I got a Shout Out from my writer friend, John Grabowski, last week. He didn’t tell me about it beforehand, so I stumbled upon it reading one of his latest blog posts. His posts are thoughtful, well-written and interesting, so I hope you’ll check him out. Here’s a brief excerpt of John’s blog post. He mentions me at the very end.
Worth 10,000 words
“Author portraits on the back of books are interesting to contemplate. They tell a lot about what the author (or perhaps the publisher) is trying to say about the book they want you to buy with your hard-earned money.
There are a number of different styles of author portrait. Some authors seem to eschew formal headshots at all and use pictures that seem to be taken by family or friends on vacation. These have a way of saying, “I’m just me. Here I am in the everyday.”…
Others take professional headshots, but try to look very approachable, even humble, despite the fact that they surely must have huge egos to become as famous as they did. These photos have an aw-shucks kind of quality that seems to say, “Thank you for even considering buying this book.”
(More interesting author photos with great comments from John in the longer post, and then the big surprise at the end–at least for me:)
“…Perhaps the best portraits are simply those that are natural and felt by their subjects. Twice I’ve seen pictures of my writer friend Susan Gabriel, author of the novel Seeking Sara Summers, and both times they look so similar that I can only conclude this is Susan as she really is–no pretense, just real and caring. Kind of hard to argue with that, eh?”
Yep, that’s me.
Read John’s entire blog post here. Thanks, John.
P.S. I am an ex-shrink who writes novels. Check out my books here.
