This is how my backyard looked Sunday morning. An ice storm rocked my area. Oh, it’s fun to live in the Northeast in winter. I didn’t realize the storm was happening until the power went out, which really messed up Movie Nite in our house. Luckily, we have a woodstove, and we spent about 10 [...]

In the publishing world, Jason Pinter has sat on both sides of the desk.  As an editor, first with Warner and Crown’s Three Rivers Press, then at St. Martin’s, Pinter saw his share of the good, the bad, and the ugly as far as submissions were concerned.  Pinter, however, wanted to write fiction–gritty, fast-paced urban novels.  He [...]

Anyone who’s been following my occasional references to the work in progress may recall that last year I had the challenging experience of needing to change horses mid-race. The situation was complicated, but in a nutshell I had a two book contract with my Australian and UK publishers, and I had written four chapters of [...]

A great blip from Wordsmith’s Word-A-Day: William Strunk and E.B. White, in their highly-regarded book, The Elements of Style, say: “Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.” They have a point. Nouns and verbs [...]

This is a strange time for me, writing-wise, because I’m not plotting fresh text or even editing old stuff. I’m thick in the marketing stage of this game. Add to that, my Odyssey of the Mind team competes in FOUR days, so my time is limited. Yes, I’m courting some new story ideas, but it [...]

It’s been awhile since I’ve read a book about the craft of writing (avoidance, or maybe something darker at work. Like laziness), but a writer friend allowed me to borrow a book she said she’d been chuckling over since she bought it: Pat Walsh’s 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published, & 14 [...]

I read this in today’s Writer’s Almanac and had to share. Did you ever wonder how some of the big publishing houses began? Here’s the story of one of them: It’s the birthday of the publisher Max Schuster, born in Kalusz, Austria (1897). He was working as the editor of a trade magazine when he [...]