This week! Books! After some TikToks went viral pointing out that you can easily read and then return Kindle e-books for a refund, which had some real effects on authors, Amazon announced that it is (modestly) tightening its e-book policy ($ link) and will require customers to explain themselves to customer service if they’ve read […]
Blog
Welcome to my blog!
My blog has everything you need to know to write, edit, and publish a book. Can't find what you need or what personalized help? Check out my editing and coaching services.
Check out a few of my most popular posts:
Most recent posts:
Avoid those little redundancies (page critique)
If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in our discussion forums: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! […]
Close off your protagonist’s easy off-ramps
Great plots in novels are defined by protagonists who want something very big and difficult and proceed to actively go after that thing. In genres like mystery and fantasy that big and difficult thing might mean a perilous quest (slaying the dragon, catching the bad guy, destroying a ring atop a rather unpleasant mountain), for […]
A fraught Banned Books Week (This week in books)
This week! Books! It’s Banned Books Week amid arguably the most intense and concentrated conservative-led book banning efforts in a generation, which are disproportionately targeting LGBTQ and minority books. I’m re-upping We Need Diverse Books’ post on how to support diverse books during a ban. And yesterday, Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Brian Schatz introduced […]
Don’t tell an agent what your book is like. Show them. (query critique)
If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in the discussion forums: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog Nominate Your Query for a Critique on the Blog Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this […]
Don’t let your opening cement in your mind
I’m a big fan of self-editing novels while I’m writing them. You can stop problems from snowballing, looking at previous stretches can spark new ideas that become useful later, and you ultimately have less work to do when you’re finished. But there is one significant danger in re-reading your work in progress: every time you […]
