My letter to Lieberman after today's vote [updated]
In light of your closure vote today, I will be calling to arrange a meeting with Ned Lamont to see about supporting his primary challenge to you, and urging my fellow members of the Democratic Town...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 1 [updated]
Now that we're finally starting to reclaim the best-seller lists from the likes of Ann Coulter, and many bloggers are turning their thoughts to writing books, I thought it might be helpful to do a...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 2 [updated]
Avoiding Publishing Scams If you missed the previous episode ("Why bad things happen to good books") you can find it here. Yes, publishing is a swamp. Most of this series will be devoted to explaining...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 3 [updated]
Literary Conventions (With an Emphasis on SF Conventions) By request, I'm going to use tonight's (very long) segment to talk about literary conventions. As a writer and editor, I'm less interested in...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 4 [updated]
Book Packagers As a former book packager myself, and an editor for the late NYC book packager Byron Preiss before that (about whom author Alan Rodgers once said, in perhaps a slight exaggeration, "When...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 5 [updated]
Submitting a Manuscript There have been a whole bunch of requests for an entry in this series covering the basics of how to submit a manuscript to a publisher. So this is going to be a long but fairly...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 6 [updated]
Publishing Lists The publishing world is crowded with "-list" terms: Backlist, frontlist, midlist, etc. All of them relate to how books are bought and sold, and understanding how those lists work can...
View ArticleA Fighting Dem in CT
Since it's Connecticut Week here on DKos, and I'm a DTC member in the heart of Lamont country, I thought I would introduce one of the other new candidates who's very much a part of the Democratic...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 7 [updated]
Literary Agents As promised, the long-awaited episode on literary agents: what they do (and don't do), why you need one, and what makes an agent a good fit for you (besides the obvious, "because she...
View ArticleA CT Poll-Watching Diary (with local totals)
I just got back from the Pomfret, Connecticut vote count. I'm a DTC member in this small town in the northeast corner of the state, traditionally heavily Republican. In last year's town elections, the...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 8 [updated]
Copyediting Yes, after a week in the mountains, and another week spent finishing up the new novel and sending it off to my agent and my beta readers, it's finally time for another episode in the...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 9 [updated]
Marketing and Publicity After many requests, I thought I'd skip ahead a bit and talk about what happens when your book actually appears - what the publisher is likely to do to help sell it (not much if...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 10 (Leaving Laura returns!)...
Outlining Possibly the hardest thing for first-time writers is actually finishing a book. Lots of people can start a great book, but a lot of those starts peter out into nothing, or get written into...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 11 [updated]
Editing I've had a bunch of requests to talk about editing in its several aspects: not just "what will an editor do to my book once it's bought?" but also "how do I edit other people's work?" and just...
View ArticleHow to Manipulate Your Professor
I started teaching my fall courses a few weeks ago, and while I'm pretty happy with this semester's students overall, way too many of them seem to have missed that class freshman year in how to get...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - part 12 [updated]
Ideas If you're a writer, people approach you reasonably often with variations on the following proposition: "I have a great idea for a book. How about I give you the idea, you write the book, and...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - Torture Edition [updated]
I almost didn't write this diary tonight. The events of the last couple of days have been so dispiriting, that I thought about taking a break, and just focusing on writing the books I have under...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - Part 14 [updated]
How Publishers Pay You Last week we touched on the "ask what you can do for your publisher" part of the equation, but tonight is time to "ask not what your publisher can do for you." Publishers would...
View Article"Mow Down that Bush!" with Bonus Lamont Content
Being a northeast Connecticut DTC member means you get to talk to a lot of interesting people this time of year, and tonight that meant regretfully skipping Kossack Sherri Vogt's event in favor of the...
View ArticleA Kossack's Guide to Book Publishing - Part 15
Worldbuilding I've been teaching a bunch of big, sprawling setting-heavy books in my fantasy class recently (Lord of the Rings, The Mists of Avalon, A Wizard of Earthsea, with Watership Down and The...
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