HeyJaredFord Knows Books
Essays, stories & curiosities | Home of the novel "Lamb" - "The Books We ❤️ Club" - and "The Road to Published" - the choose-your-own-adventure approach to writing and publishing books
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 7
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- Sep 28, 2026
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- Jul 13, 2026
Latest issues
The Costs of Indie Publishing: Adam Frankenstein, Debut Author (opens the original)
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Why I ❤️ Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" (opens the original)
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I haven’t read Before the Coffee Gets Cold yet, but after reading Rebecca Elise’s thoughtful reflection, I’ve got it sitting at the top of my teetering To Be Read pile. What begins as a whimsical premise—a coffee shop where you can travel back in time—turns into something much more interesting: a meditation on grief, regret, vulnerability, and the things we can and can’t change.I especially love the way Rebecca connects the book’s premise to the very human tendency to get stuck in the “what ifs.
The Costs of Indie Publishing: State of the Biz (opens the original)
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<img alt="assorted-title novel book lot" class="sizing-normal" height="3264" src="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1463320726281-696a485928c7?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxMDd8fGJvb2tzfGVufDB
Why I ❤️ Andrew Sean Greer's "Less" (opens the original)
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It’s been a while since I read Andrew Sean Greer’s Less, and the details have gotten a bit muddled (or middled, as you will read below). It’s a deceptively easy read (I’m told), it’s funny (they say), and a lighter-hearted rumination on aging, love, and success than your usual trauma-thon of queer fiction. It does all these things so well it won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.But I guess I am going to pick at the privilege, just a little, not so much for Arthur Less’s whiteness as the Arcad
Reviewing the Reviews (opens the original)
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A PODCASTTroy Ford: Being Bold & Bodacious With “Waterspout!”Special thanks to fellow author Wyatt O’Brian Evans for hosting me on his popular podcast ! Wyatt is a consummate interviewer—interested, engaged, and funny as hell—and he’s got his own book arriving this month, Nothing Can Tear Us Apart: Ruthless!<a class="image-link image2 is-vi
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