How ditching the side hustle helped me rediscover the joy of writing By Susan K. Hamilton I’ve been fortunate enough to have a few books and short stories published. And I knew that because my publishers were mostly small or indie presses, a lot of the marketing and promotion was going to fall on me. […]
In my childhood home, at the very back of the garden, there used to be an oak tree that towered taller than all the other trees in its company. At the base of this oak tree, there was a small hollow, maybe the size of a child’s hand. And every summer, as the cicadas would […]
By Kait Ballenger Character skits. Aesthetic videos. Shelf trophies and…masked men? #Booktok can be a confusing crowd for those unfamiliar with it. But in a publishing climate where influencers reign supreme and book sales are increasingly fueled by social media virality, what’s an author to do? The answer lies in knowing your audience. First, let […]
Mary Robinette Kowal returns to Mars in this latest entry to the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Lady Astronaut series. “Kowal masters both science and historical accuracy in this alternate history adventure.”—Andy Weir, author of The Martian, on The Calculating Stars An instant USA Today bestseller! Years after a meteorite strike obliterated Washington, D.C.—triggering an extinction-level global warming event—Earth’s survivors […]
Cousin Stories My female cousins were sister substitutes and best friends for me growing up as an only child, and I’ve always been fascinated by cousin relationships both in reality and the arts. There are probably tragic novels about cousins and even more tragic Ph.D. dissertations about them, but the tales that come to my […]
By Kait Ballenger Character skits. Aesthetic videos. Shelf trophies and…masked men? #Booktok can be a confusing crowd for those unfamiliar with it. But in a publishing climate where influencers reign supreme and book sales are increasingly fueled by social media virality, what’s an author to do? The answer lies in knowing your audience. First, let […]
By Linda Rosen “The End,” the two treasured words authors adore typing. But is it really the end? It might be several months since you began your manuscript or, if you’re like me, several years. You’ve workshopped the story in a critique group, chapter by chapter, had a writing partner sitting shotgun along the way, […]
By Tammy L. Grace As a reader, I am always drawn to characters in books. I remember characters from books I read decades ago, like Scout and Atticus Finch, Anne Shirley, Jean Valjean, and Hercule Poirot. As a young reader, I dreamed of becoming a novelist, crafting characters as unforgettable as those I still admire. […]
By Lorraine Devon Wilke When I was in grade school, my class participated in a special pullout session to watch an interesting documentary about noted anthropologist Louis Leakey. I was mesmerized throughout, so when we were assigned to write an essay immediately afterwards, I jumped in, flush with enthusiasm. Imagine, then, the blow of getting […]
by Patsy C. Robertson When I embarked on my writing journey, I had a clear vision of the types of stories I wanted to write. I wanted modern stories that displayed current and historical connections between Native Americans, African Americans, Africans, and the African diaspora throughout the Caribbean, South America, Central America, and Mexico. For […]
In Ana Hebra Flaster‘s powerful debut memoir, Flaster chronicles her family’s refugee journey from a Cuban barrio to a New Hampshire mill town, capturing the resilience, love, and complex identity of immigrant life in the U.S. Featured on NPR and PBS, and a finalist for major literary prizes, Flaster’s memoir reveals how the strong-willed women in her family wove stories of their Cuban […]
Fine, I’m a Terrible Person Fine, I’m a Terrible Person is a funny, heart wrenching adult mother daughter story. It begins when 73-year-old, worn out, former beauty, Aurora Hmans Feldenburg, a hapless, perpetually broke, eccentric, divorcee living in the wealthy enclave of Marin County in Northern California, is wakened by a phone call informing her […]
The Life and Loves of an American Artist: An Interview with Marguerite Thorne By Paulette Kennedy, author of THE ARTIST OF BLACKBERRY GRANGE (Lake Union; May 1, 2025) The Artist of Blackberry Grange: A Novel For a young caregiver in the Ozarks, an old house holds haunting memories in a ghostly novel about family secrets, sacrifice, […]
And They Had a Great Fall is a love story about a secret relationship between a single mother and a rising celebrity. Their romance started during the pandemic, a time when the entire world stopped. This unlikely pair reunite a year later in Copenhagen, after the world has reopened. What happens when they have to […]
THE VOW In a stunning work of feminist historical fiction for readers who loved Dawn Tripp’s Georgia and Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light, Jude Berman brings painter Angelica Kauffman to life. Accused of dressing as a boy to study in the prestigious galleries of eighteenth-century Italy, child prodigy Angelica Kauffman has set high goals for herself. She […]
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 […]
FIRES BURNING UNDERGROUND It’s Anny’s first day of middle school and, after years of being homeschooled, her first day of public school ever. In art, Larissa asks what kind of ESP is her favorite: telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, or telekinesis? Tracy asks how she identifies: gay, straight, bi, asexual, pan, trans, or confused? And thus kicks […]
After surviving a life-altering accident in 2010, author and speaker Heidi Siefkas adopted a two-word mantra that helped her rebuild her life—Look Up. It became her compass for navigating loss, recovery, and personal transformation. Now, more than a decade later, that simple phrase has evolved into a global movement, culminating in the release of her […]
By Kathy Anderson Today I’m the author of a novel, The New Town Librarian (NineStar Press, 2023). But once upon a time, I was a new town librarian in real life. Fresh out of graduate school with my Master of Library Science degree, I was hired as the director of a small-town public library in […]
GROOMED Set during the early days of the global pandemic and at the height of the #MeToo movement, GROOMED follows Myles “Mylo” Gunn, a middle-aged man on the cusp of his 50th birthday. With little more than an endless news cycle of global horror and his thoughts to mark the passing days, Mylo finds himself […]
By Carolyn Clarke When I launched Henlit Central, I had one core mission: to create a vibrant, authentic space where women over 40 could connect through stories that reflect who we are at this beautiful and often overlooked stage of life. “Henlit,” short for “hen lit,” may sound cheeky, but it represents a powerful shift. […]
By Lisa C. Taylor When I worked in the field of counseling, I encountered both parents and children who were grieving. During the eight years it took me to complete The Shape of What Remains, I immersed myself in research about the grieving process. I do not claim to be an expert but what I […]
By Ginny Kubitz Moyer Over the twenty-six years that I taught high school English, many students noticed an unfortunate pattern among our assigned texts. “We always have to read such depressing books in our English classes,” they would complain. “Aren’t any of the classics happy?” It was a valid point, because our department curriculum—like that […]
by Sally McQuillen I began writing to my son Christopher twenty-one days after he died at the age of twenty-one in an accident. I wrote to connect with him. I wrote to let him know how I was feeling after he left his beautiful body and went somewhere I wasn’t yet sure existed. Most of […]
By Kathleen Somers For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to write and had often fantasized about writing a book, though I never expected that I would one day do it. I have a drawer full of binders with children’s stories I had started over the years, bits and pieces of potential novels, […]
WHEN SHE WAS GONE Was she taken … or did she run? The pulse-pounding new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of You Don’t Know Me Rose once walked away from her daughter. Now she may be the only one who can save her. Former London police officer Rose Campbell has been estranged from her daughter, […]
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