I love cover art. I love design. Even bad cover art fascinates me. I sometimes browse bookstores just looking at the covers, considering what works for me and what doesn’t. To turn my obsession into something useful, I’m going to do a series of posts on cover art. Some other day, I’ll get serious and talk in some detail about the process my books go through to get their covers. But for today, I have a funny story. Harlequin mailed […]

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To anyone whose creative process is a clean, methodical, straight-forward matter, you can ignore this post (also, I hate you). To everyone else, I want to put forward a theory. We mostly think of creative talent as something that can be improved steadily. Say, you write a book. It sucks. But you learn from it, and the next book you write comes out better. You learn from that one too, and your third book is even better than the second. […]

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I was talking to a friend yesterday about the business of publishing and mentioned that it took me five years and six manuscripts to sell my first book. It’s occurred to me later though that we never stop trying to get published. It’s not as if, once you achieve the goal of selling your first book, you forever stay in that elusive state we called “published.” Instead, it’s a struggle we continue for as long as we aspire to get […]

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I’m going through a blah reading period right now, where nothing is grabbing me and making me want to stay up late to find out what happens next. I’m listening to the audio version of Shantaram on my iPod, and I have various half-finished books next to my bed, but everything’s leaving me feeling kind of lukewarm. What’s the last thing you read that grabbed you and wouldn’t let go? And what are you reading right now?

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I’ve had quite a few critique partners over the years, most of them early on when I was trying out lots of different situations–groups, one on one, online, offline, etc–to see what worked best for me. A fun part of looking back over these relationships is realizing how many of the talented women I’ve critiqued with have gone on to sell books (most of us worked together while we were still unpublished). Here’s a little tour: Cindy Procter-King http://www.cindyprocter-king.com also […]

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The crime: At approximately 7:52PM on the 5th day of March 2009, a laptop computer cord was found brutally severed by an unknown sharp object, leaving its owner computerless and unable to function like a normal human. The suspect: Robin Williams, AKA Robin the bunny, a known cord chomper with at least 10 convictions on record. Suspect has fluffy white fur, blue eyes, up ears, and a vicious overbite. He is known to be dangerous and hungry. If anyone has […]

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