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We often hear about the power of the human spirit, etc, but what about the worm? Why is the worm so ignored? Talk about a species that goes to extraordinary lengths to survive. If you want perseverance*, we say go with the worm. We note this because it is inexplicably rainy (inexplicably in that it […]

At first glance (that’s Tim McCarver’s “I’ve been a sports announcer too long” hairstyle), RLR Literary might not seem hospitable to first-time authors. As MediaBistro tells us, if you’re writing a sports-related book, it’s possible — they pretty much have that area covered (but never say never). However, agents Jennifer Unter and Tara Mark go […]

Was it just last week that we were talking about how things that sell in the United States don’t necessarily translate to international markets? It turns out it’s true — we didn’t just make it up to fill server space. As it turns out (we suggest sitting, though leaning is acceptable), romances that do well […]

But we keep on adding to our dictionaries. None of that dead language thing for us. Nope, we believe the dictionary should never be done, only resting. We do derive some comfort from the knowledge that many words come and go — we remain hopeful the aurally displeasing bling-bling will enter the Abandoned Words Home. […]

A long time ago, when we were young and innocent, we temped for a Major Hollywood Producer. Our major duties were to cut radishes and place them in a bowl of water in the office refrigerator (he never ate them, but we snuck more than a few), to carry his shoes from his office to […]

We’re going to be honest — we had high hopes for the Guardian article on the tensions at HarperCollins in Great Britain. Perhaps it was the use of the word “row”. We had visions of fisticuffs dancing in our head. Instead, we got rumor and innuendo. Nothing wrong with that, but it appears that the […]

For some, November revolves around food; for others, it revolves around the keyboard. You can tell who’s who by their approach to the Internet. Foodies search for a way to make green beans, mushroom soup, and little fried onions palatable. Writers obsessively check in at the National Novel Writing Month website. We’ll let the NaNoWriMo […]

If you want to make people crazy, just mention that you attend school for the sheer joy of learning. But, they say, what about a job? A career? A resume padder? No, you insist, it is the learning I desire. Nothing more. Though we’ve taken formal writing classes, we’ve never really thought about entering a […]

We discovered the truth about our profession from the news. This is not unusual when you work in Hollywood (the myth, not the location) — press releases are a fine way to discover your company has been sold and you’re about to be laid off. It says much about our powers of analysis that we […]

Didn’t we read about the (next) biggest author since J.K. Rowling last month? How is it possible there’s another? Do they come off the assembly line or what? Shouldn’t the book, at the very least, be released worldwide before such pronouncements are made? Yes, that’s it — there should be some sort of standards before […]