Jon Stone isn’t the only one Q & A-ing me these days. At George Washington University yesterday, I answered clueful questions from Asst. Prof. Christopher Klemek and members of his D.C. urban history class, including a young woman named Livia (did I get that name right for I-knew-her-when purposes?) who wants to run someday for […]
Read MoreConfederate History Month returns to Virginia: Should Northern VA secede?
Update, 8:01 p.m., April 7: Gov. McDonnell has apologized for not mentioning slavery when he proclaimed CHM. – D.R. The N word and a racist zoning lawyer named Stonewall Lee show up in The Solomon Scandals. The main plot of my D.C. newspaper novel unfolds in the late 20th century, and I did not pretty […]
Read MoreWashington Post iPhone app panned by gutsy WaPo technology writer: Symptom of worse woes?
Update, March 19: Hooray! The Post app in its current form now lets you change type size more gracefully. Tap the screen while reading a story and you’ll see the options. – D.R. Seymour Solomon, the real estate magnate in my D.C. newspaper novel, is among the Washington Telegram’s biggest advertisers and pals around with […]
Read MoreTheGeorgetownDish starts up: Hyperlocal newspaper war ahead? Or a friendly buyout?
A new online newspaper, the TheGeorgetown Dish, is starting up right in the neighborhood of Ben Bradlee, Sally Quinn and other VIP journalists. Beth Solomon—no relationship to the fictitious government landlord in The Solomon Scandals, thank you—is the editor and publisher. She has worked at ABC News and Voice of America among other places. Robb […]
Read MoreA WASHINGTON novel
The Solomon Scandals blog comes out of Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac from D.C., and the novel itself is very much a Washington creature, as well as a Northern Virginia one. But oh how the local details can travel, so to speak. During the Watergate party in Scandals, a PR man offers boozy insights […]
Read MoreThe Jonathan Stone-David Rothman Q. & A.
Jonathan Stone, the reporter in The Solomon Scandals, grilled me for this Q. & A.—uncut. Last updated April 10, 2024. STONE: Why’s Scandals copyrighted in your name? It’s my newspaper memoir. ROTHMAN: Er, faux memoir. Without me, you wouldn’t even have been born…or have worked for the Washington Telegram…or have struggled to avert an IRS-CIA […]
Read MoreWashington novels: A few uppity observations, plus a guide to D.C. fiction guides
Washington, D.C., is a perilous place about which to write fiction. In more than a few of the guides to D.C. fiction, a major premise is that the Great Washington Novel has yet to be written or has already been written. Uh-oh. And no pleasing everyone. One student of the genre holds up Allen Drury, […]
Read More‘About politics’: Is it or isn’t it? Plus three political novels recced on NPR
All the King’s Men has long been my favorite political novel. But is Robert Penn Warren‘s masterpiece truly about politics? Not in the opinion of Dick Meyer of National Public Radio, who, though describing it as "poetic and unforgivable," observes: …to say it’s about politics is like, well, saying War and Peace is about war […]
Read More‘Solomon Scandals’ goes on sale now as e-book; January delivery in trade paperback
Psst! Advance promo copies of The Solomon Scandals are on sale now in e-book format (retail $5.95 USD). Twilight Times Books is also taking advance orders for First Editions in trade paperback (retail $16.95 USD). The paperbacks will ship in January 2009. These are “pre-release promotional copies.” Twilight’s phone number is 423-323-0183, and other ordering […]
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