Alvah's Books

A few days ago, I was contacted by Murray Newlands, the founder of Affiliate Heat and ebook author, to do an interview. Lo and behold, it appeared today on his site, MurrayNewlands.com. Below is a portion of the interview:

An interview with Rebeca Schiller of Alvah’s Books blog

An interview with Rebeca Schiller of Alvah’s Books blog

Tell me about your Blog?

Alvah’s Books is a book review site. It’s named after my favorite author Alvah Bessie. Alvah was a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades who fought in the Spanish Civil War, he was a novelist, the literary and drama critic of The New Masses, screenwriter, and one of the Hollywood Ten. For Alvah’s Books, I review literary fiction and non-fiction. I also include essays, author interviews and publishing news.

What was your first blog?

My first blog was A Novel Approach.  It was supposed to be a blog chronicling the trials and tribulations of writing my novel. It was discontinued because it turned more into a lament about my job. It morphed into Exiled at the Beach: A Year’s Chronicle in Creativity.

What is the biggest tip you would give to a newbie blogger?

Have a plan. Think of your blog as a magazine. Think of what you want to publish daily and make it interesting.

To read the rest of the interview, go to Murray Newland’s site. Thanks Murray for the great opportunity!

Readers who have stumbled on Exiled at the Beach will know that I was an editor of The Internet Review of Books until very recently. At IRB, we had a few guidelines I found a little restrictive. Sometimes we were pitched a book that might be a year old (this exceeded our no more than six months old limit) or a category or genre we normally wouldn’t review such as poetry or cookbooks.  

So this got me thinking, why not personally review the books we rejected and then some?  The then some led to more thinking. Why not review or, perhaps, introduce books that were published long ago to readers. And that’s how this site came to be.