusing America of conducting biological warfare against North Korea by dropping poison bugs onto their territory.

Our guide also commented on George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” statement - she wasn’t too fond of it. But she did say that “normal American people are friendly.” She also said that “North Korean people hate Bush,” to which one woman in our American tour group quickly replied, “We do too.”

As I mentioned earlier, in general I have no problem with people hating the president and saying so. Furthermore, showing the North Koreans that we can dislike our own leaders and freely talk about them in a negative way can be healthy because it is a stark contrast to their world in which their leadership must be revered and can not be questioned.

However, North Korea is a nation in which the leaders use hatred of America to manipulate, control, and oppress their people. The citizens only hear how terrible the American government and president are - they don’t have access to any contrary information that can lead them to an informed opinion. Here the Americans were aiding and abetting the propaganda of the North Korean government.

I had heard other similar statements on the trip, but this comment stood out and infuriated me even more because of the use of the word “we” - she was appearing to represent the whole group, including me. I didn’t want to get into an argument, but I had to speak up.

“Not all of us,” I said, and left it at that.

Right after this, I heard another in our group explaining to a North Korean guide how “Bush represents corporations...not regular people.” He was confirming for a citizen of a socialist nation that businesses and the “regular people” are at odds. Great.

The museum also featured Korean War vehicles and weaponry - those used by North Korea and those captured from the Americans. Exhibits and guides talked about North Korean successes, such as the sinking of the USS Baltimore, which we were told was “one of the greatest feats of the war.” This story, like many at the museum, was in direct conflict with U.S. information. This “greatest feat” involved the sinking of a ship that was decommissioned in 1956 and sold for scrapping sixteen years later.

It seemed like everything we saw involved Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jung-il, North Korean nationalism, the Korean War, and/or American imperialism. So I thought it might be a nice departure when we visited a film studio, where North Korean movies are shot. The land had streets set to look like different countries and time periods, but none of America, and none of modern, prosperous South Korea.

North Korea has one television station, and from what I saw of it, there’s always something very dramatic happening in the plots while overpowering music swells. People seem to be always in the midst of tragedy or overcoming tragedy.

A nice woman at the studio talked with us and said that they “mainly make history movies.” She said there were “socialist movies,” “revolutionary movies,” movies about the “people’s life,” and movies about the “farmer’s life.” I asked if they ever make comedies and she said they do make some light-hearted films, but that they still had revolutionary/socialist themes.

There were some actors playing soldiers from the time of the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392) and I took a photo with them. They didn’t offer me a part.

Next stop was a monument to the Workers’ Party of Korea, erected ten years ago on the fiftieth anniversary of its founding. It shows a hammer, sickle, and calligrapher’s brush, representing the workers, famers, and intellectuals - the three classes of people in North Korea, all considered equals.

It was then time for lunch - we ate inside an opera theater building, which on the outside had a large portrait of a woman who we were told was fighting against the Japanese.

We then went to see the USS Pueblo, the American ship that was captured by the North Koreans in 1968 after it was found spying off their coast. One crew member was killed when it was seized and the others were detained for almost a year before being finally released. We were told the ship was kept as “a trophy” and now sits at the site where Koreans attacked the USS General Sherman in 1866 and killed its crew.

“This place,” one of our guides said, “we allocate anti-U.S.”

“Just this place?” I asked sarcastically. “Where’s the pro-U.S. part?”

No response.

We were guided through the Pueblo by a North Korean man in uniform who had been involved with the capture in 1968 as a 28-year-old. Now, thirty-seven years later, he was showing the vessel to Americans, through a translator.

We walked around the ship and then were taken to a room and shown a video about the history of the Pueblo. The narrator called it a “spyship of the U.S. imperialist forces” and said that the members of the crew confessed and said themselves that they “were treated better than they deserved.”

As images of President Johnson, the Pueblo crew, and others were shown on the television screen, the narrator explained how the “brazen-faced American imperialists” went to the UN for assistance but that “many countries...condemned the American imperialists.”

Finally, “the enemy kneeled down before the Korean people and issued an apology.” The crew was released or, as the narrator put it, “The aggressors were driven out of our country...without any dignity.” He continued, “The U.S. imperialists...were now running downhill.”

It was a “victory of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung and the glorious Workers’ Party of Korea” following “crimes of the U.S. imperialists against the Korean people.”

If I had a North Korean won every time America was called an imperialist on this trip, I’d be a rich man.

Our group didn’t say much after the video ended, but a friend of mine who went on the same trip a week ago said that one American guy actually started clapping upon the film’s conclusion.

Following the film, the guide who had been involved with the Pueblo capture said to us, “I hope you don’t support the war policy of your government.”

Next we went to the Pyongyang metro and took a subway ride one stop. Even here there was no escape from the North Korean propaganda machine, with a station named with the Korean word for “glory,” the same patriotic/militaristic music playing, and images of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jung-il in the station and on each subway car.

The most thrilling part of the subway visit was that we as we walked in the metro system we were in the middle of North Koreans - not tour guides, people working at touristy places, or others visiting a place of national significance. These were regular citizens, traveling from one place to another, going about their lives in Pyongyang.

It was great - very exciting. We waved and smiled to people and for the most part they waived and smiled back, especially the children. One girl on the subway car looked scared and on the verge of tears though - quite understandable, as about twenty-five “American imperialists” had just emerged onto her car, surrounding her. But mostly we got curious looks and smiles and it was one of the highlights of the trip. We still hadn’t talked with “regular” citizens but we were finally, actually interacting with them, albeit only through warm looks and gestures.

After the metro, we were taken to a souvenir shop. As with other souvenir places we saw, there wasn’t a lot to buy - the country definitely is not set up to accommodate and benefit from the buying power of tourists. One of our guides told us that although this place was limited, in North Korean department stores, “you can find anything you can find in your country or other countries.”

Right. I hadn’t seen a North Korean department store, but I was very skeptical.

I did find one interesting thing to purchase though - a set of North Korean postage stamps that featured the theme of space travel. Next to the stamps was a history of space exploration, mentioning early atronomer activity and Soviet accomplishments. There was no reference at all to American involvement in space travel, nothing at all about landing on the moon. One of the other guys on my trip actually mentioned the moon landings to one of our guides, and the guide said that he was unaware that they had happened.

We next went to an impressive school for children who excel in the performing arts called the Children’s Palace - an exquisite structure with marble columns inside.

We were taken from room to room to see the students. In the first classroom, cute North Korean schoolgirls were dancing, while in others, students were playing the piano and drawing. All of this occurred under the watchful eyes of the Kims, whose photos were of course hanging in each classroom.

It was very nice, but it all had a disturbing Stepford quality to it. It was perfect - too perfect. In the drawing class, for example, students sat hunched over impressive, detailed works, with their drawing implements moving around the paper. But we began to notice that none of them were actually drawing - they were just doing light shading or moving their hands over the works meaninglessly, sometimes turning back to us to see if we were gone yet.

We all had dinner on a boat (that stayed tied to the dock) and then returned to house arrest in our hotel for the evening. Some of us took advantage of the freedom to walk within 100 meters of the entrance and entered a nearby stamp shop and looked around. One stamp from 1966 showed an American soldier being brutally attacked by a North Korean man while a crowd in the background cheered and held banners.

Yes, we were very far from home, having experienced another very full day in a world unlike anything I had ever seen. Many of us spent the final evening in North Korea at our hotel’s revolving restaurant - talking, drinking, and looking out at the city of Pyongyang at night.

North Korea: Day Four (October 2005)

My alarm went off at 5:30am on Tuesday morning. It was time to leave the “hermit kingdom.” It had been an extremely interesting trip, very well organized by the tour group company.

We all met in the lobby of our hotel and boarded the buses to the airport. Over the past three days we had spent a lot of time with our guides and really bonded with them. As we began to say goodbye, one of them said to us that he hopes we leave with a “good image for this country.”

There was no doubt that we had a very good image of the North Korean people - absolutely. The North Koreans I met were extremely friendly, gracious hosts, and very interesting and enjoyable people with whom to talk.

As we parted, some in my group began giving their e-mail addresses to the guides. It was a normal thing to want to do - we genuinely liked them and wanted to keep in touch. But it was also odd and sad, because I knew they weren’t allowed to have access to the internet and the contact with the outside world that it would bring them. I did, however, give out my e-mail. Maybe one day I’ll receive an e-mail from Pyongyang. Maybe one day freedom will begin to spread to the DPRK.

At the airport, on a television screen a video showed North Koreans marching, then smiling and happily drinking beer as a woman sang. The narrator declared, “Korean style socialism is advancing.”

Two hours after boarding our flight, we landed in Beijing and exited onto the terminal. China is no free country, but I felt extremely liberated - I was at that moment more aware of my liberties than at any other time in my life. I could walk around. I could talk with people. I could explore, travel, call people, check the internet (albeit with some blocked sites). It felt incredible.

My experience in North Korea was invaluable - a limited and controlled, but still fascinating and unique visit to a nation virtually shut off from the rest of the globe. It was often frustrating to be so restricted, and it was routinely sad to see good people living under such an oppressive regime. I hope to return one day and see more of North Korea, and to see its people enjoy the fruits of freedom.

Sexual Misconduct in Fiction - Zoom and In-Person Event (October 29)

I’m excited to share that on Wednesday, October 29 at 6pm, I’ll be joining fabulous author and former sex crimes prosecutor Allison Leotta for a discussion of our novels and how our experiences investigating sexual misconduct helped shape these stories. Free registration is open to everyone here, and you can attend either via Zoom or in-person in New York City. Hope you can join us!

Open Bar Info

My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the “Thriller: Political” category - you can see the full awards list here.

You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.

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