Writing Life: the Reality

“Life is difficult,” wrote M. Scott Peck in his famous book The Road Less Traveled. “This … is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it… Once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” I’d like to amend Peck’s quote to say that “the writing […]

Set Your OWN Course

Imagine for a moment that you are flying to an exotic island.  An hour or so into the flight the pilot announces over the intercom, “I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is our radio is out and our navigational equipment is damaged. The good news is we have a […]

Marketing Help is Here!

The Frugal Book Promoter: Second Edition: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher. I very rarely read an e-book and then buy the hard copy–but I did in this case. I have to mark it up, add my colored flags and post-its, and turn down page corners. Why? […]

For Your Holiday Weekend

When you take a break on this hot Fourth of July weekend, try some of these articles. They’ll keep you in a writing frame of mind! What If You Think You Might Be a Mediocre Fiction Writer? Every novelist hits the point, sooner or later, where they think they just might not actually have any talent. What do […]

Today's Slush Pile

The slush pile of old, where my first book was discovered, was an actual tall stack of unsolicited manuscripts. They were read by lower level publishing staff called “first readers.” We thought at the time that the slush pile was huge–hundreds of manuscripts piled up. Today slush piles have gone electronic–and backed-up inboxes may hold many, many […]