Welcome to my blog for writers. Here you’ll find calls for submissions and posts about the business of writing and publishing. Look around, ask questions, and learn!
This week in Pen to Pen, I’m happy to have Mary Caelsto, author of Perfect Author Newsletters, coaches other authors in improving their websites and newsletters. Check out her list to make sure you’ve got all five of these must-haves on your website. … Read more
Rattle Magazine publishes a poem each Sunday about an event that happened in the preceding week. Poets are invited to submit poems about current events via an online submissions manager. Payment is $50. … Read more
For this week’s Pen to Pen, author ’Nathan Burgoine offers six tips on approaching your local bookstores to carry your book. Having managed bookstores for twenty years before turning to writing full-time, he knows this topic well from both sides. … Read more
For this week’s Pen to Pen Column, Liv Rancourt has stopped by to talk about the ins and outs of researching historical romances. The process is fresh in her mind, as she’s just released Aqua Follies, a gay romance set in the water ballet scene of 1950s Seattle. You didn’t know there was a Seattle water ballet scene? That’s not all her book covers, and keeping track of the historical trivia was quite the task. She has some great advice for digging up the details that movies and history books might not tell you. … Read more
A lot of writers swear by distraction-free writing apps to help them get their work done. I’ve never tried one before, but probably should have, given how often I accidentally click away to Facebook in the middle of writing a story. So I was interested to see today that AppSumo is offering lifetime access to BlankPage for only $25. Access to the app usually cost $10/month. I decided to check it out. … Read more
Welcome to Pen to Pen, a new weekly feature on my writing blog where authors stop by to talk about things they’ve learned along the way. Kicking the series off is K.S. Trenten, a wonderfully creative author of queer fantasy that I met when we both were publishing with the now-defunct Torquere Press. Today, she has some advice for those of us who have experienced rejection. And since that’s pretty much every writer who’s ever tried to get a story published, what she has to say will help a lot of people. … Read more
“Simultaneous submissions” and “multiple submissions” are bits of jargon that have distinct meanings in the publishing industry. I break them down in this article.
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Author Viktor Alexander is organizing a series of charity anthologies, with the proceeds going to provide clean drinking water for residents of Flint, Mich. … Read more
Publisher eXtasy Books publishes erotica and erotic romance; through its Devine Destinies imprint, it also publishes non-erotic romance fiction, including the subgenres of sweet romance, young adult, and sci-fi romance. Romances can feature pairings of any and all genders. … Read more
If you’ve perused my blog or social media accounts, you already know that I adore Sam Thorne. We both recently had stories in the multi-author anthology Sexy to Go Gay Romance. Her contribution, “Rebuilding the Future,” was filled with the things I’ve come to love about her stories: well-intentioned but socially awkward heroes, deep characterization, and a knack for bringing out the humor of everyday situations. Oh, and adorably besotted protagonists. When Sam’s characters fall in love, they fall hard — just like in real life. … Read more