Imagine you’re with the Secret Service. A young Ohioan calls up and says he’ll be joining the Nazi Party. “I wanted you to know.” Wait—the story gets even better. The Ohio man already has been within shooting range of presidential candidates. J. Ross Baughman isn’t a real Nazi, however. Instead he is a photojournalist for […]
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‘Solomon Scandals’ book-signing Jan. 18
Decades before the ABC-TV series Scandal or House of Cards on Netflix, The Solomon Scandals existed in manuscript form—a quirky look at a darker side of D.C. that you can’t see on the screen right now or read about in the standard bestsellers. Scandals isn’t about a comely fixer in love with Mr. President, or […]
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David Rothman is reachable at davidrothman@pobox.com.
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‘Scandals’ paperback and e-book bundled for $16.95 at re∙reads
A new local bookstore and Twilight Times Books, publisher of The Solomon Scandals, are teaming up to offer the e-book version for free, in major digital formats, for customers who buy the paperback from the store (price: $16.95). The bundling deal will be limited to the first eight buyers. re∙reads Books is south of Alexandria, […]
Read MoreGuest essay for Andy Holloman
Jane Austen wrote for herself, not her contemporaries. Her earliest reviewers were less than fully gung-ho about her fiction. Among other things, if you go by a recent book by Claire Harman, certain critics felt Austen’s writing wasn’t fresh enough. Talk about critical blunders! It took decades and decades, but the world finally caught up […]
Read More‘Scandals’ e-book back to $2.99 at Amazon
A sign that the U.S. economy is looking up? Twilight Times Books has ended the 99-cent sale, and the e-book edition of The Solomon Scandals is back at its former price of $2.99 on Amazon. I myself liked the 99 cents, but this is my publisher’s choice to make, and I actually can see both […]
Read MoreHow to ‘Scandalize’ your book group—either the online or in-person kind
The Solomon Scandals is fiction—a mix of suspense, tragedy and satire—but more than a little history lurks within in it. A high-rise collapsed in Northern Virginia, and a Senator really did hold a secret and illegal investment in a CIA-occupied building a few miles away. Characters and events are composites or imaginary. But Scandals still […]
Read More‘Tabloid City’ vs. ‘The Solomon Scandals’: A quick, friendly comparison between Pete Hamill’s newspaper novel and mine
Pete Hamill is out with Tabloid City, a New York newspaper novel commanding its share of pixels, column inches and decibels. If the rest of Tabloid City is like the first parts, I could never have written his book, just as The Solomon Scandals would have been impossible for him—we see life, newspapers and fiction […]
Read MoreE-trends and other fun for book people to mull over: A mix of reckless and not-so-reckless predictions
Note: This is an expanded version of my talk to the Washington Biography Group on Monday at Washington International School. By David H. Rothman Founder of TeleRead, Co-Founder of LibraryCity, and author of The Solomon Scandals SEEING the windmill blades turn—in Al Gore’s multimedia book Are we wasting our time talking about books and the […]
Read MoreAided by Kindle Review rec and 99-cent sale, ‘Solomon Scandals’ zoomed to 1K rank at Amazon out of 850K
For years, as founder and editor of TeleRead, I complained of e-book gouges by big publishers eager to protect their trade in paper books. My little publisher, Twilight Times Books, owned by the author-friendly Lida Quillen, listened. Last week with my blessing, Lida dropped the price of The Solomon Scandals on Amazon to 99 cents, […]
Read MoreHow the iPad-related stimulus plan could help the news business—plus a brief update on the plan
My thoughts on hyperlocal news—prompted by the forthcoming launch of TBD, the Web and TV combo for the D.C. area—have drawn visits from some powerful news organizations. While they’re at it, perhaps they can check out A national information stimulus plan: How iPad-style tablets could help educate millions and trim bureaucracy—not just be techno toys […]
Read More‘I write like William Shakespeare’: Paste ‘The Solomon Scandals’ into this Web form and see for yourself
Do you have the nerve to think that The Solomon Scandals isn’t Shakespearean in style? Hah! Just paste my foreword and first three chapters into a Web form on the ”I Write Like” site—and see for yourself. Even a blog post from the Scandals site can be Shakespearean. Try How TBD could use hyperlocal journalism […]
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