Today is a special day, one I’ll remember always. After months of skin-thickening rejection letters, today I became a Booktrope author! Vox Dei Publishing, the Christian imprint at Booktrope, has accepted my manuscript and will be publishing Little Girl Mended! There simply are no words to describe what I’m feeling...
Being a first-time author, I think it’d be great to have an agent who loves my book as much as I do and works day and night to find just the right publisher for me and my story. She’d never give up and, just as important, never let me become...
Why is waiting so difficult? None of us relish waiting . . . in line, in traffic, on hold on the phone. We need to be doing and going and seeing and saying . . . All. The. Time. I have less of a problem with the doing and going...
Shop the book. I love that phrase. It sounds so “writerly.” It’s what I’ve been doing since my last book update a couple of weeks ago. In the past two weeks, I’ve queried five literary agencies. The redoing/rearranging/rewriting of my proposal for each agency, while taking some time and thought,...
If you’ve been following my progress, you know I’ve been working on rewriting my book proposal after having a former acquiring editor read and critique it. This past Monday evening, I finished the rewrite! I closed my laptop that night with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. Although I don’t remember...
I keep hearing that writers need to have some very thick skin. Writing puts you “out there” like no other profession I can think of. Rejection is everywhere and criticism abounds. It’s a solitary profession too. So alone at my desk, it’s so easy to let doubts creep in. Why...
I was all set to blog about something else this week, and then first thing yesterday morning I received my proposal assessment back from Brooke Warner. I promised to keep you posted and so here it is. Because of deadlines in her own schedule, it took her an extra week...
No, not that kind. I’m talking about the dreaded book proposal. In the world of nonfiction publishing, unfortunately, taking a stab at the traditional route (finding an agent who will then work to find a publisher) requires writing a book proposal. That may not seem like a big deal after...
If you’ve read my About page, you know that I was an editor for quite a few years. How I landed that job without any editing experience is a long story, but it turns out I had a little bit of talent for editing, fortunately. Before I retired, when someone...
If you surveyed a group of authors ten years ago, I’d wager that most, if not all, would never have even contemplated self-publishing their works. Legitimate authors published with traditional publishing houses . . . or not at all. Self-publishing was for those whose writing couldn’t otherwise get them published....
