Joseph Wallace's Blog

As of January 2015, the Marmaduke Writing Factory has closed its doors. During its four years as writing refuge for a dozen or so different writers, the factory workers produced thousands of words and several books. (View each worker’s profile to learn more about their projects.)

The website will be around for another 9 months or so, for you to enjoy the past blog posts and links. Meanwhile, we continue to get queries from Westchester County writers looking for companionship on their rather lonely writing journey. While we are no longer sharing the Marmaduke office space, we are your comrades-in-arms, and wish you all the very best as you continue to labor tirelessly to produce your “sturdy and spare sentences” and “fully formed characters.”

Onwards and upwards!

The post The Writing Factory has closed appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

It’s something I do. In short stories like “Liminal” (from Baltimore Noir) “Custom Sets,” (The Prosecution Rests) and the forthcoming “Jaguar” (forthcoming in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine), and in my novel Diamond Ruby, I place quiet, modest, seemingly powerless young women at the center of the plot. And then I let the fun begin.

Why do I keep doing it? I have my reasons, as I explain in this blog post, written for EQMM’s blog, “Something Is Going To Happen.”

The post Male Writer, Female Protagonists appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

What book–or books–did you read as a teenager that became part of you forever? We know there was at least one, and if you’re anywhere near Pleasantville, NY, on the evening of Monday, June 9, we’d love to hear all about it. Stop by the Marmaduke Writing Factory and join a big, sprawling conversation among us factory workers and the audience, with everyone (including those of us who haven’t been a teenager for quite awhile) going home with a list of new books to check out…and reminders of old favorites, too.

It’s free! Refreshments (including chocolate-chip cookies baked by MWF’s own Joe Wallace) will be served. All ages welcome.

Hope to see you there!

The post BOOKSTRUCK Event: Monday, June 9th! appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

In 1981, when I was twenty-three, I quit my job at a legal publisher in NYC and decided to chase my dream of being a writer. At first, unsurprisingly, that involved many long days writing queries to magazines and struggling with a novel. And plenty of free time.

Sharon was working long hours as an editor at a small magazine, and after about three days she came home and said, “Explain something to me. I’m at work all day, you’re here, and I’m STILL expected to make dinner. Why is that?”

I was horrified and embarrassed to have fallen into that sexist habit, but she was right…I had no explanation. The next day I went out to Womrath’s Bookstore nearby and bought an Indian cookbook (photo attached), and then down to the East Twenties for supplies.

I’ll never forget all those long afternoons I spent in our tiny kitchen in our apartment on East 91st Street (at the time, amazingly, a “frontier”), music blasting, working my way through that book. I felt like a mad scientist (Turmeric! Cumin! Garam Masala!) and despite plenty of fiascos, I felt like I was accomplishing something. Learning. I still love cooking Indian food.

Well, I was just telling this story today, and someone said, “You should have written a memoir! It would have been a bestseller.” And I realized: He was right. I could have been Deb! Julie! Orangette! That could have been my splashy introduction to a writing career, instead of my long, slow slog to where I am now.

Alas for 1) the Internet not existing yet and 2) my not recognizing the niche right in front of me.

The post The Bestseller That Never Was appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

I love this “Bugs of Literature“ flow chart created for Book Riot  by Jenn Northington, events coordinator at WORD Bookstore in Brooklyn and Jersey City, New Jersey. I especially love that Jenn included Invasive Species as one of the chart’s endpoints, alongside everything from The Hobbit to The Once and Future King to Dracula.

Sometimes the Internet brings a little unexpected joy to a writer’s life.

The post In Great Buggy Company appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

How could have I missed this gif?! It could have been Invasive Species‘ second teaser, while bestowing the coveted Oprah Endorsement on the novel as well!

(Well, not really. But a writer can dream, can’t he?)

Click here or on the image below to see what I mean:

 

The post The INVASIVE SPECIES Book Trailer That Wasn’t appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

The best thing about Tuesday’s launch of the anthology Ice Cold at The Mysterious Bookshop on Tuesday: Getting to see Laura Lippman, Sarah Weinman, Reed Farrel Coleman, all of whom were so supportive of my first forays into writing fiction. They know how important to me they’ve been.

But there was also a grace note for me: Near the end of the event, I spotted the author Robert Crais across the room. Bob and I had known each other only via the AOL Hardboiled Board fifteen years ago. But back then, when I only dreamed of a fiction career, he too was very encouraging. His confidence helped give me the nerve to take the leap.

I was able to go over, shake his hand, and thank him in person. It was something I’d been waiting a long time to do. And it only made me realize again how surreal this journey has been to me. How fortunate I am to have kept writing, kept trying, and to find myself here today.

The post Where I Am, Where I Came From appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

The magnificent, Nobel-Prizewinning writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez died yesterday. You can read a fitting tribute to him by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times here.

It’s rare for me to be able remember where I was when I read a novel, even a favorite, but I remember exactly where I was when I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez’s first masterpiece. That memory remains intertwined with my memories of the book itself, which now serves as a kind of window to a time when I felt as if one book could change my whole view of the world.

It was 1978, spring break of my junior year of college. My English professor had assigned One Hundred Years of Solitude in Gregory Rabassa’s outstanding translation, and I’d just finished the book’s breathtaking final passage. I will never forget lying in my bed at my parents’ house in Brooklyn at 3:00 AM, staring at the ceiling, my heart pounding so hard I could hear the blood moving around inside my body. I knew I wouldn’t sleep again that night; I wondered if I’d ever sleep again without experiencing dreams as vivid as the ones Garcia Marquez had conjured up in his novel.

I can’t say that Garcia Marquez inspired me to be a writer;  before I knew his name, I dreamed of writing my own novels. But One Hundred Years…., along with Love in the Time of Cholera, Innocent Erendira, and his other works, showed me how much joy and humanity writers can pour into creating worlds, universes, if they hold nothing back. But that was the key, the lesson I would never forget: Hold nothing back.

The post Lessons from Gabriel Garcia Marquez appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

This bracelet was created for me by the wildly wonderful Liberty Hardy, bookseller extraordinaire at the equally wonderful RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Coolest thing? It incorporates all the colors from the cover of Invasive Species, my latest novel.

Sometimes the most memorable parts of the whole book-publishing experience are also the most unexpected. This one ranks right up there with the best.

The post Invasive Bracelet! appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.

A friend who lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was looking for books for his adventurous 9-year-old daughter, who is being raised bilingually and is hungry for books in English. I had some ideas of my own, but it was more fun to ask my friends on Facebook.

Boy, did they come through! Here’s the first selection–many suggested by more than one reader–accompanied by my short comments, linked to a wonderful children’s bookstore, Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis. More to come!

Elisabeth Enright, THE SATURDAYS (This is a wonderful book about kids in NYC back the 1940s.)

Beverly Cleary, RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE EIGHT (and the rest of this charming series)

 Jeanne Birdsall, THE PENDERWICKS (Four girls having adventures)


Louise Fitzhugh, HARRIET THE SPY (Still a masterpiece)


Mary Pope Osborn, THE MAGIC TREEHOUSE books (Simpler stories than most of those listed. My son loved them at this age.)


E.L. Konigsburg, FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER (another NYC-based classic)


Walter Brooks, FREDDY THE PIG and its 30 sequels. (About a pig and other barnyard animals…Jacob adored these books.)


Sydney Taylor, ALL-OF-A-KIND FAMILY (Another NYC-set tale!)


Roald Dahl, MATILDA


E. B. White, CHARLOTTE’S WEB


Wendy Mass, TWICE UPON A TIME: RAPUNZEL, THE ONE WITH ALL THE HAIR (and its fractured-fairy-tale sequels.)


Maud Hart Lovelace, BETSY-TACY and its sequels. (Vivid, charming portraits of life in mid-twentieth-century America. A huge favorite of my daughter’s.)


C.S. Lewis, THE LION, THE WITCH, AND THE WARDROBE 


Madeleine L’Engle, A WRINKLE IN TIME


Kevin Henkes, JUNONIA (A lovely portrait of a thoughtful, wise young girl.)

The post Bookstruck: Crowdsourcing For a 9-Year-Old Reader appeared first on Marmaduke Writing Factory.