Category: Guest Posts

Subconscious of Your Writing Part 1 by Ken La Salle

Author Ken La Salle
Author Ken La Salle

The other day, I found myself saying “A lot of my writing is very subconscious.” This wasn’t the first time I had said that and wondered if I was unique or if other writers also find themselves writing just as much with their subconscious mind as with their conscious mind. But this time I decided to find out, which I suppose explains the piece you are reading right now.

So, what exactly do I mean when I say that my writing is subconscious? When I tell my wife, she just figures that if I’m writing – wide awake and aware of what I’m doing – I must be conscious of it, and rightly so. “Subconscious writing” makes about as much sense as “subconscious accounting”… doesn’t it? Continue reading “Subconscious of Your Writing Part 1 by Ken La Salle”

Beating Back the Crowds at My LibraryThing Author Chat

Author Mike Markel

by Mike Markel

A lot of people have been coming up to me on the street, asking me how my Author Chat on LibraryThing went. Well, not actually a lot of people. In fact, nobody. But that’s the good thing about social media tools: instead of just muttering to yourself like a crazy person you can broadcast your mutterings without feeling quite so crazy, although to be honest I think it means you’re crazier or at least more pathetic.

So, I went on LibraryThing.com to do an Author Chat, which would last a week. My first novel, Big Sick Heart, a police procedural, had recently been published. Also doing an Author Chat at the same time was Samantha Bruce-Benjamin, author of The Art of Devotion, which the critics were calling a haunting debut novel that evokes an age of elegance and grace. I didn’t like any of those words, mostly because I never hear them used in connection with me. Continue reading “Beating Back the Crowds at My LibraryThing Author Chat”

Is She Geeking Out AGAIN?

Author Eva Caye

by Eva Caye
I can’t help myself. As an author, words are important to me. My goal is to write with clarity, but sometimes I have to consult Thesaurus.com, tasting the flavor of all possible words to pick the precise one I need. That’s when ‘It Happens’; when I’m stuck in word-selection-mode, I get a little geeky.

The OCD-editor-in-my-brain cackles madly. “Showtime!” She hovers behind me as I pull up the online thesaurus. “Mission parameters?” Continue reading “Is She Geeking Out AGAIN?”

How Nowhere Man Became a Bestseller by Robert Rosen

Author Robert Rosen
Photo by Mary Lyn Maiscott

How did my John Lennon biography, Nowhere Man, a book that was originally rejected by everybody and then published by a tiny upstart indie that operated out of a tenement basement on New York City’s Lower East Side, become a bestseller in five countries? Luck had a lot to do with it—terrible luck for the 18 years that the manuscript languished in limbo. And then, I don’t know what happened. Maybe the stars lined up. Whatever the case, my luck changed: A friend of a friend introduced me to a hungry agent who’d just left his job as an editor at a major publishing house. He recognized Nowhere Man’s potential and signed me as his first client.

My agent was shrewd enough to sell U.S. rights to Soft Skull Press for a small advance, knowing that foreign rights and serial rights would be a gold mine—which is exactly what happened. And Soft Skull, which no longer exists as an independent, was very good at one thing: They knew how to publicize a book. Continue reading “How Nowhere Man Became a Bestseller by Robert Rosen”