Cheaters
Dickey’s book Cheaters describes how even good people can have bad luck when dating. Character Stephan loves them and leaves them, just like his father. Character Chanté thinks she’s found her dream man, until his wife and kids come banging on her door. Character Jake on the other hand is a player and he just can’t shake the bad dreams he’s been having. Darnell is faithful to his wife, but the temptation to step outside his marriage is getting tougher every day. Tammy is caught between the man she loves, and the woman he’s promised to. And Karen is constantly lecturing her friends about fooling around, but she is not living up to her own high standards.
In Cheaters, I had a character, Darnell, who wanted to be a writer, and now I wanted to write about somebody who had been in the business for a while. So I thought about making the narrator Darnell, but that would mean that the woman who’d left him would have to be Tammy, and getting those two characters to this place just wasn’t going to work.
Don’t Count the Candles
Rivers publishes a self-help book on staying young, Don’t Count the Candles: Just Keep the Fire Lit! She offers advice on how to stay youthful at middle age, her experiences with plastic surgery, and her own spin on what it means to get older as a woman — and how to cope.
At fifty, confine your piercing to sardine cans and keep your hair short.
A Do Right Man
Tyree’s novel follows Bobby Dallas, a radio talk-show host who doesn’t have any children or skeletons in the closet. All he is missing is a good woman by his side. After a difficult breakup with his first love, Bobby wanders for years if marriage and a family is in the cards for him. He learns that being a do right man isn’t as easy as he thought it would be.
Milk In My Coffee
Dickey follows Jordan Greene who moves from the deep south to New York City and finds more than he ever thought he would in Milk In My Coffee. When he shares a ride with a young white girl, a romance grow between the two–much to the surprise of Jordan’s friends and family. Love forces him to examine his own values and makes him stand up against what everyone expects him to do.
Bouncing Back
Rivers publishes a self-help book, Bouncing Back: I’ve Survived Everything… and I Mean Everything…and You Can Too!.
Dr. Kevorkian will get no call from me, unless I think he’d look good in a brooch.
The Green Mile
King originally published The Green Mile as six shorter novellas. The tale of a former prison guard at a state penitentiary in 1932 who encounters a peculiar inmate, John Coffey, is categorized as magic realism after prison guard Paul Edgecombe begins to doubt that the kind-hearted Coffey actually committed his crimes.
There’s a feeling in the Green Mile that the human spirit is alive and well even under the most difficult of circumstances. I’ve heard sometimes the more difficult life becomes, the more the human spirit has a chance to shine, and I can’t think of a place where life is more difficult than on death row.
Gifted Hands autobiography
Carson publishes an autobiography entitled, Gifted Hands, telling the story of his life as a disadvantaged inner city youth through when he becomes Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
My major hope is that the message . . . will be seen by millions and millions of young people who might begin to recognize that they actually play a very major role in what happens to them in terms of the decisions that they make, regardless of the environment that they’re growing up in.
Sister Sister
Dickey follows the lives of three sisters in the book Sister Sister. This book describes the lives of three young African American women. First there is Valerie, scheming social worker Inda and broken-hearted flight attendant Chiquita. Their lives are coming together and falling apart in Los Angeles.
I actually started writing in novel form seven years before (that book was published). I was still engineering (then). I was in software development, but, there was this whole creative part of me that really just started to take control. When I was a software developer, I was doing stand-up comedy; I was doing community theater; I was doing theater; I was auditioning at every college for some student film; I was hanging out with comics—and even when you’re hanging out with comics you’re hanging out with writers.
Publishes ANSI Common Lisp
Graham publishes a reference manual for the programming language, including a guide to optimization, macros, and an appendix on debugging.
Netscape rename
Andreessen and a founding team of five other members announce the name change from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Corporation based on the popularity of the “Netscape” browser. Chairman and CEO Jim Clark says:
We are making this name change both as a gesture of good will to the University of Illinois and to more clearly differentiate our company from other companies marketing World Wide Web browsers. ‘Netscape Communications’ more fully conveys the nature and breadth of our business, which is much more comprehensive than a simple browser for the Internet. Our new name enables us to underscore our unique identity as a premier provider of complete, standards-based client/server solutions for communicating and conducting commerce on the Net.
First issue of Tokyo Classified published
After months of planning the first issue of Tokyo Classified is published. Mark designs and lays out the magazine while Mary sells the ads. Classified ads are collected from various noticeboards throughout Tokyo and through a Macintosh-based voicemail system linked to a premium-rate telephone line. The four-page sheet is handed out in about 15 locations where foreigners hang out by a “target team”. Mary:
There was just no information in English.
Forcasts Technotribalism
Celente issues a press release stating social media and the internet will be on the rise in coming years, and consumers of it will “think globally” but act locally and become more isolated.
The techno-tribalism trend will echo the sentiment of the new, growing isolation trend. People, concerned about their own welfare, are increasingly embracing a view that they shouldn’t have to solve other regions crises.
On Lisp
Graham publishes a study of advanced programming techniques using the language, with the theme of bottom-up programming.
Its examples form a library of functions and macros that readers will be able to use in their own Lisp programs.
Charles & Diana split
British Prime Minister John Major announces the formal separation of Charles and Diana. He issued a directive from Buckingham Palace making it clear that
Their Royal Highnesses are not seeking a divorce, The royal couple are separating amicably.
Waiting To Exhale
Waiting To Exhale follows the friendship between four African American women who lean on each other. Each one is hoping that the man of their dreams will come along soon. This story is about the lives of Savannah Jackson, Bernadine Harris, Robin Stokes, and Gloria Matthews who reside in Phoenix, Arizona. The women support each other through personal and professional challenges and successes. They are savvy enough to manage every element of their lives, but stereotypes and bad habits seem to ditch their efforts.
I’ve had 1,500 people show up for a reading for Waiting to Exhale. Twelve hundred in Chicago, a thousand people waiting in line in Washington. I think I’ve signed more than 10,000 books, and the people who come are 90 percent black. In some cities 98 percent.
Still Talking
Rivers publishes her second memoirish tell-all, Still Talking with Richard Merryman. In her characteristic comedic vitriolic style, she talks about her husband Edgar Rosenberg’s suicide, the birth of her daughter Melissa, gossip about celebrities, and ribs on the entertainment industry, and sex.
I know nothing about sex. All my mother told me was that the man gets on top, the woman gets on the bottom. I bought bunk beds.
Record takeover deal
The Club is sold for £20m in the biggest takeover deal in the history of British football. The new owner is Isle of Man-based property tycoon and former footballer, Michael Knighton. Manchester United chairman Martin Edwards is to receive more than £10m for his majority share in the club and will stay on as chief executive. There had been rumours for some time that Mr Edwards was planning to sell his stake but the deal was shrouded in secrecy.
Disappearing Acts
McMillan’s novel Disappearing Acts follows Zora and Franklin who is having difficulty in their marriage. Zora is a beautiful teacher who married Franklin, a man who is always in between jobs. When Franklin starts to feel like he can’t provide for his family, he decides to seek solace from another woman. Although, Zora is relieved he is gone. She can’t help but to miss her husband. The two must decide if their love can overcome layoffs and faithfulness.
The Tommyknockers
After finding something mysterious buried in her back yard, Bobbi Anderson becomes obsessed with digging it up and discovering what it is. Soon, the town’s population becomes increasingly ill due to the appearance of the aliens known as the Tommyknockers.
After becoming discouraged with his progress, King parted with the manuscript, only to come back to it decades later.
That was another case of a book I tried to write a long time ago. I had the idea of the guy stumbling over the flying saucer when I was a senior in college. I had 15 or 20 pages and I just stopped. I don’t remember why.
Misery
After being saved from a car accident, novelist Paul Sheldon is taken in and nursed by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes. Under her care, he finishes the final novel in Wilke’s favorite series, starring a character named Misery. Wilkes becomes infuriated by Sheldon’s surprise death of Misery and keeps him captive until he writes another novel bringing Misery to life. King says the inspiration for Misery came from poor fan reception of his books that weren’t horror/thriller focused. It also came from King’s struggle to give up drugs and alcohol.
Take the psychotic nurse in Misery, which I wrote when I was having such a tough time with dope. I knew what I was writing about. There was never any question. Annie was my drug problem, and she was my number-one fan. God, she never wanted to leave.