Writer Unboxed

Life’s been nutty for Kath and me lately, but we don’t want you starving for books & business news. Here are some of the latest happenings:
Merriam-Webster added some new words to the dictionary last week, including “webinar,” “fanboy,” and one that should’ve been there eons ago (says the health writer in me), “phytonutrient.”
Salman Rushdie […]

I just turned my revision of Unbounded in to Elisabeth last night, and so this week it’s going to be about balance for me. Taking my dog for a few more walks. Going for a massage. Catching up on current events (Brangelina had their baby Saturday? Where have I been?). Finishing the paint job on […]

Now that I’m a real writer (heh), I’ve had the pleasure of working with professional editors who are right at this moment scribbling all over my submission with their red pen. I’d often wondered what the secret was with YA series that seem to crank out at warp-speed to land on shelves with four, […]

Lucia Nevai is a debut novelist with an impressive writing history: short stories published across the board, including in The New Yorker. Her work has also garnered the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, not to mention some glowing critique. Here, Salon’s Jonathan Miles reviews one of Nevai’s short-story anthologies, Normal, […]

A friend and I were recently chatting about first person vs. third person, and she asked me why I chose to write my first book (and incidentally, my second, though she hasn’t yet read it) in the first person. I thought it was a great, discussion-provoking question, so I wanted to address it here.
For […]

Last week I blogged about seeing Lars and the Real Girl instead of my intended movie pick for the weekend, Juno. Maybe I’d been tainted by too much publicity about the preggers teen with the acerbic wit and potty mouth, but I took a pass and was glad I’d spent the evening with Lars […]

I’d been waiting for my fabulous new agent’s notes for tightening my manuscript, and I received those comments just last night. Up to that point, I’d half-convinced myself that she’d email to say she was crazy before and had decided she couldn’t possibly represent such a pile of lawn droppings. Instead, she said she liked […]

This was a little surreal when I read it in Publisher’s Marketplace four weeks ago:
CLASS PRESIDENT, in which the rebellious seventeen year-old daughter of the female US President impersonates her mother with unexpected comedic, political, and even romantic results, to Sarah Sevier at Harper Children’s, in a two-book deal, for publication […]

I began reading Jill A. Davis‘ latest novel, ASK AGAIN LATER, with a little apprehension. The story centers on Emily, a single woman in NYC whose life is thrown into a tailspin when her mother is diagnosed with cancer. Cancer certainly isn’t a funny topic. But Davis, an Emmy-nominated writer for the […]

By the time this is posted I’ll be in Estonia, about as far away from home as I can get. Preparations for the trip were disrupted by a new arrival – an old, blind dog who needed to be gently eased into my existing menagerie. Life is full of surprises.
Part two of Therese’s interview with […]

[Kath here: we’re pleased to post part 2 of Dave’s diary recounting his experiences at the Writer’s League of Texas’ Agents & Editors Conference. If you missed Part 1, click HERE. Or read Dave’s full account at his website: write your short story dot com.]
Agents and Editors Conference: Sunday, June 22
I woke up […]

It’s a little surreal. I mentioned my good news about finding an agent last week. Since then, I’ve been introduced to things I figured were coming, like a contract review, and other things I hadn’t really considered, like approving my manuscript to be sent to a foreign rights agent and asking an author for a […]