With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion! The last few years feel like they will be forever be caught in a strange time vortex. It somehow feels like decades and the blink of an eye at the same time. What did it do to your creativity? Have you emerged as a different writer? During the pandemic, I was stuck creatively like I’ve never been stuck b ..read more

When you really stop to think about what’s happening when you’re reading a novel, it’s weird. You are essentially using the words on the page to co-create a fictional world in your own head. Your guide is either a storytelling voice if the perspective is omniscient, or the guide is an anchoring protagonist in first person or third person limited. You only see what your guide helps you see. In the first person and third person limited, you are more a less a conjoined twin with the protagonist, only your fictional other half controls all the ambulation. If you want to go exploring, the guide mu ..read more

This week! Books! I wasn’t super plugged into social media and the internet while I was away, but I still collected a few links for your perusing pleasure. Independent press book distributor Small Press Distribution abruptly closed last month, which sent shockwaves through the small press community. It turned a rare spotlight onto the crucial role distributors play within the industry as many publishers were left in the lurch with uncertain futures. In happier news, congrats to the Edgar Award winners from the Mystery Writers of America. Some of the selections: Best Novel: Flags on the Bayou ..read more

If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in our discussion forums: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog If you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline compares to mine. And, of course, if you need help more urgently or privately, I’m available for edits and consultations! Now then. Time for the Page Critique. First I’ll presen ..read more

With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion! Writing a book, as may have discovered, is quite hard. No matter how enthusiastically you start, at some point you’ll run out of steam. Your adrenaline will crater. At some point, inevitably, it will become work. What keeps you motivated to push past the obstacles and continue moving forward? My routine ..read more

While I was away, I saw the very sad news that literary agent Janet Reid passed away. In an industry notoriously slow to change and beholden to ancient (and often elitist) customs, it’s difficult to overstate what a game changer Janet represented as the biggest early blogging literary agent, first with the anonymous Miss Snark, and later with Janet Reid, Literary Agent and Query Shark. Up until the late 2000s, many literary agencies didn’t even have websites and operated with a mindset of “the people who need to know who we are already know who we are.” Writers who lacked personal connections ..read more

This week! Books! First up, the blog will be going on a spring break over the next few weeks while I do some traveling, reflecting, and soccer watching. I’m anticipating a late April or early May return. But I’ll be working and checking email in the meantime, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help with queries, synopses, manuscripts, proposals, or coaching. (And as someone soon to be traveling and reflecting, I read this article on George Orwell’s time on the isolated Isle of Jura in Scotland, where he famously wrote 1984, with great interest). One hundred years ago, Richard Simon an ..read more

If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in the discussion forums: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline compares to mine. And, of course, if you need help more urgently or privately, I’m available for edits and consultations! Now then. Time for the Query Critique. First I’ll pres ..read more

With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion! As a reader, I’m a generalist by design. Because of my work with authors, it behooves me to familiarize myself with as much of the market as possible, which usually means reading one book by a particular author and moving on. I’m typically one and done. But there are authors who sneak under my defenses ..read more

If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in our discussion forums: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog If you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline compares to mine. And, of course, if you need help more urgently or privately, I’m available for edits and consultations! Now then. Time for the Page Critique. First I’ll presen ..read more