Latest posts
Mining All Your Interests
/ 2025-10-03Once upon a time, there was a girl, and from an early age (10), she knew she wanted to be a writer. She went to college to study writing. After she was done with her schooling, she got her first full-time teaching job. This was in 1990. But she ran... Read More
Even Stephen King
/ 2025-10-03I have preached many times about being careful promoting your religious, political, and social opinions. Yes, you have the right. But also, others have the right to delete, cancel, and cease reading your work when they can't put that off to the side when they see your work. Stephen... Read More
How Do I Define My Book’s Genre?
/ 2025-09-26‘When talking to an agent or publisher about your novel, practically the first thing out of your mouth should be the genre,’ says agent Rachelle Gardner. With so many books out there, readers need help finding the ones that beckon. Genre is a key tool for that, with each genre... Read More
To Substack or Not to Substack?
/ 2025-09-26Substack is all the rage. You can write in newsletter/essay form and start building a platform, because opening a Substack account makes you part of an instant community. New writers are jumping on it. I am receiving queries from people who claim their publishing credits are their Substack articles. A lot... Read More
Walk Away When You Need To
/ 2025-09-26I reached a point this week where I was fed up with all the emails about how to market, buy this, subscribe to that, hire this consultant, or sign up for that course. "Become a best selling author!" Most are from people I never heard of before. Clearly many of these... Read More
Engaging With a Conversation Partner to Support Your Author Event
/ 2025-09-26A recent library fundraiser featured Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water. Instead of standing at a podium talking at us, he engaged in conversation with Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers. . They sat in easy chairs on a dais and discussed Verghese's book, writing habits, and philosophies of life. For the release... Read More
The Pros and Cons of Copyright
/ 2025-09-26In the recent and pending Anthropic $1.5B settlement, a lot of writers were disappointed that their work was pirated, used, yet they did not qualify for this settlement, which amounted to about $3,000 per pirated book. One of the main disqualifiers was not having filed a formal copyright with the... Read More
The Big and Little Picture
/ 2025-09-26Well, I have bronchitis from Covid, my third week of having this damn bug. I am not particularly happy about the situation, but I am trying to see the bigger picture. I am better, just not BETTER. Some would say Covid is the bigger picture, but it's not. The bigger... Read More
Differing Views
/ 2025-09-13Last week I wrote in my weekly newsletter how I was dealing with COVID, on my 8th day of it, as a matter of fact. Well, I returned to the gym and three days later I had a bit of a relapse. Guess I jumped too soon. But that meant... Read More
7 Things Agents and Publishers Really Don’t Want: 2025 Edition
/ 2025-09-05I've spent a lot of time recently trawling through directories of agents and publishers, and I’ve learned some things. Some of these no-nos are golden oldies, but others are newer. Tech avoidance They receive a lot of stories set in the near past – say 20 or 30 years ago... Read More
