Where I Write: John Temple
The next writer in our Where I Write series is John Temple “My usual writing spot and position is feet up on the desk of my home office. It’s a smallish room with a window flanked by two big bookshelves that looks out on our hilly backyard where the boys play baseball. I have to […]
Staying in Touch with Your Agent, Editor and Publicist
I’m often surprised to see how quickly, once a book has been published, an author falls out of touch. Perhaps the author feels that he or she doesn’t want to bother me, that I’m super-busy. While I am always very busy, I love hearing from authors even long after their books have been published. I […]
Where I Write: Anne Greenwood Brown
We asked our authors to share their favorite writing spots and were so delighted with the responses that a new series of posts was born. Here is the first Where I Write post from Anne Greenwood Brown. “I have a beautiful writing desk in a writing loft with bookcases filled with all my favorite books. But […]
Has the long novel made a comeback?
Today’s New York Times (November 11, 2013) reports on the recent sale of a 900-page novel, CITY ON FIRE, by Garth Risk Hallberg, for “close to $2 million.” The article headline grabbed my attention: “A Long Debut Novel Fetches About $2,200 Per Page.” The article points out several long novels that are currently enjoying strong […]
Ingredients of Successful Fiction: If Your Novel Doesn’t Sell, Consider This
From an agent’s perspective, selling fiction can be exciting, just plain fun or heartbreaking. Exciting because I can’t wait to tell editors about a story that moved me or kept me on the edge of my seat, characters I can’t forget, a setting that resonates, language that soars. Fun because fiction can be so engaging. […]
So you are a debut novelist…
I was thrilled this week to make a 2-book deal with Kensington Publishing for first time author, Kerstin March. I think this happy ending can be instructive for debut novelists, especially those writing mainstream women’s fiction or genre fiction, so I thought I’d share a little bit about how this came to be. Kerstin came […]
Carving Out a Narrative from a Sea of Fascinating Details – On Writing History by Joseph Kelly
I fell into this book sideways. A long time ago, I wrote a short article for the Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, and I was hooked by the strange life of John England, the first Catholic bishop of Charleston. Raised in Cork, Ireland, this prickly champion of Catholic emancipation stuck like a thorn in […]
Story Telling vs. Story Trapping, by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
The process of writing the first draft of book one of The Guardian Herd Series was magical for me. The story leapt from my head, fully formed, like Venus. There is something sacred about that, right? You don’t mess with a story straight from the muse, do you? I thought you didn’t. I thought a […]
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 […]
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 […]