I think it's fairly safe to say that e-books are here to say.  Seven years ago, when I was debating whether or not to let a somewhat uncertain-looking outfit named Chippewa Press be the literary brow through which Zeus-like I would take the world by storm with a book called Salvation, this was by no means a certain thing.  At that time, e-books ( Read more... )

First update in a while.

So back in April, I got an email from a literary agency that I had previously submitted to.  The sender said that they had left the agency where I had originally submitted Salvation to, and if I was still looking for a publishing house, they were now engaged in a new endeavor.  As it was put to me, "I want to be in the ( Read more... )

During this long journey I have been on toward publication, a question has popped up over and over again, and I no longer have the ability to be polite in how it is answered.  I have been asked many times if I have ever thought of self-publishing something.  The answer, quite simply, is no.  And based on a story I read recently, it has become a ( Read more... )

Review time in the old corral.  Bear with me, folks.  I promise it's all going somewhere.

I've been fortunate enough over the years to have completed many novels; seventeen, to be exact.  Some of them have turned out better than others, to be sure, but I have good memories associated with all of them.  When I'm working straight through on a project ( Read more... )

On Monday I fired up the old submission machine, aka my trusty Alienware laptop, and sent off some query letters/proposals for both Lottery Odds and Salvation.  I was very happy as I did this; there's always that little thrill as you send something off, knowing that this could be the one that finally bears fruit.  I considered them carefully, these ( Read more... )

Moreso than being a batter in Major League Baseball, writing is a business of astonishing failure before success is found.  Consider the following examples...

Robert M. Pirsig was turned down a mind-numbing 121 times before Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was finally published.  Beatrix Potter was forced to self-publish The Tale of Peter ( Read more... )

Right now I am in the middle of taking a brief break from working on Descent, and I feel pretty good.  This book's birth has been a rather hard process, and it's definitely taken me a whole lot longer than I had planned on, but I think now I'm starting to see that fabled light at the end of the tunnel.  Wonder of wonders, I don't think it's an ( Read more... )

One of my favorite shows on television is NBC's Parenthood, which makes one of only two programs I watch on that network, the other being the criminally underrated and as my wife pointed out, my favorite show on TV, Friday Night Lights.  I like Parenthood because I dug the movie it was based on, the plots run fairly realistically and it also has ( Read more... )

Still in the holding pattern, still waiting to hear back from Harlequin.  However, this is a much better (and truth be told, easier) route than was followed when I first started this gambit.  Much better.

I've been reading a lot of blogs kept by literary agents these days, and one thing they all seem to agree upon is that the amount of authors who ( Read more... )

There are many things that are subject to interpretation in the world of writing, but one of them is not the list of requirements the place you are submitting to has.  If they say they want a cover letter, the first five pages and a plot synopsis, you are not going to score any points by having a nice cover letter, twenty pages and no synopsis.  ( Read more... )