Very interesting read here from a long time pro in the industry: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090608/siftonRead more... )

Posting up the ongoing rough draft of the latest story: The Bare Dirty. Assuming anyone looks at it, it'll be interesting to see what feedback I might get and if any of it might be deemed useful. Currently it's through chapter five. Take a peek and crit away! (link on the sidebar)

I'm one of those writers, and surely not the only one, who really has no stress over sending out queries. Feeling like I've written a decent one is another matter. However, even then I know they don't require perfection. They just need to generate interest ( Read more... )

Created a pdf version of the first draft of The Bare Dirty. I created a sidebar for it with some additional information on the story. It's visually interesting I believe, though how it is to read for others I won't know until others check it out. I purposefully did this for the rough to encourage greater feedback, as I'm one who values feedback ( Read more... )

Does anyone do odd little things to help keep motivation up for writing a particular story? Do you paste character pics from magazines up on the wall over your desk? Or have some related pic on your desktop that provides a constant reminder/inspiration? I like to make fake book covers for my books. I'm by no means any good at it, but it certainly ( Read more... )

Read an article today regarding the launch of the Kindle Deluxe (yet another reader in a price range most can't afford), but what grabbed my attention was the fact that in February, when Kindle 2 came out, the Kindle took 35% of sales for books available in that format. That's an eye-opening number. Speaks to the growing interest in reading on ( Read more... )

Started work on a new story a couple of days ago. I had been working on getting my time-travel novel underway, and am actually in chapter two of that one, but I have had this other lingering around for about a year now, and a different twist on it has made it click into place. Or so I hope anyway ( Read more... )

Very interesting query activity at Nathan Bransford's blog ended over the weekend, and my query got a whopping 2.3% request rate. This was ok, as it was something of an experimental query letter. The biggest result, other than being very glad I passed the idea along to Nathan, who made it into the fabulous contest it was, was just how difficult it ( Read more... )

Writer Mary Walters had some whining, bashing, criticism, inflammatory commentary and general 'the industry sucks' words at her blog ( Read more... )

Happy day! First request for pages from my new query on the rewritten suspense novel, Deadworld. Seven or eight rejections so far and now one request. If I maintain that ratio over the 100 agents on my list, I'll be pleased. The request was for 100 pages. I'm hoping it actually all gets read. I've had requests before for a large chunk of pages only ( Read more... )