How I first got published, part 5 – Revising and rewriting

How I first got published, part 5 – Revising and rewriting

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! (If you're joining me in progress, this is the 5th part in a series devoted to outlining how my co-author and I managed to get our book, A Year of Hitchcock, published.) So here's the part where the joy of getting a contract is smothered in the giant pile of WORK no one tells you about when…
How I first got published, part 4 – The Waiting Game

How I first got published, part 4 – The Waiting Game

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Welcome to part 4 of a series detailing from start to finish how A Year of Hitchcock went from a neat idea to a published book (Scarecrow Press, 2009). Every step of the way, from writing to pitching to all the work we had to do after it was sold. If you're an aspiring writer, hopefully this will help…
How I first got published, part 3 – The Query

How I first got published, part 3 – The Query

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Yesterday I talked about the process by which Jim and I began writing A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Week in and week out we were either in front of the TV watching Hitchcock's work or, more often than not, in front of our keyboards writing, revising, and writing some more. It was midway…
How I first got published, part 2 – Ideas and Execution

How I first got published, part 2 – Ideas and Execution

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! So as I mentioned in the first part of this series, ideas are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively worthless. In some ways they are the least significant piece of the puzzle. After all, creative people – and I assume that if you’re reading this you’re probably a creative person – usually have far more ideas than they…
How I first got published, part 1 – Introduction

How I first got published, part 1 – Introduction

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Chances are, if you like to write you’d also like to be read. While you can throw things onto the Internet and be read instantly, it’s not quite the same thing as a publisher saying, “I like your work. I’d like to invest our time and money into it. I’d like to publish your book.” Because let’s be honest…