How Annette Lyon Went From Writing "Sweet Romance" to Suspense
crimereads.com – Wednesday March 22, 2023
People who know me as a romance writer might see my new suspense novel as something that came out of nowhere. At first glance, my history would bear that out.
When my first novel was published by a small press, I really didn’t like the title they picked. It sounded too romantic for a book where, to me, the entire point was something else: the concern of a mother for her child. I made some tweaks so the title would point to that underlying theme. It had a suspense subplot, but there wasn’t really a way to get that across in the title or cover.
My second novel also had a romantic arc and a suspense subplot. My third was my first foray into historical fiction, which scared me. Readers said it was my best work yet, which told me that stretching myself had probably made me grow as a writer. That story also had a mother deeply concerned about her daughter. It didn’t have a suspense subplot, but it did open with a house burning down.
What I thought would be my fourth was a murder mystery, but the publisher suggested I do more historical, as my last book had outsold the others. I set the mystery—and my suspense ideas—on a shelf to gather dust with the many creepy resource books I’d collected about poisons, death, injury, firearms, and more.
Does it pay to be a top author?
rnz.co.nz – Sunday March 19, 2023
Does it pay to be a great novelist in New Zealand? The Detail talks to two authors about how they make a living spinning a good yarn.
Catherine Chidgey
Catherine Chidgey has been writing novels for almost 30 years - and she's one of our most celebrated writers on the scene at the moment.
Every morning, she's up at 6, writing. She does the school run, goes to her day job as a lecturer in creative writing at Waikato University, gets home, dinner, and then she's in bed - again, writing.
"It's insane," she laughs. "I don't recommend this schedule for anyone out there. Basically I have no other life."
She's just cracked the shortlist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn prize for fiction in this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, for her 2022 novel The Axeman's Carnival.
It's a prestigious prize, too - carrying a $64,000 pay-out to the successful author.
But Chidgey's not in it for the money. She's in it for the passion.
Sheppard leaves DHH to establish new literary agency
thebookseller.com – Wednesday March 15, 2023
Hannah Sheppard is leaving the DHH Literary Agency to launch a boutique agency with a focus primarily on commercial adult fiction and children’s fiction from middle grade through to YA. The Hannah Sheppard Literary Agency (HSLA) will be opening to submissions from 14th March 2023.
While at DHH, Sheppard worked with authors Dee Benson, Sarah Bonner, Abi Elphinstone and Chris McGeorge among others, and will continue to represent the majority of her client list at her new agency. With HSLA, Sheppard aims “to consciously build a community of authors who celebrate diverse and joyful representation and also commits to opening the agency’s virtual doors to aspiring authors for a monthly Zoom drop-in to help demystify publishing”.
Words of wonder: A look behind the scenes of Ireland's thriving literary magazines
irishexaminer.com – Wednesday March 15, 2023
The Moth may be departing, but there's no shortage of other outlets for writers seeking publication. Here are profiles of a few of them
Who, in their right mind, would start a literary magazine? Plenty of people, it would seem, if the growth in publishing outlets for new writers, particularly online, is to be believed. While they’re often seen as a kind of cottage industry, small literary magazines are part of a bigger picture.
They provide a temperature check of the cultural climate, they’re a resource for talent-scouting publishers and a first stop for the big names of the future. Sally Rooney’s work, for example, first appeared in The Stinging Fly (see panel) so their influence is often way out of proportion to their size.
We spoke to three journal editors at varying stages of the process to find out what possessed them to enter the perilous world of literary publishing.
Why Would Someone Steal Unpublished Manuscripts?
nytimes.com – Tuesday March 14, 2023
Filippo Bernardini has been accused by the government of stealing over 1,000 book manuscripts. In court filings, he said he was motivated not by money but by a love of reading.
For more than five years, someone was stealing unpublished book manuscripts from editors, agents, authors and literary scouts. The question of who was behind the scheme baffled the publishing industry, but just as perplexing was another question: Why?
Most unpublished manuscripts would be almost impossible to monetize, so it wasn’t clear why somebody would bother to take them. Filippo Bernardini, who has pleaded guilty in a fraud case in which the government said he stole more than 1,000 manuscripts, offered an explanation on Friday in a letter addressed to a federal judge.
Bernardini said he stole the books because he wanted to read them.
New Publisher Imprint Listing: Basalt Books
firstwriter.com – Tuesday March 14, 2023
Welcomes proposals for book projects anchored in the Pacific Northwest, particularly those focusing on the people, places, and cultures of the greater Northwest region. We encourage both established and first-time writers to contact us with your ideas. We are committed to publishing well-written and well-told stories.
Do we still need the Women’s Prize for Fiction?
spectator.co.uk – Friday March 10, 2023
Nine debut books were among the 16 novels to make the cut in this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction long list, announced this week. But what relevance does a gender-exclusive award retain when women dominate the contemporary world of publishing?
When the Women’s Prize for Fiction was launched in 1996 it was badly needed. Back then, female writers found it hard to get their work published. If they did succeed, their work was, all too often, unappreciated by critics and under-acknowledged. It’s clear that is no longer the case.
Women buy 80 per cent of all novels. At the time of writing, the New York Times top 15 bestseller list features 13 female writers. One global survey found 60 per cent of literary agents to be female; another poll, in the American publishing industry, found that 78 per cent of publishing staff overall were female, including six in ten at executive or board level. According to figures from the Bookseller, 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women. By 2021, female-authored books sold more copies on average than those written by men.
Women's Prize for Fiction nominee Maggie O'Farrell shares her writing tips
harpersbazaar.com – Friday March 10, 2023
Irish novelist Maggie O'Farrell won the Betty Trask Award for her first novel, 'After You'd Gone'. Her novel 'Hamnet', about the life of William Shakespeare's son, received international acclaim and also won numerous awards, including the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction. This year, she is longlisted for the same award for her novel, 'The Marriage Portrait'. Here, she shares her advice on writing...
Beginning isn't easy
What I wish someone had told me when I was starting out is this: you don’t have to begin at the beginning. Openings are hard. The blizzard-white emptiness of the page, the empty document with the patiently waiting cursor, the idea that you are about to inscribe the first of many thousands of words, the knowledge that you are embarking on a project that will take two or three years. All this can conspire to give you such awful vertigo that it’s hard to put down anything, let alone a defining initial sentence.
I have found, again and again, that it’s rarely always immediately apparent where in its timeline your narrative should start. It took me a while to work out that a writer doesn’t have to begin at the beginning. You can start wherever you like in the story.
Grammarly expands beyond proofreading with AI-powered writing
engadget.com – Friday March 10, 2023
Grammarly announced today that it’s (unsurprisingly) diving into the generative AI fray. GrammarlyGo is an upcoming set of auto-composition features to help the AI proofreading software keep up with the many companies adding the ChatGPT API (or different generative AI backends) to their products.
GrammarlyGo can use context like voice, style, purpose and where you’re writing to determine its approach. So, for example, it can spit out email replies, shorten passages, rewrite them for tone and clarity, brainstorm or choose from one-click prompts — all while adhering to your company’s voice or other provided context. In addition, since Grammarly’s desktop service can pop up in any text field on your computer, its generative writing could be slightly more convenient than competitors (like Notion or Gmail’s Smart Compose) that require you to visit an app or website. The company says GrammarlyGo will be enabled by default for individuals, and you can toggle it in settings.
10 Tips For Applying to Writing Residencies
electricliterature.com – Thursday March 9, 2023
Like a lot of writers tackling a book project, I’ve applied to a few residencies with mixed success. But it was only this year, when I reviewed applications for a residency that I had previously attended that I really started to see what makes some applications fail and others really succeed.
Most of the factors that decide a person’s acceptance are settled before they write their application— namely, the quality of the work, its alignment with the mission of the residency, and their personal qualifications as a writer. But a weak application can get a very established writer passed over with little more than a second thought, while a strong one can send an emerging writer to the top of the short list. So what can you do to put your application in contention?
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