Category: How To and Tips
Is “Manifestation” Real? A Skeptic Tries it and Reports Back (with a Book Deal)
By Alexis Rockley I’m an “evidence or it doesn’t exist” kind of skeptic when it comes to self-help, so when I learned about “manifestation” in early 2017, I rolled my eyes. But, like any self-care crazed millennial, raised on equal parts skepticism and optimism—I was curious. Two years and a lot of research later, I […]
An Epidemic of Invisibility by Meghan Holloway
My recently published thriller, HUNTING GROUND, is dedicated to the women who have disappeared, to the women who have felt their vulnerability, and to the women who have been forgotten. I was plotting this story when Mollie Tibbetts went out for a run near her home in Brooklyn, Iowa, one evening in July of 2018 […]
10 Questions for a “Terrifyingly Blunt” Literary Agent By S.L. McInnis
The Helen Heller Literary Agency has been in business for over thirty years. Though based in Toronto, it’s a worldwide success story and it’s just as likely you’ll find Helen making deals in London or New York. Her hit clients include Shari Lapena, Gilly Macmillan, Linwood Barclay and others who regularly appear on the NYT and Sunday […]
How Studying Psychology Has Influenced My Writing
This is a ‘what came first – the chicken or the egg’ kind of question for me, or as my daughter asked me last week – the seed or the tree? Did my study of psychology influence my writing, or did my love of stories and characters develop into a love of psychology? Even as […]
Inspiration and Research by Vali Benson
My name is Vali Benson and I am a published author. That still feels strange to hear but it’s true. My first novel was just published. It has been a work in progress for over fifty years. People have asked me to explain the writing process but I can’t. Doris Lessing once stated that “There […]
Four Painful Truths About Writing and Publishing a Book
Please do not underestimate the process of writing and publishing a book. No matter how ready you are, the book beast will still bite you in the ass. To lessen your pain, I’m telling you upfront what to expect about this process. No one wants to tell you these things. It’s like when a prospective […]
Scary Clowns are so Passé: On Writing an Evil Mime Artist
Scary Clowns are so Passé: On Writing an Evil Mime Artist By Chrissey Harrison A phobia of clowns is known as coulrophobia. With their exaggerated features, clowns are very “other”, even monstrous – it only takes a small shift in perspective to turn a caricature into a grotesque. They also behave in challenging, transgressive ways, […]
Write What You Don’t Know
Many writing teachers tell new authors to write what they know. That has value if you are describing a setting, for example. It helps to know how the place looks, feels, smells, and sounds. But what if you write fantasy? No one knows what it’s like to live on another planet or have super powers. […]
The Good, The Mediocre and The Ugly: On Reviews
Most writers will agree that when it comes to achieving the goal of having a novel published, the dream and reality do not quite correlate. From the outside, it looks amazing – and of course, in many ways it is – but what looks like a joyous time of champagne quaffing, great-review sharing and being […]
On Writing ONLY THE WOMEN ARE BURNING
It began under an elm tree at my pool. Like an explosion, this story burst onto the page with the words, “The women began to spontaneously ignite, bodies bursting into miniature mountains of flame across the suburban landscape…” I stared at these, my words. I mulled over them, fixated on them. They haunted me for […]
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