The Debutante Ball is looking for a new cohort of authors to take the reins on this blog for next year! If you are a woman/non-binary author and you have a book coming out in 2020, you should definitely consider applying. Blogging about your experience publishing a book is not only a great practice in writing consistently, it’s also a wonderful chance to share what it’s like to put a…
Looking to write a book? Here are some places I recommend you check out. While the offices for the following schools are based in New York City, I think they all offer online courses, so you can be based anywhere and still get a great writerly education! Sackett Street Writers Workshop – I took a novel generating course here and I am so glad I did! The course I took…
It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, sadly, and it seems very relevant that we’ll be talking about time this week, given that I’ve spent so little of it here. I just came back from a nice, eight-night-vacation far away from New York, and it was only after disconnecting from all the apps and emails and browsers (not entirely willingly–I had zero cell phone service in the woods…
This week, I am so excited to welcome Danya Kukafka, whose debut novel GIRL IN SNOW (Simon & Schuster, 2017) was not only a national bestseller, but a book I was blessed to read when it was still in the editing stage! Danya and I once worked together at a time when I knew nothing about what it was like to actually publish a book. As I watched Danya work…
Bookstores are great. There is nothing more satisfying than walking into your neighborhood bookstore and reading all the wonderful staff recommendations. Bookstores honor and create space for needed conversation in a society that generally does not value the production of art. But as much as bookstores contribute to a richer human culture, I think sometimes we, especially us authors and book industry people, end up romanticizing bookstores a tad too…
Devi Laskar said it best: “It’s tax season and this is a perfect time to remember that unless your last name is GRISHAM or KING, it is difficult to make a living writing books. Don’t let it deter you.” I recently read a wonderful article about how to find a rewarding career path that utilized this graph to help you understand what you really want out of your life: According…
This week, we are welcoming Maria Kuznetsova to the Debutante Ball. Maria is a debut novelist whose lovely book Oksana, Behave! will immediately become your newest favorite. I first became aware of her work in 2018 after I picked up a copy of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and read an excerpt of the book, which I was delighted to see would be published the following year. Today, Oksana, Behave! has only…
Look out everyone — it’s another book birthday! At the Debutante Ball, we are happily celebrating the publication of Martine Fournier-Watson’s THE DREAM PEDDLER! Reading Martine’s blog posts over the past few months has been such a delight for me. From her clever insights on the pitfalls of building a social media platform (“When I think of branding, I think of cattle”) to her lovely ruminations about how selling her…
How to do the research required to write a novel: Make friends with a librarian. Some are friendlier than others. Use Google Maps to determine where your characters live. Write the address down. Travel to the place where your story is set. Don’t knock on the door. Read novels that include the themes in your novel. All of them. Read anything that might marginally be related to your novel. All…
My perfect day would consist of turning on the news and learning that all of our world leaders have come together to reduce carbon emissions to save what’s left of the planet. It would also consist of finding out that our president has miraculously turned into a progressive woman of color. This ethereal POTUS will secure reparations, protect reproductive justice, enact appropriate taxes for the wealthy, stop detaining and deporting…
