Nan McCarthy

author of Since You Went Away, Chat, Connect, Crash, & Live ’Til I Die

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    • Since You Went Away, Part One: Winter
    • Chat: book one
    • Connect: book two
    • Crash: book three
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    • Buy: Since You Went Away (Part One: Winter)
    • Buy: Chat (book 1)
    • Buy: Connect (book 2)
    • Buy: Crash (book 3)
    • Buy: Live ’Til I Die
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"The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphuric, smelling of lightning." • Most of us would simply write, "Looks like rain today." Which explains why Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1949 and his 1930 stream-of-consciousness novel As I Lay Dying is considered among the best novels of the 20th century. • Written in six weeks while Faulkner worked at a power plant during the day, As I Lay Dying is a harrowing account of a family's struggle to trek across the Mississippi countryside with their mother's coffin as they honor her wish to be buried in her hometown. • Faulkner said he didn't change a word of the novel once it was written. • This is the 1964 #VintageBooks edition which I purchased in 1979 for a college literature class. It's one of my most treasured books. #WilliamFaulkner #AsILayDying #southerngothic #streamofconsciousness #NobelPrizeInLiterature #lovetoread #lovetowrite Reading through Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Other Stories last night, I remembered that Jackson wrote one of my favorite stories from childhood, "After You My Dear Alphonse." I read this story in grade school, loved it, and thought of it often throughout my life. But I had forgotten the story was written by Jackson! How nice to come across it after all these years in this collection. I don't remember if the childhood me understood the racial undertones of the story, but something in it must have struck a chord within me. So much power packed into a few short pages. • #ShirleyJackson #ShortStories #AfterYouMyDearAlphonse #TheLottery #lovetoread We packed a lot of fun into one weekend. #hiking #chatauqua #bouldercolorado #naturewalk #familytime #nofilter Fun times in Golden yesterday #hiking #brewerytouring #familytime #lovesummer Coleman's birthplace #FitzsimonsArmyMedicalCenter #24yearsago #happybirthdaycoleman #denvernative Coleman's new (future) workplace #VAHospital #DenverVA Our favorite restaurant in Colorado #25yearslater #LaCueva #yummers #familytime Thomas Jefferson may have written the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence but Benjamin Franklin made some small but resounding edits. The most important of these were his slashing of the last three words of Jefferson's "We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" and replacing them with "self-evident." In Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson's words, "By using the word 'sacred,' Jefferson had asserted, intentionally or not, that the principle in question—the equality of men and their endowment by their creator with inalienable rights—was an assertion of religion. Franklin's edit turned it instead into an assertion of rationality." Let's remember this in a time when more and more people these days are using religion as an excuse to deprive entire groups of people of these inalienable rights. • If you love biographies, I highly recommend Walter Isaacson, who in addition to writing this Franklin biography, wrote equally fascinating biographies of Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs. • #DeclarationOfIndependence #FourthOfJuly #biography #BenjaminFranklin #WalterIsaacson #lovetoread Summer means road trips and sometimes I just want to read something breezy when I'm in the car for hours at a stretch. If breezy is what you're looking for, this was a pretty good page-turner. I say "pretty good" b/c it had one plot hole that bugged the heck out of me. Without giving anything away, the supposedly thorough detective failed to interview a key character simply b/c that particular character wasn't home at the time the detective stopped by. How convenient but—um, no. If stuff like that doesn't bother you then you might love this thriller, as it seems millions of others have. #popularfiction #summerreading #roadtripreading

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Topics

  • Blog (26)
  • Books (22)
    • biography/memoir (5)
      • Live ’Til I Die (5)
    • fiction (13)
      • Chat: book one (3)
      • Connect: book two (3)
      • Crash: book three (3)
      • Since You Went Away (Part One: Winter) (3)
    • how-to (1)
  • Excerpts (1)
  • Family (16)
  • Featured (10)
  • Interviews (1)
    • students/academic (1)
  • Military life (3)
  • News (1)
  • Parenting (9)
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  • Politics (1)
  • Publishing (3)
    • self-publishing (2)
  • Recipes (7)
  • Shop (5)
  • Titles (10)
  • Writing (5)

Featured Post

How I Got the Idea for Since You Went Away

A lot of people ask writers where we get our ideas. Here’s how I came to write my latest novel…

Recent Posts

  • Student Interview: Writing & the Writing Life
  • How I Got the Idea for Since You Went Away
  • Buy: Since You Went Away (Part One: Winter)
  • Since You Went Away, Part One: Winter
  • Shit On a Shingle
  • Shot and a Beer
  • Live ’Til I Die: Student Interview
  • Vegetable Soup
  • Gooey Butter Cake
  • A Very Dry Martini
  • Bacon & Eggs
  • The Last Time I Saw My Dad Alive
  • My Favorite Scary Books
  • For Those Who Make Art
  • To My Sons: What I Would Like for Mother’s Day
  • New ebook editions of Chat, Connect, Crash now available
  • Buy: Chat (book 1)
  • Buy: Connect (book 2)
  • Buy: Crash (book 3)
  • Buy: Live ’Til I Die
  • Chat: book one
  • Connect: book two
  • Crash: book three
  • Timeline: a publishing history of Chat, Connect, & Crash
  • A Hero’s Welcome: Parades & Promises
  • Summer Shandies
  • Nan’s Top Secret Extra Special Super Duper 
Philosophy on How to Write A Book
  • excerpt: Live ‘Til I Die: a memoir of my father’s life
  • Gray Hair
  • A Journey to the Center of Time

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