She Writes

I first "met" today's guest author, Amy Sue Nathan, when she interviewed me for her blog, Women's Fiction Writers. I was on a layover at a packed, noisy airport, standing in a coffee line as we spoke by phone, but Amy somehow made that impossible interview so good that Ballantine bound it into The Four Ms. Bradwells paperback. We met in person at the Tribune Lit Fest a couple months later, and what struck me there, too, was her determination. She was writing a novel, The Glass Wives. And now here it is--just out yesterday from St. Martin's Press! RT Book Reviews calls it "a poignant reflection of forgiveness and the complicated definition of family," and says, "the plot and characters are heart-warming and the ending is inspiring and thought-provoking.”  -…

So many choices…so few guidelines or clear answers. How’s an author to choose?

With the proliferation of publishing options—traditional publishing, self-publishing, partner publishing, package publishing, e-books, p-books, and so on‑-many authors find themselves stymied by which route is best for them and their writing. Even more confusingly, there is increasing discussion of hybrid models, involving choosing one route for some work (for example, publishing a novel traditionally) and another path for other writing (publishing short stories via the Kindle Singles program.)  How do you decide the best path(s) to publication for you?

First, take the time to read up on the different choices available to you. There’s an abundance of information online, and setting aside an hour a day to cruise…

Inspired by Dane Golden's guest post on YouTube videos, I have begun a new series of YouTube videos, the second of which answers the question "Should all authors (published or not) blog?" Check out the video below for my answer. Also, one announcement: Litquake, San Francisco's literary conference, is introducing Digi.lit, a one-day digital publishing conference that will take place from 9-5 on June 29 in San Francisco. I'll be speaking on a panel titled Author Branding and Marketing from 10-11:30 a.m. I hope to see some of you there!

Recently, in a family newsletter from the 1930’s, I came across a passage that seemed to speak directly to me as a writer. 

The little sheets, typed up and mimeographed in Philadelphia and distributed to an extended Jewish family scattered on several continents, were the proud chronicle of immigrants and natives, greenhorns and assimilated settlers.  I love primary documents like this, up-close records of the lives of ordinary people. 

What especially struck me were the words of one particular family member, a man named Hirsh Leib. In 1935, he returns to Lithuania, the country he’d left 30 years before.  He gets off the boat and makes his way by horse and wagon to the town of his birth.  In the doorway of his old home he greets his mother, and they fall into each other’s…