Catherine McKenzie

In an early scene in the movie version of The Hunger Games, the heroine, Katniss, is being primped and cleaned within an inch of her life -- she even has her formerly untamed eyebrows plucked into a confirming line -- all for one purpose. She's about to meet...

It's time for The Bachelorette again: one woman, 25 men. What could go wrong?

Well, based on past seasons, a lot. Will they all be there for the "right reasons," presumably being finding someone they can fall in love with and marry? Doubtful. Maybe the quest for love is...

Spin is about a journalist who follows a celebrity into rehab to get the inside scoop. I'm often asked what inspired the book, whether it's based on my own experiences or on a real celebrity. The answer to the first question is: no. The answer to the second...

Ever since I learned (from a blog post by prominent author, and prolific Twitter user, Jennifer Weiner) that the popular #FridayReads movement on Twitter, run by @thebookmaven, is, now a business rather than a not-for-profit endeavor, I've been trying to decide how I feel about it.

Quick...

The last article I wrote about Twitter (What Twitter Taught Me), was about my neophyte adventures in cyberspace. So, it's fitting, I think, that my second Twitter-themed outing should also be about space -- actual space this time. And though I wouldn't be going to space myself (though...

As someone who has recently taken a keener interest in social media as it relates to books -- check out my "Author Effect" project on Facebook where I've been trying to bring attention to some deserving books (Jessica Z. and Two Years, No Rain by Shawn...

A couple of weeks ago a very nice reader of mine sent me her list of favorite books because she thought I might want to read some of the books that she loved. I was, of course, pleased to see that my own book was on the list, but I...

Over the past couple of months, I've been exploring the nature of book giveaways, particularly in conjunction with my project on Facebook ("I bet we can make these books bestsellers," which is currently promoting two great books by Shawn Klomparens -- Jessica Z. and...

Regular readers of this column (Wait. Do four previous blogs make a column? Can you even make a column out of blogs? Will have to look that up in OED. Anyway), may remember that a few weeks ago I wrote a blog entitled "Do Author Giveaways Work?" where...

A few weeks ago I read an interview with Beatrice.com's founder, Ron Hogan. One of the questions he was asked was his advice to writers. His answer, in part, was: "Don't obsess over your Amazon rankings." Good advice, I thought, when I read this, having flirted...

A few months ago, when I started my Facebook campaign to make deserving books bestsellers ("I bet we can make these books bestsellers" -- current selections are Jessica Z. and Two Years, No Rain by Shawn Klomparens -- both excellent in my...

When I first joined Facebook several years ago it was for the express purpose the name implies: I was looking to reconnect with some old classmates I'd lost touch with. And it worked. Turned out many of my old gang of high school friends were already on Facebook. We reconnected,...

Authors these days are bombarded with a constant message: social media is the place to be to sell books. Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads etc., you've got to be on these sites to build awareness, and awareness = book sales.

But is this one of those truisms that nobody's verified? And how...