Category: Publishing

Author interview: Annette Fix

I interviewed debut author Ellen Booraem a few months ago, and here’s a Q&A with another debut author, Annette Fix. Annette decided not to go the traditional route of getting her memoir, The Break-Up Diet, published through a house. Instead, she self-published and learned a lot along the way. This interview is part of a blog…
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Getting children to read

As with many other industries, the last couple quarters have been rough on publishing, with houses downsizing with huge layoffs, closing imprints, and restructuring to bundle imprints together with the same staff. Some smaller publishing houses have closed altogether. Before Christmas, calls went out on many blogs, including mine, for people to put books on their gift…
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Interview with Ellen Booraem Part 2

Got another two chapters done today. Goal achieved! Tomorrow, chapter 23 and 24. Also, thanks fo Layne and Jennie who posted story starters for the community story I’ll be starting in the new year. There’s still time to post one. I still haven’t even done one myself. Click here and post in the comments. After…
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Query letters and first chapters

Been busy busy again, and I’m ashamed to say I’ve missed two writing days. Wednesday I completed my revising goal, but then didn’t have time for a blog post. Yesterday no time for anything and today, no time for writing, but now I’m squeezing in a post that I’ve been wanting to write. First, thanks…
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Day 27

And I’m back on track! As promised, for the much belated day 27 of my unofficial participation in National Novel Writing Month, I got up early and finished my outline/timeline. That exercise has proved priceless. I now have a plan for the plot points that I was stumbling over. And I found solutions to a lot…
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Day 8

It has been more than a week in my unofficial participation in National Novel Writing Month. Yay! Got up early and spent about two hours in front of the computer. I can’t report that I got that much done, I’m afraid, but I was there, fingers poised over keys and occasionally pressing them. Today I…
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Inspiration and pet peeves

My middle-grade novel revision is moving along, but not as quickly as I’d like. Part of the reason is that I’m editing faster than my critique group meetings. Sounds weird, I know, but I’ll explain. You see, we meet twice a month and can take up to five pages to each meeting. After each meeting,…
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Why do we write

Literary agent Nathan Bransford put up a post last week posing a hypothetical question (click here for the post): If someone could tell you the future, would you want to know if you will be published, and if you found out you wouldn’t, would you still write?   The post got a lot of people talking,…
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