MZD at the West Hollywood Book Fair

This afternoon, Mark Z Danielewski was a part of the HISTORY REPEATING: On Writing Historical Fiction panel at the West Hollywood Book Fair. He was joined by Aimee Liu, who writes stories that deal with characters historical times from China and India, Janis Cooke Newman, who has written a novel about Mary Todd Lincoln told in the first person from Mary's point of view, Denise Nicholas, who has written a book about a voter registration worker in 1964 Mississippi, and the panel was moderated by Leslie Schwartz, who has not yet published any historical fiction.

What was strange was that they considered Only Revolutions to even be a part of the category Historical Fiction. All of the "rules of writing historical fiction" discussed seemed to be ones that Mark had either deconstructed, broken, or ignored in all of his works. The most appropriate response from Mark came when a fan asked him why the historical information in the margins is blank starting in 2006. It was a bit ironic, because this fan was asking Mark to create future historical fiction.

As mentioned yesterday, Exploration Z will be updating this very blog with video tidbits, including some things captured from the "sam cam" that were not a part of the two MZD appearances. Stay tuned!