By Amal Hdhili I didn’t set out to write a book. I set out to remember who I was before life got too loud. There was a time I wrote often—letters I never sent, poems I didn’t show, journal entries I buried in drawers. But somewhere between growing up and showing up—at work, in life, […]
By Nancie Abuhaidar WIP: abbreviation for work in progress or process: a piece of work or a product that has been begun but is not finished or ready –Cambridge Dictionary In the work in progress that is my life, it feels like I’m living the boggy middle of a first draft, a fact echoed literally in my current project. Since I self-published my debut, I’ve been working on the next […]
By A.C. Adams My wife and creative partner, Christina Adams, and I met in San Diego in our early twenties. She had just returned from a tour in India and Europe as the lead singer of Vrindavan, a world music ensemble. I was the composer and book writer for an original rock opera, An Eye […]
By Amal Hdhili I didn’t set out to write a book. I set out to remember who I was before life got too loud. There was a time I wrote often—letters I never sent, poems I didn’t show, journal entries I buried in drawers. But somewhere between growing up and showing up—at work, in life, […]
Author Catalina Margulis shares her story of the transformative power of storytelling By Catalina Margulis When I started writing my book Again, Only More Like You, I had been laid off, restructured out of my job. AND I was pregnant. On top of it all I was turning 40. Having spent my whole life building […]
Melissa Payne is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Wild Road Home, A Light in the Forest and her latest, In the Beautiful Dark. After an early career raising money for nonprofit organizations, Melissa began dreaming about becoming a published author and wrote her first novel. Her stories feature small mountain towns with […]
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 […]
By Barbara Bos June 27, 2024 I’m not sure if I’m ready for this. I’ve just sat down in my window seat, glancing outside at the plane’s wing. Beyond that, Santiago de Compostela’s airport is covered in fog. I should have chosen a better seat. Wings should give you a better perspective, but sometimes they […]
By Nancie Abuhaidar WIP: abbreviation for work in progress or process: a piece of work or a product that has been begun but is not finished or ready –Cambridge Dictionary In the work in progress that is my life, it feels like I’m living the boggy middle of a first draft, a fact echoed literally in my current project. Since I self-published my debut, I’ve been working on the next […]
By A.C. Adams My wife and creative partner, Christina Adams, and I met in San Diego in our early twenties. She had just returned from a tour in India and Europe as the lead singer of Vrindavan, a world music ensemble. I was the composer and book writer for an original rock opera, An Eye […]
By Valerie Taylor, author of the Venus Bixby Mystery Series Raise your hand. Have you ever said, “The book was better than the movie”? When it comes to Outlander (book by Diana Gabaldon), I’m in no position to compare one format to the other. I am not one of the more than 50 million people […]
Spending Seven Years Writing a Novel: A Study in Madness or Determination? This June, my fifth novel, Claire Casey’s Had Enough, will be released. When I shared the cover in my monthly newsletter, many friends said, “Wow, you wrote it so fast!” I laughed because that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m sharing this […]
By Lori B. Duff I don’t believe in fate. To believe in fate requires me to believe that free will is an illusion, that our choices only serve something predetermined. Actions have consequences. Now that I’m in my mid-fifties, I’ve had a lot of time to make a lot of choices and suffer (or celebrate) […]
Melissa Payne is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Wild Road Home, A Light in the Forest and her latest, In the Beautiful Dark. After an early career raising money for nonprofit organizations, Melissa began dreaming about becoming a published author and wrote her first novel. Her stories feature small mountain towns with […]
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 […]
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 […]
When Bob and Diane met, it was love at first sight. For both of them. In her memoirs, The Married Widow: My Journey with Bob Zappa and its companion piece, Dear Bobby: My Grief Journey, Diane describes the evolution of their relationship from their meeting in 1986 to their marriage in 2015 and his passing […]
The Book Club For Troublesome Women “This is a novel about ambitious women and the mentors that inspired them to excellence . . . Bostwick carves an unforgettable path for her characters.”–Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone Margaret Ryan never really meant to start a book club . . . or a feminist revolution in […]
By Pamela Fagan Hutchins Many of you, like me, wrestle with the question of whether you “deserve” to be something. A parent. A computer scientist. An athlete. Or in my case, a writer. Whether I am a good enough writer. Whether I am really even a writer at all or just some Karin Slaughter wannabe. […]
By Laurie Buchanan, author of the Sean McPherson crime thriller novels The lifeblood of crime fiction is tension—the underlying current of unease, suspense, and anticipation that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. The elements that contribute to tension are: INTRIGUING CHARACTERS Complex characters with hidden motives and flaws make for compelling reading. The interplay […]
This excerpt is from Stephanie Peirolo’s upcoming book The Saint and the Drunk – A Guide to Making the Big Decisions In Your Life about how to use the ancient spiritual tools of St Ignatius of Loyola through the lens of the Higher Power concept from Alcoholic Anonymous for a modern, spiritual-but-not-religious approach to make […]
By Christina Hamlett Who among us hasn’t scoped out bridal, craft, garden and home decor shows held at convention centers? The basic structure of a “meet, greet, browse, purchase” platform is the same model used by book fairs. Authors and readers, however, aren’t the only ones attending these events; publishers, agents, librarians, educators and vendors […]
By Taryn Hubbard Everyone has something unique they obsess over, that keeps them up at night, or ticks away in the back of their mind. I refer to mine as my hauntings. When I set out to write my debut novel, The Very Good Best Friend, I had been ruminating about many of the themes examined […]
By Lee Upton Years ago I was fired from a job at a credit agency. My first reaction: I sobbed. I sobbed so much it felt like tears spurted out of my neck. I sobbed because I was embarrassed. I sobbed because I was humiliated. I sobbed out of pity for the sad and anxious […]
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” These words are the No. 1 regret of the dying, as reported by Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who provided palliative care for patients in the last 12 years of their lives. In 2016, this […]
By Karen Booth If you’re reading this, chances are you’re hoping you’ll write a bestselling book. You’ve imagined what it would be like to hit the top of the NY Times list and having people line up around the block at book signings, just so they can tell you how brilliant you are. If you’re […]
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