One year into my Amazon Kindle experience, it's time to evaluate the relationship.

This is a highly partial, definitely biased, non-techno savvy review. I love reading on screen. Big screens. Little screens. PDAs. Dedicated readers. I've loved it since my Rocket Book many years ago, loved it through the TV Guide/RCA model.

Even loved it when I had to deal with greedy, grasping Microsoft who made it harder to access my own bought-and-paid-for reading material than military secrets at the Pentagon. I want ebook readers to succeed for many reasons, not the least of which is that I believe their ultimate dominance is not only inevitable but possibly vital to our survival in the marketplace.

So don't say I didn't warn you.

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For me, there is nothing more intimidating than a blank computer screen. If I could, I would pay someone to start my novels for me. Since that isn’t going to happen, I’d better start from the beginning – literally.

For many writers, the first thing that happens in the creative process is characters suddenly intrude into your daily life. Fully formed, walking and talking – you see and hear them as plain as day. Excited over their arrival, you listen to the story of their lives before sitting down to write and…nothing happens. Or what you end up writing is nothing like you’d imagined.

So why is that?

The universal truth among every writer on the planet is that there will ALWAYS be a gap between your imagination and what appears on your page. Imagine the story-writing process as an onion. With the addition of each layer (rewriting, editing, adding description) the onion, like your story, will be fuller and rounder. But, before we get to that point, we have to write the beginning.

In an ideal world, an editor would give your book the time and attention that you, the author, puts into it. Wouldn’t you love to know that an editor is going to curl up, undisturbed, in an armchair with a cup of cocoa and your enthralling manuscript? Not only will they love every word, but also they will buy it immediately and with no revisions necessary.

I’ve got news for you, it isn’t going to happen. [Read more...]

Welcome Michael Homler, an Editor at St. Martin's Press. He acquires in a wide range of areas which include literary fiction, mystery/thrillers, graphic novels, narrative nonfiction and biography. He has worked on such books as the NBCC winning biography James Tiptree Jr. by Julie Phillips, The Fault Tree by Louise Ure, the Edgar-nominated Pyres by Derek Nikitas, The Urban Hermit, by Sam MacDonald, and Don Mattingly's Hitting is Simple by Don Mattingly and Jim Rosenthal.

What made you decide to edit fiction?

I loved reading books and always thought I had a good sense of how to improve structures to both novels and nonfiction narratives.

What kinds of manuscripts do you acquire? Who are some of the writers with whom you work?

I acquire in a range of areas. I do some crime fiction, literary fiction, literary and commercial biography, pop culture, narrative nonfiction, popular science, graphic novels and even memoir. I worked on the Edgar-nominated PYRES by Derek Nikitas, Tracy Daugherty on the forthcoming biography of Donald Barthelme called HIDING MAN, David Oppegaard's THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS, and also Jonathan Maberry's PATIENT ZERO, which comes out in March.

What about a manuscript grabs your attention and makes you consider making an offer?

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Welcome Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc.  Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the innovative Internet book marketing campaigns. Her book Red Hot Internet Publicity has been called the "leading guide to everything Internet." AME is the first marketing and publicity firm to use Internet promotion to its full impact through The Virtual Author Tour^TM, which strategically works with social networking sites, micro-blogs, blogs, book videos, and relevant sites to push an authors message into the virtual community and connect with sites related to the book's topic, positioning the author in his or her market.

Simple Ways to Promote Yourself Online

In as much as I've taught Internet marketing and publicity classes, the idea of marketing yourself online is still very confusing to a lot of people. Let's face it; our company has a department dedicated to this. Why? Because stuff changes all the time on the Internet; if we didn't have a dedicated department researching this and reading all the "geek stuff," we'd never be able to keep up. But for right now I want to give you the bottom line basics because at the end of the day, we all need to start somewhere and the best place to start is online.

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I love this time of year. The magic of snow, good cheer all around, and giving presents. Yes, I like giving even more than getting (though I like getting—don't get me wrong!), because I love offering my friends something I think they'll enjoy.

Here are some gifts for you, dear readers: two new places to find free fiction online, and a free year-at-a-glance calendar.

Electronic is all the rage. Last week Ninc member Sasha White talked about free reads. There are two brand new sites that didn't get onto her list, though: Book View Cafe and the Mad Genius Club.

Book View Cafe is is a joint venture by over twenty multi-published writers including Ninc members Maya Bonhoff, Jennifer Stevenson, and myself, to bring our out-of-print and experimental fiction to readers on the Internet.

Book View Cafe features science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, mystery, horror, romance, and [Read more...]