I really want to write a rant to all the devastations of the day: the Kavanaugh vote in the Senate, the FBI’s incomplete investigation, the senator from Maine’s weak speech justifying her vote against women, the Senate’s dismissal and nullification of Dr. Ford’s courage. But I have to write for the Debs, it’s that time of the week where the Debs must cull their thoughts for the topic at hand….
Chronicles of an X-American (part 1) The best training is to read and write, no matter what — Grace Paley I’ve always been a poet, and it’s always some tributary of poetry that I return to when I have my teeth, metaphorically, kicked in. I started writing poems, mostly nature poems, when I turned nine. I was fast with my first drafts and slow to revise. Only my fifth-grade…
Origin Story: I am the sum of so many things and it is at once easy and difficult to place labels on myself. I’ll begin in the most obvious ways: I’m a daughter to an academic; my dad is a mathematician and was immersed in the world of biostatistics and multi-variant statistical analysis for more than a half-century before retiring this year. I saw how much he loves math —…
It is with great pleasure that The Debutante Ball welcomes fabulous author Georgia Clark to the guest chair! Georgia is the author of the “feisty, feminist fairy tale,” THE REGULARS, along with two YA novels. In addition, she is an improv actor, screenwriter, book marketing guru, and a terrific friend. Information about her new, cutting-edge, online course on effective book marketing — The Pro-active Author — is here and below. If you…
There is a ton of excellent information online and in books about how to write the perfect query letter, the one that will wow your dream literary agent and set you on the path to publication. But in between giving your manuscript that final polish and digging into the finer mechanics of the elevator pitch there’s a step people do not write as much about: creating a thoughtful agent list….
As 2011 draws to a close, we’re thrilled to welcome back Deb Kim Stagliano to the Ball to talk about her new romantic suspense titled House of Cards available for all Amazon downloads! * * * * Move over Morelli and Ranger, here comes Mass State Trooper Strohmeyer! Bounty Hunter Stephanie Plum would think her life is easy compared to Kat Cavicchio’s. When a car crash with a New England…
The writing myth I’m going to debunk is a biggie. It’s big enough, in fact, to stop the faint-hearted in their tracks. (Although I’ve found that we don’t have a lot of faint-hearted readers here at the Ball, so you’re probably safe.) I remember vividly the day I read this in a magazine–probably “Writer’s Digest.” I was already subscribing to “Writer’s Digest,” which in some way meant that I was…
When I give publishing advice, I often include at least one bulletpoint that emphasizes the importance of collaboration. This is due to a job I had about seven years ago that taught me more about collaboration than anything before or since. I was an assistant at a production company that developed programming for children. I was hired to assist the general manager of the office, but in a six-person company,…
(This post is best viewed using Firefox, Safari, or IE 7+.) (I hope Kristina doesn’t mind that I’m going to borrow her “photo tour” angle!) I used to have the office upstairs for my writing and the sewing room downstairs for my creative work (well, you know what I mean), but after about two years, the husb caught on and demanded that the space be divided 1-1 rather than 2-0….
This is my last regularly-scheduled Saturday founder post, and I thought I’d use it to take a look at my life after being a Debutante. I have two more books coming out in spring of 2008: MY TIKI GIRL, for young adults, and ISLAND OF LOST GIRLS, my next novel for adults. My wonder-agent is working on another sale. I’m working on two new books. So Debutante-hood is definitely behind…
