Chef Holly Herrick’s Latest: The French Cook–Sauces
Charleston-based Holly Herrick is a Cordon Blue-trained chef. Here she discusses how cookbooks are her “children” (although she does have a dog). Her latest, first in a series of French cookbooks from Gibbs Smith, takes her back to her days in France where she learned to be a chef. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NvoNKUTfFns Holly is hard at work […]
Read of the Week: COUNTDOWN CITY, Ben H. Winters
The Last Policeman received the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original–along with plenty of glowing reviews. Now Detective Hank Palace returns in Countdown City, the second volume of the Last Policeman trilogy. There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under […]
Do Your Homework to Land a Literary Agent
It never ceases to amaze me by 99% of the unsolicited queries we receive at the agency are doomed. Why? Because in so many cases, the writer clearly did not check our agency website and submission guidelines. And I’m assuming that if they are querying multiple literary agents (which, by the way, is OK), this […]
Read of the Week: SUMMER SHIFT, Lynn Bonasia
Beach read pick for Woman’s Day and the New York Post Forty-four-year-old Cape Cod clam bar owner Mary Hopkins is stuck in the cycle of her seasonal business; overwhelmed by the relentless influx of new names and fresh young faces, she feels as if life is passing her by. In the first days of the […]
Guest Post from Debut YA Novelist L. Tam Holland
We invited Lindsay Tam Holland, author of The Counterfeit Family Tree of Vee Crawford-Wong, (July 2013 publication, Simon & Schuster)to share what inspired her first novel. Please also check out her website, www.lindsaytamholland.com. “I grew up in Hawaii, a white kid in a predominantly Asian community. Most of my friends through high school were of mixed […]
Sequel to Ashley Rhodes-Courter’s THREE LITTLE WORDS sold!
I first met Ashley Rhodes-Courter when she was 16. I represented her adoptive mother, Gay Courter, a wonderful commercial novelist, and nonfiction writer. Ashley had just won a contest sponsored by Scholastic for an essay on “What Harry Potter Means to Me.” As a child, Ashley had been in and out of foster homes from […]
A DIFFERENT SUN Book Club
Debut novelist Elaine Neil Orr has been very busy promoting her gorgeous novel about a missionary in the pre-Civil War South who goes to Africa. Inspired by the diary of an actual missionary, A DIFFERENT SUN has been getting rave reviews. Elaine, who teaches literature at North Carolina State University, sent in this wonderful photo […]
Query Letter Do’s and Don’ts
If you’re a writer and you have not been living under a rock, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the infamous query letter. This is the vehicle by which you will approach prospective agents and publishers.It is all-important because it will determine whether the recipient–someone you are trying to impress and engage–will respond to you and consider […]
Ben H. Winters’ THE LAST POLICEMAN Wins an Edgar Award!
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending the Mystery Writers of America’s annual Edgar Allen Poe Awards at the invitation of Quirk Books, publisher of one of the one of the nominees in the “best paperback original” original category. Turns out the amiable author Ben Winters dresses up really nice in a tux, and […]
Veteran Editor John Paine on Cutting Your Manuscript
Writers are understandably concerned when asked to trim their manuscript by a considerable degree. Yet the experience of cutting your manuscript with the help of an experienced editor need not be a painful one. An editor has the advantage of being a neutral outsider, not caught up in the countless whirling threads that consume an […]