Lindsay Prevette — News and Blog

this spring i have four publications, including my new hardcover LITTLE NIGHT, and to celebrate, we have redone the website. i'm so thankful to adrian kinloch, photographer and web designer, and andrew duncan, marketing manager at viking, for working so hard and making the site so beautiful (and easy for me to use, so i can share lots of writing, photos, and videos with you.) lindsay prevette, publicity manager at viking/penguin, and meghan fallon, of viking publicity, have been wonderful in providing material for the new site and getting the word out about all our news. ted o'gorman continues to be amazing, both as writer of his own fiction and in keeping my site and facebook running well.

tomorrow, april 17, BLUE MOON will be available as an e-book for the first time ever--the novel was first published in 1993, and was based on a true-life fishing boat incident off the connecticut and rhode island coastlines. the novel has been out in paperback, and was made into a cbs movie of the week, but this is it's e-debut.

THE SILVER BOAT comes out in trade paperback on may 29--the novel is very dear to me, and i must admit i love the cover and its shingled beach house. it's set on martha's vineyard, one of my favorite places, and deals with three sisters visiting their beloved summer cottage for the last time.

HOW WE STARTED is an e-special-- two short stories linked to LITTLE NIGHT and THE SILVER BOAT. the first story, "miss martha's vineyard", visits the characters harrison and rory of the silver boat, back when they were young and trying not to be in love. the second, "paul and clare," is a prequel to little night, and tells about their dreams of love, nature, new york city, and how they're destined to be both so right and so wrong.

i hope you'll enjoy the changes on my website, and i can't wait for you to read these four new releases.

on another, thrilling note, there was a starred review of LITTLE NIGHT in today's publisher's weekly.

I had such a wonderful time doing this interview with Emily Achenbaum Harris. I'm very grateful to Baker & Taylor, and to Emily, for their support--and to the always amazing Lindsay Prevette for putting us together.

Author Spotlight from Baker & Taylor Forecast

Luanne Rice

New York Times best-selling novelist Luanne Rice is used to mining her own life to tell tales of family, friendship and love. But for her 27th book, The Silver Boat (Viking, April 2011), Rice says her writing is more personal — and darker — than what readers have seen before. The Silver Boat follows a trio of sisters grappling with addiction, strained marriages and a parent who isn’t around to give answers. Rice chatted with Forecast from the East Coast, where she splits her time between New York City and a beach cottage in Olde Lyme, Conn., which inspired some scenes in The Silver Boat.

Forecast: The Silver Boat centers around the larger-than-life role a house can play in our dreams and family dynamics. What drew you to that? Luanne Rice: My grandparents had a beach house where my sisters and I spent every summer. One of the most touching things for me is we come from a working class family, so I was really in awe that they pulled the money together to buy the land and build the cottage. I had this sort of vision of becoming the family matriarch myself and keeping the house going the way my mother had. But when my mother died, it was like the light went out of the house, and my sisters and I had different ideas as to what to do with it. It made me reflect on what a house means—Is it just a setting? Real estate? Is it a repository of dreams? We put it on the market, but didn’t clean it up—this was psychological—let it look like a small-scale Grey Gardens. It didn’t sell. I eventually decided to buy my sisters out, and it’s wonderful having it.

FC: A ghost ship appears as we follow the sisters’ search for clues to their father, a boatbuilder, presumed shipwrecked in Ireland decades earlier. What is it about the sea that conjures up such feelings of being lost or haunted?

LR: I grew up in New England, where the coast is strewn with shipwrecks. There is so much mystery about the sea; it’s vast and the elements are so intense. On a foggy day, you’re not sure what you’re seeing, and that makes you feel anything is possible. When you lose somebody, and it’s so unfinished, with so many questions, you want so badly to have that person back. When their father disappeared, it makes sense they would look to the sea.

FC: You’ve written more than two dozen books since your first novel was published in 1985. What keeps you going? LR: My mother always encouraged my writing. When I was a child, she would hold workshops

around our family’s oak table. She’d have us write down descriptions of rocks and sand. I felt like I couldn’t stop writing. There was a long spell when I got things back in self-addressed envelopes. My mother was so thrilled to see me become a writer and get published. I miss being able to tell her news of jacket art. Writing can be an isolating job; it’s me and the three cats. But I am very active on my website and forums and it’s wonderful, because you can open up a screen and suddenly all those people are there.

Luanne's News and Blog