First Daughter Turns First-Time Self-Publisher

As the author of eight previous titles–under such imprints as HarperCollins, Plume and Putnam–Patti Davis (The Way I See It, The Long Goodbye) has a notable track record in publishing. Yet, for the past 12 years even she, the daughter of the 40th President of the United States, has struggled to get her latest book, Till Human Voices Wake Us, to the reading public.

“Fiction is hard to get published these days. But fiction was always hard for me to get published,” Davis confesses from her home in Santa Monica. She wields the same light voice and unpredictable ...

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Martyr Maker, Self-Starter

“Jesus’ death wasn’t the worst of the persecution of the Martyrs. The greater and even lesser known Apostles died equally horrible deaths,” writes Eriq La Salle in his debut thriller, Laws of Depravity, which Kirkus calls “a delightfully twisting roller-coaster ride through light, dark and the shades in between,” in a starred review.

These killings—crucifixions, beheadings, flayings—are mirrored in the crime scene photos of the more than 30 victims, all clergymen, of the “Martyr Maker.” They were also the initial inspiration for La Salle, a successful actor and director, to assume the role as novelist and take ...

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Pushing the Envelope

General Merrill A. McPeak came of age with the Jet Era. His life in flight parallels the formative years of the U.S. Air Force. Born in 1936, three years before the first flight of Germany’s experimental He-178 and a decade before the onset of the Cold War, McPeak was 23 when he first reached Mach speed in an F-104, the same year Ho Chi Minh declared “a people’s war to reunite Vietnam” and the Air Force experienced “a renaissance in fighter aviation.”

Hangar Flying, McPeak’s debut memoir, takes its name from the expression airmen use for ...

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World Conquerors, Self-Publishers

Ryan and Colin Pyle, whose full-throttle travelogue debut The Middle Kingdom Ride details their circumnavigation of China on motorcycles, grew up in and around Toronto. Children of divorce, Ryan spent his formative years with their father, while Colin remained with their mother. Although they were only three years apart and, at one point, fellow students in the same high school, they were never fully fraternal. They were further separated by Ryan’s decision to relocate to China, where he met his wife, Jasmine, started a family and pursued a self-taught career in photojournalism, shooting images of his adoptive homeland for ...

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Hollywood Wonderworld

Everybody knows that video killed the radio star. Unsatisfied, it broke down the Wall, ended the Cold War and became the “planet’s Esperanto” before exploding onto screens of every size in an orgy of reality TV. And that’s just the beginning, according to Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato in their debut publishing venture, The World According to Wonder: 1991-2012. “TV is a medium not even a hundred years old,” they write in the book, assuaging those who fret over the decline of our culture. “Reality TV is just the hormonally raging teen.”

To commemorate the first 21 years ...

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Back Story: Patricia Dunn's Teenage Rebels Rise Up in Tahrir Square

Patricia Dunn’s young adult novel, Rebels by Accident, deals with romance, revolution and the efforts of three women to balance their disparate worlds. Through the eyes of Mariam, a patriotic U.S. teenager of Egyptian ancestry, and against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, Dunn reveals how Mariam, her best friend, Deanna, and her sittu (grandmother) learn to let their “freak flags fly.”

The former managing editor of Muslimwakeup.com, a popular U.S.-based online magazine, and a teacher at Sarah Lawrence College, Dunn’s previous work has been published in web journals and anthologies. In this successful ...

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