I announced the official launch of my new online community, Publetariat.com, on 2/11/2009. The site got over 7,000 hits in the first 24 hours following its launch, and 3-month average Alexa traffic rank in the top 6.92% of all websites-a figure which, when adjusted to account for the brief time period during which Publetariat had been open to the public, equates to a rank in the top 2% of all websites. What makes these results even more astonishing still is the fact that I'd only come up with the idea for the site one month before, on January 15, 2009. In 18 days, I'd taken the site from...

Cinder Torley is an intelligent young woman who yearns to escape the stifling yoke imposed by her small town upbringing and unhappy marriage, but that doesn't mean she killed her husband. When he goes missing one night, Cinder quickly learns who---and how few---her friends really are in this darkly comic tale of dueling schemers and incompetents. The sheriff thinks this might be his only ticket out of back-country law enforcement. Coffee house barista Clark Norris knows a sordid, true-crime story could jumpstart his stalled writing career. Glamorous correspondent Bailey Weems sees a ratings...

Adelaide Binchley is probably the only fortysomething housewife and junior college dropout ever to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics, and she's certainly the only one whose career was launched by a bedpan. When Addie meets Physics professor Jakob Pankowicz, she discovers that having just one person see a greater potential in her, and believe in her even when she doesn't believe in herself, is all she needs to escape her self-imposed limits. In this hilarious and touching novel, as she navigates the rough territory created by her teenage-feminist daughter, borderline delinquent son,...