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Did Freud destroy the art of creating characters? If so, you’ve got to hand it to the guy. Very few of us have the power to change the course of a single profession. Freud managed to re-engineer at least two. It seems character development was arrested by the introduction of ids and ego and superegos. […]

While we’ve been fighting the Mad Beast of Sinus (new Tylenol product: Severe, written in friendly, easy-to-read-through-the-agony yellow letters), others have been thinking. Normally, we don’t encourage this sort of behavior, but that’s only because we know what sort of trouble ensues. When you throw something out into the collective unconscious, you may eventually be […]

We’ve been hearing stories about Transita for the past couple of months — a whisper here, a question there. Always with the underlying “they’re looking for stories about/by older women”. Followed by “what does that mean?” Yeah, well, what does that mean? Fiction has traditionally celebrated the younger woman (and man, let’s be fair). The […]

It was recently brought to our attention that we, unlike some, do not aspire to be Tolstoy. For a lot of reasons, we took this as a compliment. Not that we don’t adore Russian literary giants — we do. But remember, too much Tolstoy causes the gout. When our poor, put-upon bookclub encountered our first […]

We received a complaint about our content: apparently some of our subject matter is too obscure. Books and publishers and writing. . .all of this seems a little foreign to at least one reader. Because we take constructive criticism seriously, we are going to strive for more accessible subject matter. We are going to start […]

Most authors would be happy to get their agents on the phone. We know one person who’d be happy to get an email response that makes sense. Having your agent take on the government? Heck, that’s like a dream come true. This may be why so many people want The Strothman Agency behind them. Wendy […]

Ugh. The agony. The kids were in bed, the dh had ordered us a movie and I’d just typed my name in the google search engine. Then I found it. A tiny blurb that didn’t look like a glowing rec for my book. I had to click. Dh very selfishly didn’t want to hear me […]

Are you tagging yet? It’s all the rage, so if you aren’t now, you will be soon. The good news is that tagging can be done from the privacy of your home. Nobody needs to know what you’re doing, unless you choose to share. Tagging, basically, is a method for adding keywords to photos, links, […]

The hallmark of a good friend is her ability to intuit, across thousands of miles and a couple of time zones, that you’re going to wake up with a nasty sinus headache. She then takes it upon herself to post something on your blog in your stead. We thank Jill for picking up our slack […]

Last week I had an interesting experience…I substituted for five days in the first grade. (I say five days rather than a week, because for some reason five days just seems longer!) I taught freshmen before I settled down to write, so the differences are numerous. In first grade, the students are shorter than I […]