The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is writing a children's book. Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar is about Richard's grandfather, Theodore Augustus Dupree, who encouraged Richards' musical aspirations. Richards plans to collaborate on the text with Barnaby Harris and Bill Shapiro, and his daughter Theodora Dupree Richards will illustrate it. "I have just become a grandfather for the fifth time, so I know what I'm talking about," Richards said in a statement. "The bond, the special bond, between kids and grandparents is unique and should be treasured. This is a story of one of those magical moments. May I be as great a grandfather as Gus was to me." Little, Brown Books for Young Readers expects to release the book in September.
According to a Vanity Fair profile, the creators of HBO's Game of Thrones series know how George R.R. Martin's books will end. (If this were Game of Thrones, they would be mobbed and then ritually tortured until they revealed the ending.)
The 2014 Twitter Fiction Festival, "an all-day, all-night celebration of storytelling on Twitter," is launching on Wednesday. Among other scheduled delights, Anthony Marra will plumb "the erotic inner life of Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey." A story by Emma Straub is called, "How to Go On Vacation with a Man You've Just Started Sleeping With, a guide." And Alexander McCall Smith will tweet four short stories, the most intriguing of which is "The Sociopath's Ball," described thusly: "The social season in Palm Beach is in full swing. The socialites plan a charity ball for sociopaths."
Mindy Project creator Mindy Kaling is writing a second book, she told an audience at SXSW. She didn't reveal any more details.
In an interview with Tin House, Rachel Kushner talks about writing Reno, the solitary main character of her novel The Flamethrowers: "I wanted to be unafraid of extremes and of cruelty. I wanted the main character to navigate a world that starts to seem, for the reader, increasingly cruel. I wanted the main character to have nowhere to turn. It was simply an instinct. That was actually the way I was guided to build the narrative structure: by the end, there would be no place for her to turn. Life is like that, to some degree. You turn toward yourself, a lifelong relation you can count on."
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