This weekend at Triangle Reads I interviewed author Elin Hilderbrand about her latest novel The Rumor.

Hilderbrand is known for her fun, well-written summer novels, but The Rumor was fun for me on a different level. One of the main characters in her book is Madeline King, a novelist who is on deadline to submit her next novel but is completely, totally blocked. She has nothing to write about, but then her best friend starts up a steamy affair with her gardener … and her next novel begins to write itself.

Authors are instructed to write what you know. Hilderbrand knows publishing inside and out, and The Rumor is packed with authentic nuggets from that world: the heated conversations with her agent, the favor-trading between parties, the manuscript that gets passed around before the author is ready. She references the notoriously cranky Kirkus reviews and authors who plagiarize their teenage children. If you’re a serious reader, you’ll eat it up.

Hilderbrand’s book got me thinking about other novels that are enjoyably self-aware about the writing process, whether their end product is fiction, history, or memoir. This is my list; I’d love to hear yours in comments.

If you’ve read these, what did you think of the books? What would YOU add to this list?