|
|
Today I had the pleasure to meet Ben Fountain, who came to lunch at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Ben’s first novel, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, debuted this month. His short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, won a PEN/Hemingway award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Award for Fiction, a Whiting Writers [...]
Two weeks ago, I wrote a post titled “If Publicity Doesn’t Sell Books, What Does?” in which numerous published authors offered insider tips on how they publicized and marketed theirs books, and numerous writers responded. This week, Paul J. Krupin, a publicist who blogs at Direct Contact PR, offers his perspective on the publicity debate. [...]
Today I am honored to present you with two wonderful new guests. Author, teacher and book editor Elizabeth Bernstein will be interviewing author, teacher and performer Ericka Lutz about her debut novel The Edge of Maybe, which takes place right here in the East Bay of San Francisco.
Ericka Lutz is a writer, teacher, [...]
Thank you so much to the 105 authors who took the author advance survey! Here are the results (now with author comments added below):
Average and Median of All Advances
Five people reported multi-book deals (four two-book deals and one four-book deal), which skewed the results a bit. Below are results counting the multi-book deals [...]
I’m on vacation for a couple of weeks, but I’m looking forward to catching up on everyone’s blogs and tweets when I return. Meanwhile, here’s a guest post from Samuel Park, author of This Burns My Heart. If you haven’t bought his book yet, do! Samuel is an exceedingly intelligent and talented writer. I loved [...]
First, I want to say that I was fortunate enough to meet Samuel Park in person when he read from his debut novel This Burns My Heart here in San Francisco tonight. I was so drawn in by the story and his dialogue that I bought THREE copies–all at full hardcover price. So if you’re [...]
Today we have an interview with Nina LaCour, author of the YA novel Hold Still, which is a fantastic book (I read it last week).
Writerland: When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
NL: I’ve always been in love with stories—listening to people tell them, reading them, writing them. My [...]
We’re sad here at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto to announce the death of poet and novelist Victor Martinez. His bio on the Harper Collins website reads: Victor Martinez was born and raised in Fresno, California, the fourth in a family of twelve children. He attended California State University at Fresno and Stanford University, and [...]
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the survey. You guys are awesome. Here are the results:
Sixty-five writers took the survey. Of those, 42% are novelists, 18% are nonfiction and/or memoir writers, and the rest are broken down below. 43% of the writers support themselves through non-writing-related jobs (see below for a [...]
My last post got me thinking about different ways to begin a project. When I’m advising new writers on how to begin a memoir, I tell them to think of an event and just sit down and write it as a scene (or in essay form if they aren’t ready yet to write scenes). Then [...]
|
E-mail meghan(at) meghanward(dot)com
|