Hello Readers & Friends, All this talk about summer reading, and I fell short in meeting my quota for the month. Sigh. While I traveled in June—the perfect time to get lost in a book—I disconnected and focused on the moment. Which was pretty amazing. But nine is still a good number, and these […]
Fire Mountain, Dana Mentink Fire rains from above as they fight to discover the truth and stay alive. In the shadow of a threatening volcano, long-haul trucker Kit Garrido wakes up in her crashed big rig, unable to recall what happened or why she’s suddenly in possession of someone’s baby. Fiercely independent, she has to […]
By Jill McCroskey Coupe “Last year at the Kauai Writers Conference, Salman Rushdie offered a keynote in which he said: ‘Writing is a mess.’ He couldn’t be more right. There’s nothing about the process of writing a book that follows a prescribed way of doing things or a specific formula. Just keep writing and letting […]
By Lauren Wittenberg Weiner I’ve always said that one of the critical drivers of my success over my life is that I can write really well under substantial time pressure. My high school English teachers should be credited for that, and it got me through high school and college and even my PhD with a […]
by Tracy Shawn It takes energy, determination, and focus to get those words down. And it can be even more challenging to find the motivation to write when being bombarded by bad news and anxious thoughts. And let’s face it, there’s lots of bad news out there—plus a lot more of us are feeling a […]
Once upon a time, women were taught to wait. Wait for Prince Charming, for the shoe to fit, for the happily ever after. But what happens when you realize life doesn’t come with a fairy godmother to wave her wand and grant your dreams? You grab a sword, get on a white horse, and get […]
Señora Dull was my third-grade Spanish teacher. My eight-year-old friends and I found this hilarious. Señora Dull was my first language teacher, and in addition to basic vocabulary, useful phrases, and rhymes which I still remember (Chicle puesto en el cesto no molesta a la maestra), she taught us the difference between a ‘stop D’ […]
By Lynne Shaner I started writing what would become my debut novel more than ten years ago. The first draft was messy and awful and all over the place, in the way firsts drafts are (mine, anyway). I printed it out it and boxed it up and lugged it halfway across the country. I tucked […]
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I understood the gravity of a bounced check. Once I figured out that a checkbook was only as good as my rapidly fluctuating account balance at the bank, the act of writing a check to pay for anything felt like risky business. A bounced check can represent […]
What is the spark that ignites your creativity? What sets your imagination on fire, sending you to your laptop or notebook to record those thoughts before they fly away? What keeps you moving forward? This is the best part of writing, letting the words fly across the page as your characters take shape and you […]
THRILL OF THE CHASE – Kathryn Nolan When rivals Harper and Eve are forced to team up on a high-stakes treasure hunt, sparks fly, secrets unravel, and the biggest prize might just be their hearts. Reporter Harper Hendrix is chasing a career-making story—and the legendary Blackburn Diamonds are her ticket to the top. She’s smart, […]
TELL ME SOMETHING GOOD “This is a writer that understands people down to the bones. Her characters are fallible and hopeful, flawed and loving, and so real they have stayed with me.” –Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author “A knockout.” —Booklist Starred Review This is a story of the rich and the very poor. This is a […]
THE FINAL EPISODE When a true crime series chronicles the tragic childhood summer that changed her life forever, a young woman must grapple with the truth about her father…and herself. Jennifer Jones and her best friends spend every summer at Big Cypress Swamp, and this summer, Jennifer will finally turn eleven. She hopes to gain […]
Lora Chilton and Ah’SaWei WaTaPa’AnTam (Golden Fawn) 1666: A Novel The survival story of the Patawomeck Tribe of Virginia has been remembered within the tribe for generations, but the massacre of Patawomeck men and the enslavement of women and children by land hungry colonists in 1666 has been mostly unknown outside of the tribe until […]
The following is a Q&A with Karen Fang, author of BACKGROUND ARTIST: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong (Rutgers University Press). Karen is a film scholar and cultural critic who writes for museums and film festivals around the world. She is a professor of English at the University of Houston, and her previous books […]
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 […]
By Megan Williams I started writing my memoir One Bad Mother when I was applying to the Philadelphia Police Academy. It began as journal-like entries on my computer. I couldn’t believe some of the stuff I encountered and I wanted to make sure that I didn’t forget any of that craziness. Stuff like being told […]
‘Unintentional Medium’ who switched from memoir to fiction. Perceived wisdom tells us that everyone has a book in them, and I do believe this is true. The question is what separates a rather ordinary story from a great book? Well, my guess is belief; belief in yourself and belief in your book. My own path […]
By Lisa Montanaro My father doesn’t really read. Well, okay, he reads boating magazines and car manuals, but not books. Certainly not novels. And yet, when I received the publishing deal for my debut novel, he called, and after congratulating me, said, “So, when am I going to read this manuscript?” “You want to read […]
It’s not coincidental that this current limb of my life—where I’m interrogating my relationship to medicine—coincides with the moment I’ve begun sharing my soul through writing. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that one would herald the other. The kind of surrender required to trust the universe and write from that truth cannot coexist with […]
By Kelli Estes In the magnificent Scottish Highlands, two devoted mothers separated by centuries discover a haunting connection in a gripping novel by the USA Today bestselling author of The Girl Who Wrote in Silk. Struggling with the tragic end of her marriage, Keaka Denney is on a bittersweet adventure in Scotland with her son, Colin. She’s joining […]
By Sheila Vijeyarasa Some books take time to percolate. Mine arrived like a bolt of lightning, then poured out in a steady, determined trickle over two trimesters of pregnancy and the first three months of my son’s life. Yes, I wrote my second book while growing a human, birthing that human, and learning how to […]
By Kate Woodworth “Remember mud football on the quad?” our Trinity College (Hartford) reunion chair, Henry Bruce wrote last fall when trying to drum up enthusiasm for our 50th. “The Sha-Na-Na concert?” Nope. In my four years of college, I attended zero sporting events. I don’t know what mud football is and have no desire […]
by Anne Vines In my early days of writing fiction, I did not set out to write about war. But perhaps because I was born a few years after World War Two ended, it was a fascination in my reading and film watching, so I should have expected it to well up sometime into my […]
By Sharon Maas Of all my sixteen novels, Girl in a Red Silk Sari has the most tumultuous history: a twenty-something year backstory that has seen it jumping from publisher to publisher, from incarnation to incarnation, from title to title; almost as if searching for an identity of its own. A final identity, now found. […]
By Claudia Hinz It is one my favorite emails in my inbox even though I can’t bring myself to read the whole letter: News from the Arctic Circle. The subject line alone sends a chill up my spine. The frozen nostril zing of a wild adventure on the top of the world. A place I […]
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