Is anyone else worrying about the avian flu? You read the papers and soon you’re freaking out, looking for Tamiflu, thinking you will stock up.

I hate how the media does that.

Well, next Thursday, November 16 (is that a Thursday?), one of my guests will be Marc Siegel, M.D., author of False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear. Read more about him here

. Of course his book is not about fear as concerns writers but writers are also immobilized by fear–fear of not succeeding, fear of discovering that their work stinks, fear that they will never ever write one decent paragraph or story or book.

Speaking of books, my other guest that night will be the new book editor at the Los Angeles Times, David Ulin. He was on before with his book, The Myth of Solid Ground

. We’ll talk about changes at the book review. I’m happy about David’s new post and happy most of his writer friends are women. Maybe this means we’ll start seeing more books by women covered by the Book Review–finally!