When I was an aspiring author, I read every query letter success story I could get my hands on. There was a common theme to these essays, which tended to go something like this: the writer, having long since given up hope that she’d ever become published, is strolling through Target one day when her phone rings. She glances at it, realizes the phone is displaying the 212 area…
Here’s where I was standing when I got The Call from Connor Goldsmith: Yeah. It was kind of a bonkers day. But my life has often seemed a strange and haphazard thing, so it only seems appropriate that one of the most significant moments of it should also be one of the most surreal. It’s actually not out of character at all. I seem destined to have important conversations in…
I was terrified of the game of Duck Duck Goose* when I was a kid. I’ve always been an anxious type, so Duck Duck Goose was second only to dodgeball on the list of most dreaded recess games. It’s ironic, then, that as an adult I would submit voluntarily to a similar game–that is, the game of getting a literary agent. For me, getting an agent took two years, two manuscripts,…
You know the end of When Harry Met Sally, when they say, “We were friends for a long time. And then we weren’t. And then we fell in love“? That’s how selling my book went. There was a very, very long time when the book was in the hands of an editor who liked it and who requested some changes to the ending, so I spent several months on them…
