Birthdays: Patricia Cornwell (1956), Gregory Maguire (1954), James Kelman (1946), Joe Haldeman (1943), Paul Beatty (1962)

Tip: If you’re given a deadline—meet it! If there’s a valid reason why you can’t (hospital=valid; binging on Netflix does not), let your editor know as soon as possible.

Thought for the day: “Even if you are a best-seller you feel insecure because it is all so unpredictable.” – Patricia Cornwell

Jumpstart: Finish the following: I don’t know what made me look out the window at that moment, but I did. Unfortunately…

Gregory Maguire is an American novelist. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister.

James Kelman is a Scottish writer. His novel A Disaffection won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won the 1994 Booker Prize with How Late It Was, How Late.

Joe Haldeman is an American science fiction author. He is best known for his novel The Forever War.

Patricia Cornwell is an American crime writer. She is best known as the creator of a series of novels featuring Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner that started with Postmortem.

Paul Beatty is an American author who won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sellout.