When I was small, I loved everything about swords, princesses, and fantasy. Beauty and the Beast always kept my attention, all story versions I heard as well as coloring books. (Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter and Beauty are wonderful later discoveries.) I’m familiar with the wilderness, and all things medieval have always called my name. So […]
Joanne Reese
Associate Editor Joanne Reese started life in the beautiful Hudson Valley region of New York, where a frozen pond became a perfect landscape for her dreams to take root. Through the years, figure skating melted into the desire to become a prima ballerina. She has the broken pointe shoes and callouses to prove it. Nowadays, […]
Behind the Scenes: Brianna Storm Hilvety on Mind Revving
One thing that most people don’t know or don’t believe about me is that I’ve been riding ATVs since I was ten years old. I can perform donuts in the gravel and snow (which I like to call “powdered donuts”), and I once flipped an ATV into a bean field (I was uninjured except for […]
Point of view: how deep?
Editors these days will typically steer a writer to use “deep point-of-view,” or deep POV. It’s a writing device where the reader learns only what the current POV character sees, feels, or thinks — until the next scene, when the POV character may be someone else. If there are one or two POV characters, the […]
Writers, what do you do about a sagging middle?
We’ve all read books with sagging middles. The story starts out with a bang and then seems to … sort of .. meander around a bit. If we are persistent we may find that the story settles down to a strong, bang-up ending. But with a sagging middle, most readers will never get there. So, […]
Hang out with other writers
If you’re like most writers, there aren’t any other serious fiction writers in your circle of family or friends. Writers just aren’t that common. And, like most writers, you may be an introvert who’d rather stay home and interact with the characters in your head. So why seek out other writers? Why make the effort? […]
After the Writers’ Conference
Many of you have been to a writers’ conference this summer. It was a fabulous experience where you met new friends, learned new writing and marketing tips, and (hopefully) received requests for your Work in Progress (WIP). Now you’re back and home and real life has set in. The excitement is treasured memory, you’ve had time […]
Why would I need to hire myself an editor?
Writers, you probably know that there are plenty of free-lance editors out there, ready to help you hone your novel. But do you need one? And do you need to pay one? Your needs depend on your goals. What if you want to take the slow route–taking five, ten years? I did it this way, […]
The Editor vs. the Writer
Editing and writing are two sides of the same coin. Both manipulate the written word to craft a story, yet they are very different. Writing creates words and stories. Editing takes words already crafted into stories and fine-tunes them. As a matter of fact, the two activities are so different they even use different sides of the […]
So you want to write a book review…
By Associate Editor Marisa Deshaies Book reviews online are bombarding social media. More and more people have their own blogs dedicated to book reviews, host giveaways and prize packages, chat with authors for interviews, promote novels of all genres, and display the various book review programs in which they participate. Social media sites such as […]