What are your thoughts on self-publishing? I ask this question carefully. I don’t want a long tirade on the arrogance of the traditional publishing market. In fact, I’ve had great experience with my publisher, ABC-CLIO, Praeger Press. They are not only responsive but they also do a good job. Nonetheless, I understand that the publishing […]
How ’bout some help with the query
Query letters are the pitches that make or break writers. They are the little paragraphs that enable us to get our foot in an agent’s door. If the query does not “sparkle” (as one agent described it), you lose. In today’s competitive fiction environment, the query is almost as important as the manuscript itself. Knowing […]
A Sparkling Query Letter
I have finished the manuscript and am ready to start the business of getting my book out there. Step one is the query letter. Yes, I know. It has to be short and it must hook the reader. In very few words it must say what the book is about, who the characters are, and […]
First Sentence Launches Your Novel
Wouldn’t it be nice to get some feedback on your first sentence–that all important sentence that launches your novel? Why not? I’m sure that some fellow writers out there could give me some advice and I’m also sure that some fellow readers could throw in their two cents. We know that the first paragraph of […]