Three Links 5/8/2020
Loleta Abi
Writing:
1. https://www.livewritethrive.com/2020/05/04/5-literary-agents-reveal-the-9-pitching-mistakes-authors-make/ “I kid you not: In late 2016, I sent query letters to twenty-seven literary agents; 84% of them never replied, and the remaining 16% said they were not interested.
Here’s what I had done:
- I collected the emails addresses of literary agents near me and added their names in a spreadsheet.
- Next, I copied a cover letter template from the web, pasted it in the email body, and attached my sample chapters.
- Then, I pasted the email addresses from the spreadsheet into the cc column, added my signature, and hit the send button.
The whole process barely took thirty minutes. But the outcome of this blazing-fast submission method? Rejections. The image below should tell you more:”
2. https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/good-book-editor/ “This is without doubt the question I receive most frequently from fellow writers. It’s a hard question to answer because, while finding an editor is easy, finding a good book editor is something else again.
I originally published this post a few years ago after asking other writing experts, whose opinions I trust, for their recommendations of freelance book editors. I then”
3. https://awriterofhistory.com/2020/05/08/the-road-to-liberation/ “It seems fitting on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two to feature an author and a collection of stories commemorating WW2. Today, Chrystyna Lucyk-Berger talks about writing WWII fiction and her contribution to The Road to Liberation.
What inspires you to write about World War II?
My family are refugees of WWII and I grew up knowing that they had barely made it out of Europe alive. I grew up in a diaspora of Ukrainian-Americans, many of whom believed they would return to the “old country” as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed. Well, that did not happen right away. By that time, the first generations of Americans were deeply entrenched, married to Americans, and living a dual life between the old and the new. I, however, always knew that I would somehow return to the “old country”. That “somehow” turned into Austria, the country where my mother was born in a displaced person’s camp, and that “somehow” was by returning to war via my historical fiction.”
Research & Fun Bits:
2. https://killzoneblog.com/2020/05/what-really-goes-on-in-the-morgue.html “Most living people never visit the morgue.
Most never think of the morgue except when watching TV shows like CSI or some new Netflix forensic special. The screen may show in hi-def and tell in surround sound, but it can’t broadcast smell. That’s a good thing because no one would tune in and the actors would be looking for real-life morgue jobs like homicide cops, coroners and forensic pathologists.
I did two of those real-life morgue jobs for a long time. I’m a retired murder cop and field coroner who spent a lot of hours in that windowless place. Now, I’m a crime writer and thought I’d share a bit of what really goes on in the morgue with my crime-writing colleagues.”
3. https://davidgaughran.com/2020/05/08/apple-books-for-authors-launches-pc/ “Apple Books For Authors has launched and the all-new site now provides help with every stage in the publishing process. And here’s the biggest news of all: PC users can now publish direct with Apple Books. That’s right!
Before now, anyone using a PC device could not publish direct with Apple Books (unless they went to the trouble of using a Mac emulator) and had to use a distributor to reach all of Apple’s customers. Now that has changed, and the new Apple Books publishing portal is accessible by web browser, and on a PC too.
That’s going to be the headline news for many people, so I just wanted to get that out of the way up top. But before we dig into that a little more, let’s take a look at some of the other aspects of Apple Books For Authors – which only threw open its doors to the public this very morning.
Hot off the presses, people.”
Some Things More Serious:
1. https://writersinthestormblog.com/2020/05/indie-publishing-during-covid19/ “When New Jersey went into lockdown on March 21st, I foolishly thought that I would get infinite amounts of writing done. During the day, I am the author acquisitions manager at IngramSpark and by night I like to write humorous personal non-fiction and romance novels. In my mind, I thought that the pandemic would give me a small reprieve from business as usual that included a very busy travel schedule.
I didn’t expect that business as usual would take on a whole new meaning.
As the publishing world began to screech to a halt with independent bookstores closing, publishers furloughing staff, Amazon focusing on essential items, and other printing plants closing, all of a sudden Ingram and IngramSpark felt the burden, more than ever, to uphold our commitment to the publishing industry to keep”
2. https://writersinthestormblog.com/2020/05/in-defense-of-editing-as-you-go/ “Writing process is a topic of ongoing conversation among writers, whether just starting or multi-published. Plenty of books and articles have been written and workshops and webinars held to suggest this writing process or that one, claiming it’s The Way It’s Done.
While savvy writers out there reject the one-size-fits-all message, we still have certain presumptions that we mostly swallow. One of these can be summarized as…”
3. https://www.suecoletta.com/killing-mary-mabel-rogers/ “Mary Mabel Rogers’ final sunset dipped below the grey and cheerless hills to the west, shadows swallowing the prison walls around her. Ink-darkness cascaded over Mary’s porcelain skin, her delicate fingers gripping the bars of the grated cell door—eagle-eyed on the fading glints of sunlight.
Tears cascaded down her cheeks when she turned to the prison matron, Mrs. Loukes.
For the first time since her arrest Mary allowed emotion to get the better of her.
“I know it must be and I am prepared to die.” She whimpered. “You don’t think they will hurt me?”
Teaser Fiction & Poetry:
1. https://colleenchesebro.com/2020/05/08/the-palo-verde-weeps-haibun/
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Book Reviews, Cover Reveals, & Author Interviews:
1. https://coldhandboyack.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/book-promo-grinders-by-c-s-boyack/ “This is a cyberpunk story set in our near future. I went out of my way to make sure there were some good things and bad things about our future way of life. Unfortunately, there are already some similarities showing up. I know I feel like a cyber-shut-in during these troubling times.
I’ve been to enough Zoom meetings to last a lifetime, but in futuristic San Francisco some of that is prevalent. Imagine police officers giving courtroom testimony in a kind of virtual reality, or holographic doctors being projected from an ambulance.”
2. https://zojestage.blogspot.com/2020/05/all-about-wonderland.html
3. https://pitchwars.org/pitch-wars-success-stories-with-leila-mottley-and-her-mentor-samantha-rajaram/
A Dash of Words with Loleta Abi Romance Author 
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