Pulp friction: Irish women’s place in genre writing should be rescued from ignominy
irishtimes.com – Sunday October 24, 2021
In 1911 a woman named Mary Helena Fortune died in Melbourne, Australia, her death largely unremarked. By then she was an alcoholic, nearly blind and boasted a career criminal for a surviving son, the exotically named Eastbourne Vaudrey Fortune – better known, unsurprisingly, as George. She subsisted on a small pension from the Australian Journal, and was so poor when she died that she was buried in a grave intended for another.
Only in the 1950s was Fortune connected to the pseudonym WW, or “Waif Wander”, under which she wrote hundreds of crime stories, including a pioneering series for the Journal called The Detective’s Album, detailing the cases of an Australian lawman named Mark Sinclair. So convincingly did Fortune inhabit these first-person accounts that readers were convinced they were the work of a serving or recently retired officer of the law. The Journal did nothing to disabuse its subscribers of this notion, probably figuring the myth would sell more copies than the truth, which was that the tales were being written by a clever, gifted woman born in Belfast in 1833, one who had arrived in Australia via Canada in 1855 with her father and infant son, leaving a bad marriage behind her.
How Amazon Changed Fiction As We Know It
esquire.com – Tuesday October 19, 2021
During my interview with literary historian Mark McGurl, I glanced out the window to see an Amazon truck rumbling down my block. It was a fitting metaphor for our conversation about Everything and Less, McGurl’s provocative new literary history about how Amazon has reorganized the universe of fiction. “Amazon has insinuated itself into every dimension of the collective experience of literature in the United States,” McGurl writes. “Increasingly, it is the new platform of contemporary literary life.”
New Magazine Listing: Wine & Country Weddings
firstwriter.com – Friday October 15, 2021
A uniquely curated magazine for creating the elegant country wedding in Jefferson’s Virginia, one that will inspire couples as well as top event planners across the nation from New York City to Beverly Hills.
New Publisher Imprint: Simon Element
firstwriter.com – Wednesday October 13, 2021
Publishes books addressing topics that are foundational to how we live—from the meals we eat to the relationships we nurture, the households we manage, and the personal and professional goals we set and strive to achieve.
JK Rowling: I kept writing a 'very bad novel' while I created Harry Potter
scotsman.com – Monday October 11, 2021
Rowling has disclosed that the manuscript for The Private Joke was in the luggage rack of her train from Manchester to London when she dreamt up the character.
Writing in a Sunday newspaper essay, she has admitted she kept writing the first novel while working on the first Potter novel, The Philosopher’s Stone.
New Magazine Listing: Wine & Country Life
firstwriter.com – Monday October 11, 2021
Celebrates elevated living in the heart of Virginia wine country. Each issue of our luxury print magazine highlights Virginia wine, farm-to-table food, architecture, gardens & décor, hunt country, the arts and elegant entertaining, as well as Virginia craft spirits, beer And ciders.
New Literary Agency Listing: Arthur B Pulitzer Agency
firstwriter.com – Monday October 11, 2021
True Crime Manuscripts, Screenplays, Poems based on real people. As their literary agent, I am in personal contact with each of these authors Since 2009 I have been corresponding with inmates by mail, email, telephone. I have corresponded via letters, email, and phone calls to inmates and some of their relatives. I have thoroughly read all manuscripts, correspondence and taken notes during direct phone calls and researched the court documents (including appeals) of each inmate. Each story, manuscript as written by the inmate, includes such injustices as: wrongful conviction, ineffective counsel, racially biased juries, police wrongdoing, evidence withheld, prosecutorial misconduct, racism in the courtroom, and constitutional rights’ violations. Inmate backgrounds include horrific conditions such as: incest, parental abuse, domestic violence, poverty, drugs, and sexual abuse. All original screenplays, manuscripts were sourced by me directly from men and women inmates. Most are still in prison.
Seven Benefits of a Writing Partner
publishersweekly.com – Sunday October 10, 2021
I used to think I could go it alone as a writer.
As a matter of fact, I preferred it that way. I wanted to rely on myself alone, not bother anyone, not need anyone to get involved. I was doing fine with this philosophy for years. I wrote and edited and rewrote all on my own, bumping along in a quiet, solitary manner, sending stories and poems to literary magazines, receiving rejections, jumping up and down with my beloved cat whenever an editor wrote me a note or I won a contest.
“What does this mean? Are you famous yet?” my husband would sometimes tease.
He isn’t a writer, so I forgave him. But the fact remained: I wasn’t taking any sizable steps forward in my writing career.
What It Would Take to Disrupt the Publishing Industry
publishersweekly.com – Sunday October 10, 2021
Anyone who follows publishing knows that it loves to celebrate a disruptor. Disruptor is a label thrown at anything new, and publishing is unusually easy to disrupt because it is particularly slow to change.
Back when I started She Writes Press in 2012, I was called a disruptor. I confess, I liked it. But it wasn’t exactly accurate, and whenever I spoke at conferences about what we were doing—which was growing a reputable hybrid model based on the systems of traditional publishing—I let audiences know that legacy publishers had been cutting hybrid deals for years, which was an open secret. If I was doing anything disruptive, it was encouraging the authors we published to be proud of publishing nontraditionally. As I mentioned, it doesn’t take much to be considered a disruptor in this space.
New Publisher Listing: Zibby Books
firstwriter.com – Friday October 8, 2021
A publishing home for fiction and memoir.
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