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Penguin Group (USA) Authors a Hit at This Year's BEA

Penguin Group (USA) had a very successful BEA 2008 this past weekend in Los Angeles. Our booth was constantly filled with booksellers, librarians and media people. Many of BEA's most talked about events featured Penguin Group (USA) authors, including a Book Sense reception honoring Khaled Hosseini for winning Book of the Year for A Thousand Splendid Suns, a special reception for Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson's upcoming Razorbill book, Influence, and Riverhead author Lewis Black's wildly successful Saturday Night BEA benefit.

Lewis Black, whose Riverhead book, Me of Little Faith went on sale this week, headlined the BEA Saturday Night benefit event in front of an audience of 2,000 book expo attendees at L.A.'s Orpheum Theatre, where he performed a riotous standup routine, and then was interviewed on stage by his longtime friend, Sara Nelson, Editor-In-Chief of Publishers Weekly, about the book.

John Hodgman, author of the upcoming More Information Than You Require, to be published by Dutton in October, was the Master of Ceremonies at Sunday's Book & Author Breakfast, where he introduced his fellow literary colleagues Ted Turner, Azar Nafisi, and Dennis Lehane. New York Magazine felt that John "I'm a PC" Hodgman was the funniest guy throughout all of BEA, "who at a forum at 8 a.m. Sunday managed to blow every other humorist out of the water." Hodgman also signed poster/blads of More Information Than You Require at the Penguin Booth for three hours on Saturday afternoon.

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In my last post I mentioned that when I tell people the title of my new novel, their eyes go wide. The Dirty Secrets Club.

They say: Where'd you come up with that? They're thinking: No way she just invented that. The novel's set in San Francisco, and she lived near San Francisco, so two plus two equals... A friend even sent me the card below, showing the Golden Gate Bridge with the caption: "Say, Mommy - what did you and Daddy do when you were members of the Dirty Secrets Club?"

So this is a good time for me to say, loudly: Not all novels are autobiographical.

Especially not The Dirty Secrets Club. I've never sprinted across the roof of a skyscraper in stilettos, trying to escape the gaze of a news chopper. I've never chased a killer across the Golden Gate Bridge.

I have, however, been through a knock-you-down earthquake.

Here's the truth: my novels are not autobiographical, but ­everything that happens in my life is fair game for becoming book material.

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