“It’s a deeply unscientific — one is almost tempted to call it whimsical — compilation, which has a veneer of a certain kind of science,” he [Steve Wasserman] says. Making Books – The Bestseller Lists: Totting up book sales is not as simple as one, two, three.
Cricket Pechstein (founder of the Christina Pechstein Agency — we’re sensing someone has a nickname) and Jeffery McGraw (late of Harpercollins) have joined forces to form The August Agency. Since they have a website, we leave it to you know learn all about submitting and what they want from you. We will go out on a limb and suggest that knowledge of Latin might be a bonus, though, obviously, not required. The August Agency, LLC
We’re sure you’ve heard about the white shark swimming around at the Monterey Bay Aquarium? We thought we were safe by, well, not going anywhere near the beast (to say we were permanently scarred by Jaws is to say too little). However, it appears the shark was merely passing through Monterey on its way to world domination, Hollywood style. It turns out that Paradigm Talent and Literary Agency (we will not, for the sake of getting through this post, dwell on the subtle, yet pointless, differences between the two) has gobbled up Writers and Artists Group; absorbed Monterey Peninsula; and,
They say you’re supposed to make sure your family is aware that you’re participating in National Novel Writing Month. We believed this was so husbands, wives, children, parents, siblings, grandparents, etc. could offer unconditional support, mostly by preparing delicious meals and martinis. Clearly, our husband did not get the memo (or if he did receive it, there’s an excellent chance he presumed it was junk mail and didn’t read it). He wants to know why we haven’t gone all out and decorated our blog in NaNo stuff. Uh, if we haven’t had time to get our hair cut (and we
But we’re not going to find it. We are going to spend the rest of the day enjoying the vision of two tabloid newspapers donning little red boxing gloves and mouth guards, even as we begin to suspect one or more fights like a girl (which, we will point out, can be an effective battle technique in some situation). We are hoping for ugly. We crave vicious. We want ringside seats as the written word becomes a honed weapon. Oops, sorry. We’ve gone too far. That’s the problem with an active fantasy life. We should have stopped before part about
If you are a writer, you will understand why a man spends a lifetime doing something that, at best, is grueling and non-commercial. You will understand why a person can feel just fine when the world passes him by. You will understand that measuring success in terms of dollars and cents gives one a false security. But it will take you a long time before you discover these truths. If you are a writer, and you are pursuing writing seriously, you have faith in your talent. You absolutely believe you are good. And you are. But if you’re writing for
It’s no secret that we get all worked up at the slightest provocation. In fact, it has been suggested that you can set your watch by it. We don’t recommend this — we checked our watch today, and with the time changes and all, we were behind in a way that put us outside the margin of error. However, sometimes we try to restrain our frenetic posting. Usually it doesn’t work, and this time we took it out on Beatrice. Something tells us we’ll have more to say, but as evidenced by this morning’s litany of excuses, it won’t be
According to our trusty spreadsheet (which we spent a few minutes making even more complex — hard to believe it was possible, but we can be amazingly resourceful), we remain on track in this NaNo game. It is Thursday, and we have successfully written over and above our goal (which was either 5.5 or 6.6 pages — or something like that) each day. Now, before anyone starts thinking we are competitive overachievers, we will mention certain obstacles in our way. First, Friday looms. We have an all-day meeting. The joy cannot be described. Actually, we could describe it — it
This just in: the new Graham Greene is stirring up controversy. Lots of controver…Wait, didn’t we just write something about this last month? We’re quite sure of it. Hold on, we need to check. Okay, the good news is we’re not crazy. The bad news is the New York Times is the kid who’s running after the bus. However, we recommend the article to you on the basis of a new and exciting scandal it illuminates. It is the kind of dish that makes us want to buy tickets for all our friends. Yes (Jill is getting all excited, because
Now, we’re the first to admit we don’t know what’s cool with the kids today. But something tells us that even in the magical world of celebrity authors, there is a limit to name recognition. We believe we have found our benchmark: The New York Times recently reported that lawyers had attempted for [John] Gotti to be released on bail by informing the judge in his case that he “now prefers writing children’s books to extortion and racketeering.” Sure, we prefer pain and suffering to letting others do the dirty work for us, too. If you’re writing kids’ books, there’s
