Columns

So You Want To Edit A Book Part 1: The Dramatic First Read Through

April 24th, 2015

Hi you guys! Remember me? Last fall, we walked through the process of writing a novel together, during which I shared tips and tricks in the hopes that I could pass along something helpful. While I wrote that column, I was actually writing a book. I mean, I couldn't exactly talk/blog about it without doing it, right? My hope, at the time, was that you, dear reader, wrote one too. Did you? How'd it go?

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Marvel Movie Preview: Avengers 2, CapAm 3, and More!!

April 23rd, 2015

Warning: The following column is spoiler-heavy Seriously, if you want to go into Avengers: Age of Ultron or Captain America 3: Civil War with a clean palette—don't read anymore. Still good? Okay, let's talk a little bit about what's coming up in the Marvel films, starting with the new cast in A2.

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Storyville: Shifting Sympathies

April 23rd, 2015

WARNING: SPOILERS for Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn

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Reading in the Dark: A Brief History of Books for the Blind

April 22nd, 2015

Imagine this scenario: you’re reading Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy and you come across a description of Lisbeth Salander’s wasp tattoo. You realize that you’ve never seen a wasp— in fact, you’ve never seen the color yellow. Think of Anne Shirley’s red hair, or the sea and sky that “look like fabric” in To the Lighthouse. With no visual referent, what do those words mean to you?

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5 Problems with the Humble Protagonist

April 22nd, 2015

As an independent editor, I work with a lot of novels over the course of a year, and a lot of protagonists too. Some are straight-ahead heroes and some are antiheroes; most fall somewhere in between. Then there's what I've come to think of as the Humble Protagonist (HP).

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Let's Read About Sex

April 21st, 2015

Everyone who read the above title and clicked away to watch a Salt-N-Pepa video, just know that I forgive you and understand your plight. Regardless of which Salt-N-Pepa video you chose. As for the rest of you, welcome to this column about sex. I'm hoping this qualifies me as a "sex columnist" and maybe even a "sexpert." Two goals met with one column? Not bad.

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The Girl Who Starred In All The Books

April 20th, 2015

With the English translation of Stieg Larsson's first Millennium trilogy novel, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, hitting American bookshelves in late 2008, a publishing trend took its first steps out of the primordial ooze and ventured onward. The release of the second and third books, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, respectively, helped spread this trend further, solidifying its prevalence even today, seven years later. 

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Path to Publication 3.6: Blurbs And Reviews, Incoming

April 20th, 2015

Polis Books will release my debut novel, New Yorked, in June, with the follow-up, City of Rose, slated to follow in 2016. This is a column about taking a book over the finish line. Let's talk about blurbs.  Asking for blurbs is really awkward. 

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Exercises All Writers Need To Do

April 17th, 2015

Once upon a time, there was a romantic vision of writers treating their bodies terribly. Opiates, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and cigarettes were an integral part of the tortured writer stereotype. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was known for her opium addiction. William S.Burroughs was a heroin addict. Then there are the myriad of writers, past and present, with alcohol issues: Hemingway, Bukowski, Fitzgerald, Poe, Bukowski, to name a few…

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14 Reasons We Love List Articles

April 17th, 2015

In my time as a freelancer, I've written hundreds of list articles. That's not a joke or an exaggeration. Literally hundreds. When I pitch multiple article ideas, the ones most commonly selected seem to be the list articles. And hell, even when I write articles in a non-list form, lo and behold, an editor decides to number my sub-headings and transform my work into a list.

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