Website Interviews and Features
| In this monthly column I pen for Library Journal I tackle fun topics that librarians can share with constituents at home — like this one on our beloved houseplants. Read It | |
| Ever find yourself staring at your phone, wondering what you will ever find to do after work? Well, this weekly column I wrote for DCist had lots of options on getting out and about in the nation’s capital. Read It | |
| I love a fun twist on a gift guide, like this list of local experiences I created for DCist. It even made my shopping easier! Read It | |
| Romance is expanding in so many exciting directions, and one trend I wanted to spotlight was mature heroes and heroines. These authors were kind enough to talk with me about finding — and writing about — love at any age. Read It | |
| Christopher Moore has long been one of my favorite authors, so getting to pepper him with questions about his new release was a real treat! Read It | |
| Book-to-screen projects are always big news in the publishing industry, and when I heard that popular romance author Beverly Jenkins was crowdsourcing to produce her own project, I knew our readers would need to know more. Read It | |
| They say a picture tells a 1,000 words, and cover model Jason Aaron Baca is intent on being the most prolific face out there. The man with more covers than Fabio chatted with me about his career. Read It | |
| Personal life highlight? Getting to meet Francine Pascal! We chatted about the Sweet Valley High movie — which has not yet come to be — and more. Read It | |
| Working as a writer means tackling all types of topics. This is a piece I wrote for my hometown, about the local veterans and a lovely dedication ceremony they host. Read It |
Blog Features
Running a website means constantly checking your stats to see what your readers are engaging with, and what needs to change. Here’s a sampling of the features that our readers consistently clicked on, in some cases month after month.
| Self-publishing is a big deal these days, but it can be hard to find a book worth your money. I developed a column where every month I selected the best of the bestsellers for readers to try. It was a hit! Read It | |
| One of the most popular features on RTBookReviews.com? The Lifetime movie recap! Here’s one of the most popular recaps I ever penned, based on a YA murder mystery I loved. Read It | |
| People on the internet seem to either want to read long screeds (a la my Lifetime recaps) or short-and-sweet pieces. I developed this interview format for well-established authors so we could learn a little more about them in bite-sized pieces. Read It | |
| Interviewing someone via email is one thing, phone calls another — on video it’s quite a different beast. Here I was lucky enough to chat with Veronica Roth just as she was getting ready to release her divisive trilogy-ender, Allegiant. Watch It |
Some others to check out:
Mean Girls the Musical is So Fetch
Debut Author Spotlight: Melissa Albert
How to Make WattPad Work for You
RT2015 Convention: The Giant Book Fair
Magazine Features
DIY YA: Self-publishing is a juggernaut that has taken the publishing industry by storm. But not all genres are successful — why is that? I took a look at the burgeoning self-publishing YA market. Read it
The Girl Who Lived: Female-Driven Fantasy Takes the Lead in YA: Trends are endlessly fascinating to me — how do we all come to love the same thing at the same time? Fantasy is hugely popular in Young Adult fiction right now, and it was great to speaking with all these passionate authors who care so much about their work. Read page one and page two.
Trend Watch: Alphabet Soup: A great part of working in journalism is getting to try out new and fun feature ideas. Here’s a fun one I worked on a few years back on author pseudonyms. Read it here.
Forever Young (Adult): When the YA market burst open, there were so many choices! How to pick? Choose your own adventure, of course! Read it here.
One of my fondest memories was fielding a phone call from a publicist friend telling me, “You know that advanced copy of that book The Hunger Games I sent over? You should read it this weekend.” The next year I got to interview Suzanne Collins amidst the Katniss mania. Read it here.
Business Writing
Organizing a Global PCR Database for GEDnet: One of my favorite parts about working in journalism is the variety of subject matter I get to deal with every day! Here’s a peek at my business writing; this is a case study for environmental firm PRé. Read it here.
Edits by Elissa 