Choose to Learn About our Choose Your Own Misery Books!

Something other authors always talk about on the interwebs, but which you sort of fail to appreciate until your book is in that weird pupal stage between "being done" and "existing in the world," is that there's a LOT of not-really-book-stuff you have to do.

You know, so that people have any idea your book exists in the first place.

That should be enough, right?

How Can You Tell When It's GOOD Advice?

Yesterday I went to my writing group, where two of my fellow writers had submitted pages, and the rest of us told those (un?)lucky two what we thought.

Sometimes we agreed, which is always reassuring, both as a writer and a critiquer--it means there's probably something legitimate in the criticism.

And sometimes we didn't. At all. Or sometimes we offered wildly different potential solutions to perceived problems. Like mine was "maybe more dialogue" and someone else's was "if she passed out from pain, that would explain things"-level different.

Fantastic Reading with Elephant Rock Books

Just got back from Storrs, Connecticut, and I'm still glowing about the fabulous Roar Reading that Elephant Rock Books put on there tonight!

Mary Collins and Emily Lyon both read fantastic, funny, moving pieces, and the room was full--no small feat for a Monday night reading series in a smallish town!