To be honest, I'm not sure why I'm not skipping right over this author photo bit and moving on to The Four Ms. Bradwells showing up on Amazon. I. Hate. Photos. …
novels
A Brief History of the Slush Pile
Did you know the first time the New York Times used the term "slush pile" in a literary sense wasn't until 1967? I just came across an article at the Awl, "Very …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 9: Titles and DESCRIPTIONS and Author Photos – Oh My! (the "Description" part)
One funny thing about writing a book is how hard it is to reduce 300+ pages of prose to a one- or two-paragraph description. So the good news is that when your …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 8: TITLES and Descriptions and Author Photos – Oh My!
The working title for The Four Ms. Bradwells was "The Ms. Bradwells," which comes from an 1873 Supreme Court case, Bradwell v. Illinois, in which nine white …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 7: It's a … Well, Not a Book, Exactly, but an ARC. Or an ARE?
I've just arrive home from ten days in Berlin and Prague to find a box of advanced reader copies of The Four Ms. Bradwells on my doorstep! Woo hoo!!! For those …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 6: It Starts to Look Like a Book!!! (a.k.a. in Praise of Beth Pearson)
My tweet for May 15 reads "Page proofs for THE FOUR MS. BRADWELLS just arrived! Woo hooo! It looks like a book!" Which is all the work of others, whose praise …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 5: Hunting the Elusive Agent
I've gotten a few requests from readers of this series to write a few words about how I got an agent. It's a step I skipped because I already had an agent - not …
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 4: What's in a Cover?
I've got my final cover for The Four Ms. Bradwells, and am so excited about it that I am going to leap ahead in my narrative here to cover the great cover …
[Read more...] about The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 4: What's in a Cover?
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 3: Why I LOVE my Editor
You may recall that when last you saw our fearless hero (me!), she'd had the bad judgment to send her editor a revised draft of The Four Ms. Bradwells on …
[Read more...] about The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 3: Why I LOVE my Editor
The All-True Story of How a Novel Gets Published, Part 2: Brainstorm, and Revise, Revise, Revise!
In Part 1 of this little series, "Manuscript Puberty," I shared the experience of sending a first draft of my new novel, The Four Ms. Bradwells, to my editor, …