by Joy Jordan-Lake ECHOES OF US From the bestselling author of Under a Gilded Moon comes the soaring story of an unlikely friendship of three men and one extraordinary woman and the legacy they built—if their own secrets don’t destroy it. In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student, and […]
By Kathy Hopewell Julia Cameron’s concept of the shadow artist in The Artist’s Way refers to someone who secretly desires to be creative but is found servicing artists instead, such as an assistant, critic or teacher. To be a shadow artist, in Julia Cameron’s opinion, can conceal an unacknowledged desire to be creative. It’s often […]
By Susen Edwards, Author, Lookin’ for Love I knew better than to declare sobriety, but something had shifted in my soul. A nagging voice in the back of my mind told me I was only fooling myself, but a stronger voice told me I’d found my home. Back in my apartment, I piled my dance […]
By Elizabeth Parman I had taken my mother to see her doctor and while we were waiting, we chatted about a story in our family that we are descendants of Pocahontas. My mother asked me if I knew Pocahontas was known as the Empress of Virginia. About that time Mom’s name was called, and I […]
By Ona Gritz Two Autumns ago, I attempted to draft a manuscript for National Novel Writing Month and failed. Actually, I failed in two ways. To win NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Not only didn’t I make it, but before my marathon even began, I blew a goal I’d set for […]
by Kris Waldherr One of my favorite literary touchstones is Dante’s Inferno. The story of the poet’s pilgrimage through the underworld has fed some of my creative projects as an illustrator and writer. The Inferno kicks off with one of the most famous sentences ever set on paper. To paraphrase roughly in English: “In the middle of the […]
By Andrea J. Stein, author of Typecast and Dear Eliza When babies are born, there are celebrations galore. Showers are thrown. Gifts are given. Visits are paid. In many ways, books are authors’ babies. They take hours and hours (truthfully, years!) of work to create and cultivate, and then they face a big world full […]
By Tiffany Yates Martin Four years ago, in April of 2020, my first book for authors released right as the world shut down in the acute initial panic of a global pandemic. The book, Intuitive Editing, felt like my life’s work, the culmination of my decades working in the publishing industry as an editor: a […]
by Marilyn Simon Rothstein Getting published saves time. That’s because it’s no longer necessary to spend hours yearning to be published. Nine out of ten authors are “bestselling”. The rest are “award winning”. Almost every writer was once a lawyer. Smile at this remark, “I’m constantly lending your new book to friends. Did I mention […]
By Jennifer Lang Six months after signing a contract for my first book with a small, independent press, I held my breath, crossed all ten fingers, and submitted my second manuscript to them. After an OFFER OF PUBLICATION email arrived in my inbox a few months later, I was overcome by a mixture of joy […]
by Joy Jordan-Lake ECHOES OF US From the bestselling author of Under a Gilded Moon comes the soaring story of an unlikely friendship of three men and one extraordinary woman and the legacy they built—if their own secrets don’t destroy it. In the midst of World War II, a Tennessee farm boy, a Jewish Cambridge student, and […]
by Lenore Borja, author of the Mirror Realm Series THE LOST PORTAL For fans of Kendare Blake’s Goddess War series comes this second installment in a gripping YA fantasy series that follows a band of huntresses taking on a world of demons and gods. For years, Hadley Caldwell kept humanity safe by hunting demons. But […]
By Susen Edwards, Author, Lookin’ for Love I knew better than to declare sobriety, but something had shifted in my soul. A nagging voice in the back of my mind told me I was only fooling myself, but a stronger voice told me I’d found my home. Back in my apartment, I piled my dance […]
LOVE IS FOR THE BIRDS For fans of Mary Alice Monroe’s The Beach House comes a heartwarming story from women’s fiction author Diane Owens Prettyman about second chances as two people find a pathway out of their grief—directly in the aftermath of a hurricane. The Texas Gulf: beautiful yet unpredictable. A beach town destroyed. Her mother’s candy […]
The Accidental Sisterhood Jules Malone has sworn off love after two failed relationships: one with an abusive fiancé whom she calls her white knight-mare, and the other with a nice-but-boring ex with whom she co-parents their son, Max. But then one fateful Christmas Eve, Jules meets Sean, a twinkly-eyed charmer with a captivating smile and […]
By Andrea J. Stein, author of Typecast and Dear Eliza When babies are born, there are celebrations galore. Showers are thrown. Gifts are given. Visits are paid. In many ways, books are authors’ babies. They take hours and hours (truthfully, years!) of work to create and cultivate, and then they face a big world full […]
by Marilyn Simon Rothstein Getting published saves time. That’s because it’s no longer necessary to spend hours yearning to be published. Nine out of ten authors are “bestselling”. The rest are “award winning”. Almost every writer was once a lawyer. Smile at this remark, “I’m constantly lending your new book to friends. Did I mention […]
Why is Book Marketing So Damn Hard? I offer a marketing mastermind for writers, called 12 weeks to Book Launch Success. In this group program, I guide novelists and memoir writers to develop a successful launch plan for their book. (If this sounds interesting, more details at the end!) Before developing my program, I interviewed […]
Things I wish I’d known about book marketing: A few specific tips for the author who wants to sell books as well as write them! (1) When people ask me how I found my agent, I tell them about Publishers Marketplace https://www.publishersmarketplace.com/. This is an enormous database that lists (nearly) every book deal, as well […]
I was at a low. I’d just broken up with my literary agent after three years, and it felt as if my publishing dreams would never come true. I couldn’t sleep. I was cranky. When The Secret by Rhonda Byrne was published in 2006, I didn’t read it but at 2am one night the Netflix […]
Here’s why. You slump, shrink, curl down in your seat, never stand up straight. As if an arrow might pick you off. Not an arrow, a bullet. Not a bullet, a blow. Not a blow, words. Not words, looks. Here’s why. You’re a freak. Four inches in one year? Your father’s colleague says he keeps […]
He wanted you to have this. It was written with exaggerated clarity on a scrap of paper, as if the author was unsure of the reader’s grasp of English. The torn paper, rather than a proper card, another signal from the sender. It was signed Elaine, with a rounded, buxom capital E. On the padded […]
Elaine Walsh Barrington revs up her white BMW and reverses the car out of the double garage behind the house. “I really don’t mind getting a taxi to the station again,” Lorna, her younger sister, says from the passenger seat. “You didn’t have to leave your New Years Day open house like this.” The clenched […]
She’s a woman who discards anything which causes sorrow or blocks her path. A man she cares for does both, and she leaves him. She takes only what she really values, an old set of books, a few china plates of her mother’s, an abstract painting she’d found in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She abhors […]
This is an account of what it was like to be nine years old and on the receiving end of the bombing power of a well-armed enemy. Like millions in London we were evacuated at the start of the war. My father went to Harpenden with the insurance company he worked for, two days before […]
Q&A with Literary Agent ERIN NIUMATA Folio Literary Management, VP and Literary Agent Erin Niumata has been in publishing for over three decades. She started as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster in the Touchstone/Fireside division for several years; then moved over to Harper Collins as an editor, and then she went to Avalon […]
Three years ago, I was a freelance writer with an extremely long Word document chilling on my hard drive. Today, those 98,000 words mark my shift from aspiring writer to fiction author: The Lost Night is coming out from Crown. My novel is a thriller about a woman uncovering the dark truths surrounding her best […]
A few days ago I did an interview and one of the questions was did I think having an agent was crucial in this business. The answer for me was a huge, resounding yes. My agent is Carly Watters at P.S. Literary Agency, and I literally wouldn’t be where I am now without her patient […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series Part One Part Two | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION ELEVEN Historically, how many story ideas do you […]
A Twenty-Five-Question Interview Published as a Five Part Series. Read Part One HERE | Hosted by MM Finck | | Anonymously Answered By Agented Authors* with Varying Publishing Career Durations and Successes from Debut to Bestselling and Represented by Multiple Literary Agencies of Varying Sizes | QUESTION SIX Did your first agented manuscript sell? If […]
A celebration of “women’s work,” this book features contemporary artists from around the globe who are transforming what it means to make craft. “Women’s work” has historically been relegated to the domestic, absent from galleries and discussions of “art.” From cross-stitching and quilts to baskets and decorative ceramics, women have spent centuries creating masterful crafts […]
By Ann E. Lowry Author, The Blue Trunk A blue trunk sits in my foyer. I see it every day when I take my dog, Loki, for a walk. It belonged to my Great-great Aunt Marit who used it when she immigrated from Norway to the United States. When I first noticed the blue trunk […]
By Julie Castillo Author, Long Man’s Pillow When gentle friends tell me they’re going to read my novel, I’m tempted to tell them to skip the first scene. Someone dies of thirst, literally on the first page, and it’s not pretty. Maybe the book should have come with a disclaimer. Why in the heck did […]
By Erin Quinn-Kong When I was a sophomore in high school, I took an Intro to Journalism class where we learned about news and feature writing, the role of editors, and more. That was it—I knew what I wanted to do with my life. After attending the University of Missouri School of Journalism, I moved […]
Before I could write What I Couldn’t Tell My Therapist, I had to write a different book. My original goal was to create a book about my grueling medical journey with an inexplicable headache, aiming to help others who suffered from headaches. I gathered all my medical records, sifted through hundreds of pages of medical […]
We’re delighted to feature this excerpt from THE DECEMBER MARKET by RaeAnne Thayne! The magic of Christmas—and a second shot at romance—is in the air in Shelter Springs this holiday season… Amanda Taylor isn’t a fan of Christmas, but as the owner of a local soap shop, ignoring the holiday season isn’t an option. To […]
I’m not a finance person. When I decided to apply to business schools for an MBA, my mom refused to believe I didn’t mean a master’s degree in journalism or creative writing. Even after business school, I found the stock market boring. That changed in January of 2021. The stock of a failing video game […]
Katie Keridan Let me start by reminding you of something you already know, which will also serve to clear up one of the most common misconceptions I continue to hear about the writing process: There is no right way to write a book. There are, however, ways to write a book that will work better […]
THE MURDERESS Anne LeRoi moved to Phoenix in 1930 with her friend, Sammy Samuelson, so that Sammy could recover from tuberculosis. They met in Alaska when Sammy was an elementary school teacher and Anne was an X-ray technician. They quickly made the acquaintance with Ruth Judd, a medical secretary who worked at the Grunow Clinic, […]
By Melissa Connelly When I began writing my novel, What Was Lost, I thought I was opening a window into an earlier time that would illuminate America’s past before Roe v. Wade. But progress isn’t a straight line; sometimes it takes us back to a place we thought we’d left for good. I had no […]
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