New Magazine Listing: Fourteen Poems
firstwriter.com – Tuesday June 13, 2023
Print magazine published three times a year. Each issue includes work by fourteen LGBTQ+ poets, printing their queer takes on sex, love, race, gender and life in the LGBTQ+ global community.
New Literary Agent Listing: Melanie Figueroa
firstwriter.com – Tuesday June 13, 2023
I want to work with the kind of stories that both create and sustain life-long readers—books that make me sigh with contentment, learn something new, or take delight in the unexpected. Those stories stay with you, and they're a gift I want to help give readers by lifting up the voices of talented and hard-working creatives.
Author dropped by publisher after posting several 'mean' TikToks about Goodreads reviewer who rated debut book: 'Completely baffling'
uk.finance.yahoo.com – Sunday June 11, 2023
Author Sarah Stusek has been accused of bullying a Goodreads reviewer after she left a four-star review for Stusek’s upcoming book. A Twitter thread seemed to indicate that Stusek’s book publisher had dropped her in response to the allegations. Stusek said she later apologized to the reviewer in a private conversation.
It’s a story that’s taken BookTok — a subcommunity within TikTok dedicated to books and literature, where there is a significant focus on young adult fiction — by storm. Stusek’s book, Three Rivers, is classified as young adult fiction and was slated to be released on Sept. 12.
Stusek, who is a first-time author, reportedly called Goodreads reviewer Karleigh Kebartas a “bitch” in a since-deleted TikTok for posting the first four-star review for Three Rivers, which, according to Stusek, had been getting only five-star reviews up until that point.
New Literary Agent Listing: Caroline Wood
firstwriter.com – Friday June 9, 2023
I represent prize-winning literary fiction and well written commercial fiction. I am actively looking for original, character driven debuts. I love books that transport me to a different time or place, books that have a secret or mystery at the heart of them, books about family and relationships, books that leave me with something to ponder. My authors have won the Booker Prize, the Costa Novel and First Novel Awards, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Prix Médicis Etranger, the Desmond Elliot Prize and the Betty Trask. I greatly enjoy the editing process and work closely with my authors to make their books the best they can be. In non-fiction, I represent primarily cookery and memoirs. I also sell book to film/TV rights for a number of my authors.
The Novel Opening
By G. Miki Hayden
Instructor at Writer's Digest University online and private writing coach
firstwriter.com – Sunday June 4, 2023
The opening of your novel is an opportunity to seize the interest of the agent, the editor, and/or the reader. Opportunities are to be taken, and this is a particularly meaty one. Here is where you set the hook, often within the first paragraph.
What do you want from the persons reading your initial words? You want them to be curious about “what comes next?” And that’s what you want throughout the novel but the initial words or pages is perhaps the only chance you have to elicit that response. Because if you don’t set the hook, the agent, editor, or civilian reader will pass you by.
WME Acquires Ross Yoon Agency in Expansion of Literary Talent Portfolio
variety.com – Sunday June 4, 2023
Endeavor Group Holdings Inc.’s WME announced today it has acquired Ross Yoon Agency.
The Washington D.C.-based agency, Ross Yoon, specializes in literary and commercial nonfiction including memoir, biography, history, popular science, business and psychology. In addition, the literary agency’s president Gail Ross and principal Howard Yoon will join WME as partners.
The current Ross Yoon clients will join WME’s roster — the new clientele will include Ross Yoon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and authors, business, non-profit leaders, doctors, scientists, academics, politicians and media personalities.
How to Start a Literary Magazine
lithub.com – Wednesday May 31, 2023
In the latest “Craftwork” episode, Declan Meade talks with Brad about starting and editing a literary magazine. He is the founding editor and publisher of The Stinging Fly, one of the world’s premiere literary magazines, based in Dublin, Ireland. You may have read about Declan and The Stinging Fly in the New York Times back in April 2023, in a feature story by Max Ufberg.
Brad Listi: What about for people listening who might want to submit, but also people who might have an interest in starting their own magazine? I’d be interested to hear you talk about the editorial process when somebody gets a yes, and what in general the editorial process entails at the Stinging Fly. I have to believe that it’s lovely to get a story where you feel like it’s almost all done. And usually I think when a writer is in command of the work, there usually isn’t a ton to do. But are there instances where the work is like 75 percent of the way there, and in the editorial process you get the rest of the way? What does it look like for somebody who gets a yes to work with you in an editorial capacity?
Peter James reveals thought process in writing his novels
theargus.co.uk – Tuesday May 30, 2023
Best-selling writer Peter James is better known for words than numbers and has confessed he didn't care much for maths at school.
But now the Grace author has teamed up with the charity National Numeracy - and revealed how numbers have become key to his work.
In an exclusive interview to support National Numeracy Day, Brighton-born Peter gave a unique insight into how he writes his best-selling books.
How do you use numeracy in your work?
When I’m starting a new book – and I’ve done this for years – I set myself a target for each week. I find the first 20 pages are very slow because I go back and back and back, and then as I progress with a book it gets quicker and then towards the end it slows down again.
I started the 20th Roy Grace novel on April 24 so for that Saturday, 29, I put a target of page 5. Then the following week, page 15, then the following week, page 30. Then I go slightly bigger – up to page 50. Every book of mine is around about 450 pages long.
Depending on if it’s a busy week or a quiet week I’ll set myself a target of either ten, 15, 20 or 25 pages. I go through week by week until I get to what I call ‘page 500’ and that’s the finish. So at the moment, the target for page 500 is November 25. My pages are double spaced and about 250 words.
Each week, if I’m over my target I feel really happy but if I’m under then I know I’ve got to write more the next week. It really works for me, I can tell where I am every week in terms of the schedule for the book. Numeracy really helps me with keeping on track in terms of scheduled writing.
My Novel Was Rejected By 41 Literary Agents Before Becoming a Bestseller. Here are 8 Truths About Perseverance I Want Everyone With a Big Dream to Know
mariashriversundaypaper.com – Sunday May 28, 2023
When I tell my story, it’s the ending that gets attention.
New York Times bestselling author! Both of my books are being turned into movies! I’m adapting my first novel for the screen! Five separate seven-figure deals!
It’d be easy to conclude that with all that incredible success, the path to get here must have been smooth and clear.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
As a young twentysomething, I spent years pursuing my Broadway dreams in New York, which ended with me and my embarrassingly thin resume buying a one-way ticket back home to Arizona. My mid-twenties were spent sleeping in the twin bed in my childhood bedroom at my parent’s house, trying to figure out what a person with a degree in musical theatre (who failed at working in musical theatre) was supposed to do with the rest of her life. For years, I wrote “figure out my life” on every to-do list I created. I meant it sincerely. It never got scratched off.
I tried the AI novel-writing tool everyone hates, and it’s better than I expected
theverge.com – Wednesday May 24, 2023
Last week, generative fiction tool Sudowrite launched a system for writing whole novels. Called Story Engine, it’s another shot in the ongoing culture war between artists and AI developers — one side infuriated by what feels like a devaluation of their craft, the other insisting that it’s a tool for unlocking creativity and breaking writer’s block. Neither answered the question I was really curious about: does it work?
Well, I didn’t take on Sudowrite’s pitch of a full novel in a few days. But over the weekend, I generated a novella written entirely inside Story Engine — it’s called The Electric Sea at the AI’s suggestion, and you can read the whole thing on Tumblr.
I’m not sure how I feel about it.
I’m an enthusiastic, if strictly amateur, fiction writer. I wrote somewhere north of 150,000 words of unpublished fiction last year, so Sudowrite’s “break writer’s block” pitch isn’t that compelling to me. Writing, however, is not a task I hold inherently sacred. The field has a long and proud tradition of hastily written profit-driven trash, from Ed Wood’s churned-out erotica to the infamous pulp publisher Badger Books, known for handing authors a cover and asking them to write a book around it. I enjoy seeing where large language models’ strengths and weaknesses lie, and I’ve long been fascinated by challenges like NaNoGenMo, which asked writers to create an AI-generated novel in the days before modern generative AI. So on Saturday morning I paid for 90,000 words of Sudowrite text, booted it up, and “wrote” a roughly 22,500-word cyberpunk novella by Sunday afternoon.
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