Authors

We were saddened yesterday to hear of the death of novelist Mary Wilbon, who came to New York in the 1970s to pursue a career as a Broadway actress and eventually wound up as an employee of the U.S. Department of Labor (doing such an outstanding job that she received a letter of recommendation from then-vice president Al Gore). Wilbon stayed active in community theater near her home in northern New Jersey, but she also published two novels with Kensington: Naughty Little Secrets in 2004, and One Last Kiss in February of this year. "Mary’s effervescent personality will be missed by all those who knew her," Kensington said in its notice of Wilbon's death following a short illness. "Her last wishes included any donations to be sent to the Human Rights Campaign and local chapters of the ASPCA."

"This isn't a recent photo," she once wrote about the headshot at left, "but damn it, she was determined to get some use out of the headshots she paid for."

Federal Judge Deborah Batts decided today that a Swedish author could not publish his follow-up to "The Catcher in the Rye."

Earlier this month, the judge issued a temporary order blocking author Fredrik Colting from publishing "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye"--a novel revisiting characters from a classic J.D. Salinger novel. According to the AP Batts ultimately rejected two main claims by the defense, that the book was a parody and critique of Salinger's original work.

Here's more from the article: "[Batts noted that] Colting and his publishers made no indication before the lawsuit was filed that the book was meant as a parody or critique of Salinger's work. 'Quite to the contrary, the original jacket of '60 Years' states that it is '... a marvelous sequel to one of our most beloved classics,'' the judge noted."

When the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that author and comedian Al Franken had won his U.S. Senate seat yesterday, the Internet simmered with a mix of jubilant, angry, and relieved posts.

On the Morning Media Menu, ABC News' senior political reporter Rick Klein analyzed both sides of the debate. One GalleyCat reader had these thoughts: "We are living in a US nightmare. Too many crazy Dems in political office ... and now a crude comedian. Please, someone make a time machine and take me back to the Dark Ages, when times were better."

Even GalleyCat editor Ron Hogan tweeted his opinion: "Dear Republicans: A party that holds Fred Dalton Thompson in high esteem can just shut the hell up about Al Franken, thank you very much."

This afternoon the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously decided that comedian, author, and Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken should receive the election certificate that would give him a seat in the United States Senate --ruling that Franken won the highly-contested race.

According to the Star Tribune, the ruling upheld a lower court's decision rejecting Republican Norm Coleman's claims that he had unfairly lost the close election last fall. Franken is the author of bestselling political books like "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" and "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot"

Here's the court's ruling: "Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled [under Minnesota law] to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota."

How did the mainstream media miss the real estate bubble? On today's Morning Media Menu, journalist Alyssa Katz talked about her new book, "Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us"--criticizing journalists' failure to report on foreclosures and bad housing loans before the recession.

In the book's reviews, journalists and scholars have repeated the same refrain: we needed this book before the foreclosure crisis. During the interview, Katz gave publishers and authors clues to writing future books about real estate--helping avoid the mistakes that plunged this country into a deep recession.

The show was hosted by GalleyCat editor Jason Boog and AgencySpy editor Matt Van Hoven. You can listen to all the past podcasts at the Morning Media Menu page.

The late pop singer Michael Jackson published three books during his lifetime, and read like a writer--he reportedly owned 10,000 books and shopped at Los Angeles bookstores throughout his career.

According to an LA Times interview with the former owners of Dutton's Books, Jackson would occasionally visit the Brentwood bookstore. He gravitated towards the poetry section, and his favorite poet was Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The article also quoted Bob Sanger, Jackson's lawyer: "We talked about psychology, Freud and Jung, Hawthorne, sociology, black history and sociology dealing with race issues ... But he was very well read in the classics of psychology and history and literature . . . Freud and Jung -- go down the street and try and find five people who can talk about Freud and Jung."

As GalleyCat editor Ron Hogan explained so well this morning, novelist Alice Hoffman made waves in the Twitter-stream yesterday when she published critic Roberta Silman's telephone number and email address on Twitter--urging her fans to respond to a review in The Boston Globe.

The Twitter page with the post in question has disappeared but Hoffman still uses this Twitter page. The post generated a long stream of responses about the heightened interaction between authors, critics, and readers in the 21st Century.

This morning, three MediaBistro editors (no strangers to reader criticism themselves) debated this Twitter-versy during the Morning Media Menu. In addition, Afterward, Edward Champion, Literary Saloon, and Gawker analyzed the tweet read 'round the literary world.

In the wake of Michael Jackson's tragic death last week, Macmillan decided to reprint 85,000 copies of Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness--a biography by J. Randy Taraborrelli.

According to Bookseller, the book has jumped to the top of the Amazon bestseller list, and is currently listed out-of-stock in the UK. Last week GalleyCat collected the books Jackson wrote during his lifetime, and we wonder if any reprints are scheduled for these long out-of-print titles.

Here's more from the article: "However, no new book on Jackson appears to have been commissioned since Taraborrelli's book, and this is the only title on the singer in Amazon.co.uk's top 100 list."

Most readers remember L. Ron Hubbard as the founder of Scientology and a science fiction writer, but one publisher just celebrated the pulp fiction author's 30 westerns--books based on memories from his Montana childhood.

Hubbard's publisher, Galaxy Press, attended the 2009 Western Writers of America (WWA) Conference this week, pitching Hubbard's 80 novels and 150 pulp fiction stories written during the 1930s and '40s. The publisher hopes to release the author's whole pulp output over a six-year schedule.

Here's more from John Goodwin, president of the press: "[Hubbard's] familiarity with the real locale lets any reader really experience the excitement of another time and place ... The Series represents one of the largest releases of short fiction ever published for a single author ... We're hoping to make publishing history."

Boston Globe food columnist Adam Ried got one of his best column ideas ever when a late-night case of the munchies led him to try making a milkshake out of chocolate sorbet. "It was so much better than the mocha shakes I'd made with chocolate syrup," he recalled, and soon he had a bunch of people over to test-drive some more variations. ("It's not hard to find friends to taste milkshakes," he confided.) One guest sprinkled cardamom into the mocha shake; Ried loved the results, and the column wound up focusing on a batch of similar "twists."

From there, he went on to develop Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes, and one of the first questions we had when we met him for drinks at The Stand was whether there were any flavors he hadn't been able to refine to his satisfaction...

Once he got started experimenting, it was hard to stop. "The contract was for 50 shakes," he said of the book deal, "and I think I ended up with 110." Working on a tight deadline (less than five months), he wound up test-driving 100 variations during a visit with his sister; "I shudder at how many calories I consumed that one week," he reflected—sure, a couple slurps would've given him an idea of the flavor, but how would he know if it was enduring without testing the entire glass? Afterwards, he joked, his doctor suggested his next book should be about "the wonders of dressing lettuce with plain lemon juice."

That's not the actual idea he's working on, of course, but he is working out a concept for a second book at his own pace. In the meantime, he's enjoying the wide range of dishes he gets to tinker with through his Globe column. Prior to that gig, he wrote for Cook's Illustrated, where "it's all about meatloaf and apple pie, so that's what I did." (Not that he's knocking it: He notes that the magazine was able to attract a million subscribers in under 15 years by focusing on those basics, and he still writes for the sister publication, Cook's Country—along with a recurring role on PBS's America's Test Kitchen.) "Some of my other friends who write cookbooks tease me for going too slow as I write recipes," he added, "but I do want to at least try the obvious variations. I don't know how people do those books with 1,000 recipes. It would take me years without a staff."