Jon Clinch's Blog
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Jan.06.2011
Everybody's talking about Huckleberry Finn and the n-word controversy, so I weighed in too. The full article is over at AOL News, and it covers both the bowdlerization of Huck by NewSouth Books and the problems with Twain's new Autobiography. Here's a sample...
Of course Gribbon and the...
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Jan.05.2011
Since I'm a much better novelist than I am blogger, I've set up an account over at Tumblr where I'll be putting up little snatches of my current project — THE INFINITE VARIETIES OF LOSS — as time goes by. Don't expect it to make a whole lot of narrative sense. Each post will just be one of my...
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Jul.10.2010
Sorry, but I'm out of time to update the Red Room events list. Full details are at BookTour.com.
Hope to see you out there!
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Mar.24.2010
Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and winner of the National Book Award, had this to say about my new novel:
"To read a book by Jon Clinch is to enter an emotional mineshaft, a place where the darkness is profound and menacing yet lures you on with the promise of untold treasure. Like Finn,...
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Mar.15.2010
I'll be hitting the road to introduce Kings of the Earth this summer.I love this part, by the way. Not the traveling, but the opportunity to spend time with readers. Writing novels is a two-way street after all; don't let anybody tell you otherwise.Hope to see you out there... Friday, July 9, 7:00...
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Jan.11.2010
It's launch week for Double Black: A Ski Diva Mystery. It's my wife's my debut novel, a ski mystery that features a young woman who moves to a Vermont ski town to become a ski bum. She doesn't have any money so she ends up sleeping in her car, until one day she stumbles across a ring of master...
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Nov.03.2009
Just got the jacket copy for Kings of the Earth... "Following up Finn—his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked “the mythic styles of his literary predecessors...William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones” (San Francisco Chronicle)—Jon Clinch...
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Aug.18.2009
Wendy Clinch's debut novel—DOUBLE BLACK: A SKI DIVA MYSTERY—is coming to your favorite bookstore on Jauary 5, 2010. It's about a young woman who heads for a Vermont ski town to pursue the ski-bum lifestyle, only to stumble on financial intrigue, bitter family warfare, and murder. It has lots of...
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Jul.30.2009
My publishing misstep with FINN was exactly fifty-six characters long. Twelve words. Two lines. A pair of simple declarative sentences that live on in the hardcover edition, but have vanished from the trade paperback.
Here's how it happened.
My editor didn't ask for many changes to the manuscript...
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Jun.03.2009
"The Dog," a story that might be considered a missing chapter from Finn, is now available on my web site as a free download. It's also a low-priced eBook for Amazon's Kindle, but I wanted to make it available to folks who haven't yet caught up with that particular technology.Folks like...
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May.30.2009
Just before Huckleberry Finn went to press, Mark Twain's publisher asked him to remove an episode from near the start of Chapter 16. The deleted pages showed Huck eavesdropping on a group of raftsmen by night, and over time became known to scholars as "The Raftsmen's Passage" or "...
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Apr.07.2009
Kings of the Earth, my new novel, just sold to Random House.Here's the run-down...Impoverished, illiterate, and rooted to the land, the three Proctor brothers have lived and worked together since childhood. When one dies and another is suspected of his murder, the community begins to talk. KINGS OF...
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Apr.02.2009
Every two years, the Center for Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College hosts the International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies.Among the scholars on deck for the 2009 conference is Takuya Kubo,Associate Professor at Japan's Kanazawa University. Professor Kubo specializes in 19th century...
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Jan.31.2009
You know what they say: Mission Accomplished.
Here's a story from the Hartford Courant on the improved financial state of the Mark Twain House & Museum...
A million thanks to those who've given of their time and funds to help preserve this bit of holy ground. Keep it up!
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Dec.11.2008
The Ski Diva Mysteries!
If you've never clicked on the links in the right-hand column of my other blog, you may not know about my wife's not-so-secret identity.
A couple of years ago Wendy founded The Ski Diva, a site that's become the internet's premiere destination for women who ski. With...
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About Jon
Born and raised in upstate New York, Jon Clinch has been an English teacher, a metalworker, a folksinger, an illustrator, a typeface designer, a housepainter, a copywriter, and an advertising executive. After graduating from Syracuse University, he taught...
Causes Jon Clinch Supports
The Mark Twain House and Museum