by Lynn H. Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn I’m on a deadline y’all, so this is going to be brief. This deadline is for, Lord willing, my fifth published novel. I’ve been churning out words for weeks, months, okay a couple of years now, and I’ve made a few, let’s call them “observations,” regarding…

By W. Terry Whalin @terrywhalin Rejection is a reality of the writing life that no one likes. As a writer, my pitches are rejected or answered with silence. Like other writers, I also get ghosted. Besides having written many books and articles for publication, I’m working at my third publishing house…

by Maggie Wallem Rowe Last month in this space, we talked about the problem of platform – will a publisher be interested in your work without a big one? (For a refresher, click here.) But before you even begin to build a platform, you need to establish your identity as…

By W. Terry Whalin @terrywhalin Several years ago, I met a writer who had written a romance manuscript. I asked this author, “Do you read romance?” He instantly said, “No. I just write romance.” I understood his reason for writing since romance is the largest fiction genre but if you are…

by Katherine Hutchinson-Hayes, Ed.D. @khutch0767 A few months ago, I was contacted by a local disc jockey. I’d known him as a casual acquaintance through Andrew, my brother, but I was surprised when he invited me to speak at a fund-raising banquet. As we worked through the engagement’s details, I asked…

By W. Terry Whalin @terrywhalin For many years, I’ve known about the Catch-22 of publishing. The Merrian-Webster dictionary defines Catch-22 as “a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule.” Several years ago in Spokane, I taught a workshop…