In the United States of America, we’re fortunate American powers—those pale, corporate men who believe in the almighty accumulation of wealth and acquiring monstrous power and not much else—treat children and poets as inconsequential, some innocuous foolishness by thos...

How many times have you heard a reader remark, “If the book doesn’t grab me in the first few pages, I’m done?” Or the reader might state, “I don’t read anything over 250 pages,” as if there is a limit on how many words the brain is able to handle. The answer: a lot. No...

Tall, about 6 foot 3 inches, he towered over display tables where he flipped books over casually to check out back covers and author bios. Handsome with dark, curly hair that looped over his large ears, the young man asked, “Are you the publisher or one of the editors?...

Quite often, people considering the eventuality or imminence of their deaths begin ridding themselves of possessions. They shed their familiar—even treasured—objects, their clothing, their furniture, their souvenirs from trips, kitchen utensils, even their books.

Marie...

Almost every writer starts out thinking that publishing her (his) book will define a successful career arc. Envy of published writers seems to be part of the territory of being young and in love with writing. If a writer is serendipitously fortunate, or happens to pers...

Your book or books are up online. Good for you. People are actually reading your work, and you get some lovely reviews. It is heady stuff to read what others have written about your work. You know you shouldn’t read reviews of your books, but you do and find a multitud...

Want a living, breathing work of fiction? Writing is a recursive process. Two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes, it becomes one step forward and two steps back. When you have “finished” a chapter in a novel, it is tempting to press forward without returning to...

You've been waiting for this day. Anxious, excited, curious, even a little intimidated. The release of your new novel by the publisher just happened. Now what? 

In your life as a writer, everything builds to your book being made available to readers. It is published, an...

Even when snow is “falling faintly…faintly falling,” prospects for publishing literary work are appallingly dismal.

How did your story start? “A writer climbs out of his clothes like dead skin, sloughing off every vestige of waking life, walks down to the dock, stands f...

For this continuing series of posts, I'm recommending other works of fiction and non-fiction.

I'd like to start with Ta-Nehisi Coates' We Were Eight Years in Power. This powerful text is at once memoir, history, news, and social and political commentary of the highest o...