Caimh McDonnell: too funny and too Irish
irishtimes.com – Wednesday December 21, 2016
Publishing used be a lot like a bad country disco. The publishers in this metaphor are the lovely ladies and the authors are the likely lads. I don’t mean that the ladies stand bored on one side of the hall while the lads are on the other skulling pints. No, this is another kind of bad. Imagine a GAA tournament clashed with a young farmer’s convention and the AGM of the Association of People Called Sean. The ladies are so out-numbered, it’s like the film 300 remade as a romcom.
Good news, though, the publishers found a solution. The ladies hired some bouncers to do their rejecting for them – literary agents. As a lonely author looking for love, you’ve now got to convince one of them to dance with you long before any of the girls will consider it.
A primer on writing from a gifted novelist
usatoday.com – Friday December 16, 2016
Charles Johnson, one of America’s finest novelists (Middle Passage) and foremost thinkers pondering the cosmos of literature, has published a road map to that cosmos as complex, daunting and rewarding as the destination itself. Titled The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling (Scribner, 256 pp., *** out of four stars), this dense little book could just as cogently be called The Rigors of Writing Seriously.
Is making a living just from writing books a literary fiction?
irishtimes.com – Monday December 5, 2016
Rumour has it that there are only 12 writers in Ireland who can make a living from their books alone.
Of course, the figure changes with on the telling – dropping to seven, or rising to 20, perhaps even 30 – and while trying to guess the names of those on this privileged list makes for a good game, I’ve yet to uncover the research on which this supposed statistic is based.
‘Writing a good sex scene is a skill you hone over and over again’
independent.ie – Thursday December 1, 2016
Is there anything worse than a bad sex scene in a book? (Apart, maybe, from a bad sex scene in real life.) There you are, mentally immersed in this fictional universe, lost in an invented world, and suddenly… a clumsy, clunky, cringy sex scene blunders into view, waving its unmentionables about, and breaks the magic.
Badly written sex scenes are jarring. They’re jolting. They just feel wrong, even more so if the book you’re reading is otherwise well-crafted.
How Reality TV Inspires My Writing
huffingtonpost.com – Wednesday November 30, 2016
Last year, I officially became a cord cutter and canceled my cable subscription. I had enough of spending $100/month wasting time watching mindless television. At first, it was great. I started reading more, going out more and finding new hobbies, but soon enough, I was craving the entertainment of television again.
When I went home to visit my parents, I gorged on Bravo and E! reality TV shows. I could watch an entire season of ‘Real Housewives’ without getting bored for a second; at the end, I actually felt let down that I had to wait months for the next season to come out. And then, I felt guilty for loving this ‘trashy television’ that most of my friends and family - and most of society - considers ‘garbage.’ I realized, though, that it doesn’t only provide entertainment; it also teaches me aspects of storytelling that I try to incorporate into my own writing.
How to Write and Publish a Novel: 5 Crossroads You’ll Face
geek.com – Sunday November 20, 2016
Guest writer A.M. Justice brings us her top tips in becoming a successfulpublisher author like her. Her recent work A Wizard’s Forge has been getting fantastic reviews. Here’s what the sci-fi/fantasy maven has to share with us on getting your writing out into the world.
It’s 2 am. You’ve just wrapped up an RPG session, and you think, “that campaign would make an epic novel!” You invested hours into developing your characters’ backstory, quirks, and flaws. Their goals are clear and so are their obstacles, and lots of antagonists lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce. This is going to be a killer story.
Swigging your favorite late-night beverage, you flip open the laptop and stare at a white screen and a blinking cursor. Now, what?
Writing for Money: Tips for Planning Your Next Article Pitch
sitepoint.com – Saturday November 19, 2016
If you have expertise with web technologies, there’s good money to be made writing for online publications like SitePoint.
Don’t worry if you feel you’re not a great writer. The most important thing is your knowledge and enthusiasm for your subject.
As an editor for SitePoint, I’ve compiled a list of the most important things to consider when planning and pitching your article idea.
Breaking the mould: the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted authors on innovative fiction
newstatesman.com – Thursday November 10, 2016
The Goldsmiths Prize rewards fiction that “extends the possibilities of the novel form”. In a series of interviews, the six authors shortlisted for the 2016 prize discuss creative risk, writing sex, the pitfalls of the publishing industry, and why so many of them are Irish.
Want to Succeed at Self-Publishing? Harness Your Passion: Tips from an Indie Author
publishersweekly.com – Monday November 7, 2016
Janice Petrie’s life has always fueled her writing. Her experience as an outreach specialist for the New England Aquarium helped inform her picture books, while growing up near -- and once staying the night in -- a haunted, lakeside cottage gave her non-fiction a unique perspective. When she decided to try self-publishing, she wanted to “produce well-written books that readers would find entertaining and interesting.” Perfection to a Fault, an indie true crime tale of a gruesome 1916 murder of a wife by her husband, received a positive review from Publishers Weekly, with our reviewer calling it “crisp” and “quick-moving,” and praising Petrie for “expertly put[ting] details into historical context.”
How Do You Capture the 1980s in Writing? Six Novelists Discuss Re-creating the Decade
vulture.com – Friday October 28, 2016
Writers never make things easy on themselves, and nostalgia is no exception. While the phenomenon has a rich literary tradition that sifts down like a dreamy haze through the novels of Marcel Proust, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Virginia Woolf, it’s no mean feat to convincingly render a lost time and place on the page. In film and music, the signifiers of another era are seen and heard, viscerally apparent, with no need for explicit discussion or exposition. Authors, meanwhile, are often stuck describing the particulars.
So how do writers transport us backward through time, especially to a recent decade such as the ever-popular 1980s, without weighing down their stories? We asked six novelists:
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