I'm so pleased to announce that my first book--How to Write & Publish a Successful Children's Book: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply (Atlantic Publishing, 2010)--landed a finalist spot in the Writing & Publishing Category in the Indie Book Awards!
I owe a big "thank you" to my careful editors at Atlantic Publishing--Kimberly Fulscher and Marilee Griffin, and to the publisher, Doug Brown, for allowing me the freedom to include my illustrations in the book. I'm as happy as if I'd won the award!
I'm looking forward to my next nonfiction title's debut, due at the end of June, on publishing for the Kindle. It will be the first book to describe the process of publishing a magazine and newspaper for the Kindle. It's good to try to have some sort of corner on the market!
~
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Another Installment of Angry Rejection Mail
We (meaning I and the majority of the staff at Prick of the Spindle) think the gross majority of e-mails sent in angry, impulsive response to rejections (even the nicest and most helpful of rejections) are largely hilarious.
A while back (don't ask me how long ago) I posted an article I wrote featuring some of the best hilarity-inducing e-mails. Due to the more or less steady influx of such letters (which I attribute to the more or less steady stream of rejections we send), I think featuring these every now and then might be good for a larf.
One note, however: we have noticed a strong trend. Since implementing the Submishmash submission manager, we have noticed that both a) the decrease in overall submissions received and b) the increase in quality of submissions received has coincided with a sharp decrease in the number of angry rejection mail (ARM). Coincidence? Perhaps. Or...not so much.
Without further ado, ARM #1 of this installment:
You would have found everything that you suggested if you read the story slowly. Not every story can be understood, even if it is written simply and expecially if it is more complex than it initially appears, if it is quickly read. But today's editors are more than often too overwhelmed with and desensitized by submissions to read them any other way. Thus, contemporary literature has become like so many other things in this country--a cheap product to be quickly consumed in vast quantities.
As for the parotting dialogue, that is the character's personality, a personality strongly based on a real person.
Writer X
5. "expecially" should provide some idea of the quality of writing we're dealing with here
4. "Today's editors." Yeah. I'll let that one stand on its own.
3. Submissions don't desensitize me--this work is my passion. I am, however, becoming better at analyzing the volumes of work that come in and determing whether something can be "rescued" by editing, or if it is flawed at its very heart and the result of a writer not yet developed.
2. Yeah, we're all about that "cheap product." We're Wal-Mart shoppers. Faded Glory over Gucci.
And the best one yet...
1. Oh yes, fiction is always best when it imitates life and actual people and events closely. After all, that's what fiction's all about--staying true to the events, not the story. Nonfiction is for the birds!
~
A while back (don't ask me how long ago) I posted an article I wrote featuring some of the best hilarity-inducing e-mails. Due to the more or less steady influx of such letters (which I attribute to the more or less steady stream of rejections we send), I think featuring these every now and then might be good for a larf.
One note, however: we have noticed a strong trend. Since implementing the Submishmash submission manager, we have noticed that both a) the decrease in overall submissions received and b) the increase in quality of submissions received has coincided with a sharp decrease in the number of angry rejection mail (ARM). Coincidence? Perhaps. Or...not so much.
Without further ado, ARM #1 of this installment:
You would have found everything that you suggested if you read the story slowly. Not every story can be understood, even if it is written simply and expecially if it is more complex than it initially appears, if it is quickly read. But today's editors are more than often too overwhelmed with and desensitized by submissions to read them any other way. Thus, contemporary literature has become like so many other things in this country--a cheap product to be quickly consumed in vast quantities.
As for the parotting dialogue, that is the character's personality, a personality strongly based on a real person.
Writer X
5. "expecially" should provide some idea of the quality of writing we're dealing with here
4. "Today's editors." Yeah. I'll let that one stand on its own.
3. Submissions don't desensitize me--this work is my passion. I am, however, becoming better at analyzing the volumes of work that come in and determing whether something can be "rescued" by editing, or if it is flawed at its very heart and the result of a writer not yet developed.
2. Yeah, we're all about that "cheap product." We're Wal-Mart shoppers. Faded Glory over Gucci.
And the best one yet...
1. Oh yes, fiction is always best when it imitates life and actual people and events closely. After all, that's what fiction's all about--staying true to the events, not the story. Nonfiction is for the birds!
~
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