Resources
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Wake Up Call
By David R. Altman
A gold-eyed predator races through the low limbs,
her kill window only six minutes, just before first light.
Like a Vampire of the Woods,
she must return to her hidden roost before sunrise.
Gliding silently, she sees the unsuspecting cat
curled upon the deck post, its hearing long gone and
senses dulled with age,
now the target of a racing drone, whose radar is locked on.
It strikes quickly; the cat, never to awaken, is suddenly lifted upward,
leaving one family to feed another, creating memories of its ninth life,
now flown like a grocery sack to an unlikely final resting place
high among the branches, far from the deck post
where her kitten sleeps undisturbed,
a lofty sacrifice that will never be confirmed.
Keening
By Kathleen McCoy
It comes back in a rush as you hold the one
who's at that border-bog between
greenness and fever-fire: your dream
where she stands tremulously then falls,
falls into you, heart to beating heart,
passes through your body, rises as a rush
of smoke toward the stained glass
high above your heads.
With nurse's hands now upon her wrist
comes the somber nod. A low horn howls
deep in distance yet grows nearer, red
and black and green, coyote call clawing
over many mountains in dim mist,
watery wail that worms its way
through, in a fit of frisson,
whatever beast you have become.
The Bind
Founded by award-winning poet Rochelle Hurt, The Bind is an online journal that reviews poetry books by women and nonbinary authors. They review chapbooks, full-length collections, hybrid works, and translations. The Bind is interested in intersectional and feminist writing. Read a 2017 interview with Hurt on Trish Hopkinson's blog. Visit their website for guidelines for pitching articles and requesting reviews.
BetaBooks
BetaBooks is an app for sharing your manuscript with beta readers and keeping track of their feedback. It takes over the task of document conversion when recipients are using different software and e-readers. Writers can also track incoming comments by manuscript version, chapter, character, or person giving feedback.
V.A.
By Terry Severhill Very aggravating Sitting here at 2 North, V.A. Regional Medical Center, La Jolla Waiting— God, how many hours, weeks, years Have I spent waiting on a reluctant Government? Signs— Signs all around— "Depression"— Well yes it is— This whole fucking place is. "Cognitive Mood Disorder Clinic" Huh? That sign pisses me off for some reason. "Psychiatry Emergency Clinic"— Why don't they just say— "This place is for all you pissed off Rage filled, bummed out assholes" but that would just be another sign. Under the sign "Depression" They list 9 signs. I have 7. I'm so depressed by the revelation. I got here early— That must be a sign of something. I wasn't the first. Just a kicked-backed black dude about my age— A regular—the doctors and staff know him by name. More "clients/patients" trickle in— A couple look like WW II vets. Only one looks... [continue]
Writing Better Trans Characters
Cheryl Morgan is a science fiction critic, radio presenter, and owner of Wizard's Tower Press. In this 2015 article from speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons, she discusses tropes in transgender and genderqueer character representation and how to create gender-diverse worlds in a respectful and accurate way.
Rowena Macdonald on Dialogue
Rowena Macdonald is the author of The Threat Level Remains Severe (Aardvark Bureau), a comedic thriller about British politics. In this 2017 essay from Glimmer Train Bulletin, she shares useful tips for writing natural-sounding fictional dialogue.
The Rejection Survival Guide
Novelist and nonfiction writer Daniella Levy shares advice on this blog about staying hopeful and self-affirming in the face of the rejections that all writers experience. Her "Creative Resilience Manifesto" reads, in part: "I cultivate hope. I refrain from the use of prophylactic pessimism to numb myself to disappointment. I invite myself to feel everything." Levy is the author of By Light of Hidden Candles (Kasva Press), a historical novel about Spanish Jews during the 16th-century Inquisition.
Self-Publishing a Debut Literary Novel
In this 2017 guest post on publishing expert Jane Friedman's blog, Nicole Dieker offers a dollars-and-cents case study of all the marketing strategies she used for her debut literary novel, The Biographies of Ordinary People: Vol. 1: 1989-2000, and their return on investment. A must-read for indie authors on a budget.
Ambisinistrous
By Berwyn Moore
What should have been a romantic ruse,
a seductive scheme, the simple shearing
of your harmless hair, has us both confused,
your neck nicked and bleeding, me fearing
infection, your wrath, or worse—our passion
sapped by the danger of my clumsy love.
You gasp, then grin, though your face is ashen
as I rush to dab, to press the gauze, to prove
my slip, just that, a slip—not sinister.
If love must leave its mark, then red is fine.
Let it bloom and blaze, let it glow and glister.
My blunder—pure intent—to us a sign
of things to come: at every slip of tongue
or knife, resist the urge to come undone.
First published in Measure: A Review of Poetry, Vol. X, Issue 2
Jane Friedman’s Self-Publishing Tutorial
This 2017 blog post from publishing expert Jane Friedman walks you through the steps of self-publishing a book. Video tutorial included.
A Basic Guide to Getting Permissions & Sample Permissions Letter
Publishing expert Jane Friedman explains the legal requirements for quoting or excerpting copyrighted material in your own published work. Topics include fair use and how to request reprint permissions.
Here and There, Now and Then
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson Here in Los Angeles geraniums big as bushes, there, where memory takes me, geraniums in pots or window boxes, grandma's cellar, the walls paved with Kerr bottles capped with sticky discs, each filled with colors grown, sliced, pressure-preserved by her own hand, a barn out back where grandfather slaughtered his lamb and his year's take of venison into roasts, the meat hooks now hang from eaves empty, and not too far from Gram's chicken coop a stump—where she unceremoniously wrung the necks of old stewers for Sunday supper which she doused with yellow-fatted gravy and dumplings, also from her own hand. If we did that still—the kill, slit, smell, gut-wrap and freeze—rather than a nodded head, memorized blessings or none at all, we would fall each day on our knees, open our mouths in praise for those bodies, their lives and what they give us. And... [continue]
Peonies: For Jill
By Joan Gelfand She won't sell the country house. Not yet! And not because of Locust Lake, sailboats in summer. Alders in snow. Not because of the long view of the Poconos, Those graduating waves of forest green fading To watery sage tiered like a chiffon dress. Lost in those folds, the dizzy roller coaster Of marriage, sickness, the push pull of desire. Paul planted peonies. She, a lover of Japanese. Woodblock prints, bamboo, and toro nagashi: Lit lanterns set free on a river, Golden rice paper houses inscribed with ancestor's Names reflecting orange glow on black water. Vertigo. Her tears water the earth where peonies proliferate. In life, he betrayed, but in death transmogrified, Missed. At night, she denied him the touch The skin he craved. You can't have it both ways, She reminded. Just now, she wants it exactly Both ways. Perfect in life. Perfect in death.... [continue]
ExpertAccess
ExpertAccess is a membership group offering discounted rates for freelance writers to purchase access to LexisNexis, a premium subscription database of U.S. case law, statutes, and news articles. Writers also receive training in how to use LexisNexis.
Enigma Public
Enigma Public bills itself as the world's broadest collection of public data. Signup is free. Search a wide variety of state, national, and international government data on health, finance, public works, science, population demographics, and more. There are also databases from famous museums, research universities, major corporations and trade associations, and international institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations.
American Literature
American Literature is a free online archive with the complete text of hundreds of classic public-domain short stories, poems, and novels for adults and children. There are also study guides and writing exercises for young readers.
Water Street
By Naila Moreira. This poet and science journalist's second chapbook marries the majesty of High Modernist style with a humble attention to our nonhuman neighbors on the planet. Like Yeats and Eliot, she speaks with prophetic sureness about cosmic themes, but where they might have recoiled from nature's messiness into the cool chambers of intellect, Moreira shows us the fatal consequences of such detachment. She quickens our conscience to protect our fragile environment, then invites us to be awestruck by meteor showers and comforted by the cycle "of being and of killing, of eating and of rot", as our tiny breaths "fuse with the world's bedlam of respiration".
Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
By Johann Hari. This meticulously researched history book reads like a thriller, with vivid characters and political intrigue. British journalist Hari unearths the junk science and racist panic behind the criminalization of addictive substances, exposes the brutality of American prisons, and profiles communities from Vancouver to Portugal where legalization is working. His takeaway findings: Drugs don't cause addiction, trauma and isolation do. Prescribing maintenance doses to addicts in safe medical settings not only cuts crime dramatically, it even reduces addiction over the long term.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
By Roxane Gay. In this starkly honest and courageous memoir, the bestselling fiction writer and feminist commentator shares her complex and ongoing story of childhood trauma, eating disorders, and navigating prejudice against fat bodies. After being gang-raped at age 12, Gay self-medicated her emotional pain with food and became obese as armor against the world. She offers no easy answers or tales of miracle diets, but rather something more valuable: a role model for learning to cherish and nourish yourself in a genuine way despite society's cruelty toward "unruly" bodies.
Reconstructed Happiness
By Trish Hopkinson
Perpetually,
I am fleeing.
Perpetually,
I am my typewriter.
I am green.
I am my childhood.
I am wonder.
I am the dream
of innocence in Wonderland
and I am Tom Sawyer
and I am birth, music, sound
and I am reconstructed
happiness, the storms of life
and eternal life discovered.
I am anxiously new.
I am like rain
and I am the earth
and I am salvation waiting
to be called.
I am perpetually new again.
I am the channel.
Really, I am.
I am the state of revival,
a birth of wonder—
perpetually, I am.
I am anarchy.
I am waiting to up and fly.
I am a new discovery.
I wail.
I am someone
and I am,
I am waiting.
—a found poem in reverse of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "I Am Waiting"
Originally published by Silver Birch Press
Editcetera
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Editcetera has been matching editorial freelancers with projects since 1971. Their clients include book and magazine publishers, businesses and nonprofits, and independent authors and scholars. Services include proofreaders, copyeditors, developmental editors, business writers, technical writers, and ghostwriters. They also offer training programs for editors and writers.
The Latino Author
Founded by Corina Chaudhry, The Latino Author is a networking site that brings Hispanic/Latino authors and readers together. They welcome indie and self-published authors. The site includes annual best books lists, author profiles and interviews, and craft essays.
A Literary Agent’s Guide to Publishing Terms Authors Should Know
Literary agent Mark Gottlieb currently works at Publishers Marketplace's #1-ranked literary agency, Trident Media Group. In this article from The Write Life, he explains seven essential publishing-industry and contract terms.
Agent Advice: The Complete Series at Poets & Writers
This page on the website of Poets & Writers Magazine, a leading source of writers' resources, collects their Agent Advice columns since 2010. Read top literary agents' responses to readers' questions.
His Ghost Returns to Frijoles Canyon
By Radha Marcum
To the creek and its snow-
choked wedding.
To sky-bare woods—
pools and drifts. To
slowing trout with
taut, watery bodies
hidden on carved rock.
To mossy isotopes of joy.
To the traces of ones
who cultivated dust—
vessels of reed
vessels of clay—
and left black, sun-flashed
flecks of arrowheads.
To fire-singed cliffs.
Here the Earth held
a man who seeded
a death flower, whose body
once-upon-a-time burned
with sun below
the abandoned caves.
Here he returns,
the summer's musts
laid down to ifs.
Only sparrows
shake the bush.
Sensory Experience
By Gary Beck
Radio compelled people
to pay attention
to what they heard
and listen carefully.
Movies isolated people
who sat alone in darkness,
glued rapturously
to the silver screen.
TV chained people at home
watching the revealed world,
a paltry substitute
for imagination.
The internet erased
international boundaries,
allowing users
world wide exploration
anonymously,
mostly for trivia,
sometimes for science,
too often for evil,
unleashing new dangers
on the unprepared world.
BookBub’s Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing
Self-publishing service BookBub has compiled this list of articles from their BookBub Partners blog, covering every aspect of the marketing campaign for your self-published or small press book. Topics include book and cover design, pricing, advertising, creating an online platform, author success stories, and how to track the results of your marketing efforts.
The Big Book of Exit Strategies
By Jamaal May. The award-winning poet's second collection from Alice James Books explores bereavement, masculinity, risk, tenderness, gun violence, and the unacknowledged vitality of his beloved Detroit, in verse that is both muscular and musical. Nominated for the 2017 NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry.
An Episode of Grace
By Linda McCullough Moore. Grace abounds, though sentimentality may be skewered, in these sparkling stories about women taking stock of their flawed relationships with husbands and families—and often finding a surprising bit of information that shifts their longstanding narrative of their lives. A self-lacerating quip or satirical observation of human nature will be followed by a moment of raw loneliness or unexpected kindness that turns the reader's laughter to tears and back again.
Odd Mercy
By Gail Thomas. This elegantly crafted, life-affirming chapbook won the 2016 Charlotte Muse Prize from Headmistress Press, a lesbian-feminist poetry publisher. Thomas' verse knits together several generations of women, from her once prim and proper suburban mother descending into Alzheimer's, to her young granddaughter surrounded by gender-bending friends and same-sex couples. She grounds their history in earthy details like the taste of asparagus, locks of hair from the dead, and old newspaper clippings of buildings raised and gardens planted by blue-collar forebears. The centerpiece of the collection, "The Little Mommy Sonnets", poignantly depicts a sort of reconciliation at the end of a thorny relationship, where differences in ideals of womanhood fall away, and what's left is the primal comfort of touching and feeding a loved one.
TrailerShelf
A project of Wildbound PR, TrailerShelf is a curated site that features book trailers in a variety of genres including literature and fiction, mystery, young adult, spirituality, history, biography, art books, children's literature, and indie authors. There is no charge to submit your book trailer, but the site is selective about acceptance, based on the quality and creativity of the video and the expected audience for the book. They expect to add a paid advertising feature with modest fees. Wildbound PR founder Julia Drake says, "The prices [are likely to] range from $10 for social media amplification to $75 for being featured in our Top Trallers section. There's no way to tell on the site whether placement is paid for or not, but bear in mind that we have to accept the submission, so if we feel that the placement is not warranted, we won't accept the sponsored listing. We will... [continue]
Tanager
By Anna Scotti There are people who spend this pink hour of dawn walking the perimeters of skyscrapers in Houston, never looking up, gathering birds that have crashed against the great walls of mirrored windows, bewildered by all this broken sky and endless squares of cloud. And there is a Texas man who crosses to Matamoros every morning, stacks of flyers on the cracked seat beside him: La has visto? Missing seven years. They are never coming back, the girl, the years, they are never coming back, the flocks that once darkened the plain wide skies like purple clouds, but there are goldfinch, and warblers, and martins tucked in every tree, nature's secret, until their desperate hallelujah at the orange edge of dawn. Some of the birds are dead and some will die on folded towels in boxes tucked beneath desks or in car trunks, old women's tears wetting... [continue]
Web Hosting Rating’s Top 100 Web Design Resources
Freelance website developer Lisa Sanovski reviews service providers on her Web Hosting Rating site, which includes this extensive list of her favorite resources for fonts, graphics, stock photos, logo editors, and other web design tools.
Miles from Standing Rock, tonight,
By Leah Angstman
over this snowdrift land fires light into the expanse—
a joke, it seems, the ice melting into puddles of fresh water
beneath throngs sending signals upward: rain down.
Our bodies are water, in and on,
at heartbeats of what we must think and drink—
You know when you've gone dry,
to go without breath and skin,
roots to your earth.
What is water to us, and how do we own it?
Broken at the base of Ash Coulee,
spill under vitality herded through fist,
uncontained. Make the point drawn from wells of irony:
we'll claim what soaks in our soles,
but it could be anything, oil-thick or water-wet,
what rains up.
I Think I Should Give Up Exercise
By Elizabeth Marchitti I think I have given up exercise unless you count the trip from the living room where I sit, feet up, reading, to the kitchen where my new washer/dryer hums doing its job with grace Silence tells me the dryer has stopped It's time to fold the laundry. I stand to do that, make a neat pile of towels and t-shirts, return to my lounge chair and my novel, feet up I think I have given up exercise unless you count trips to J.C. Penney's, Barnes & Noble, or the Totowa Public Library, unless you count the long walk down the aisle at the Paper Mill Playhouse. Or the short walk, after John has parked the car, to the Montclair Public Library or the Hamilton Club in Paterson, to attend poetry readings. I think I have given up exercise, unless you count how happily I jump... [continue]
Freedom With Writing: The Paid Publishing Guidebook
Freedom With Writing connects freelance writers with jobs and opportunities. Sign up for their free e-newsletter to receive this PDF directory (100+ pages) of magazines and websites that pay for writing in various genres including news, entertainment, sports, travel, education, philosophy, and religion.
What Type of Book Editing Do You Need? And When?
This article from self-publishing and marketing service BookBaby, by professional editor Jim Dempsey of Novel Gazers, explains the three types of editing that every manuscript needs before publication, and when to do each one. The page includes links to other useful articles on the same theme.
How to Write a Killer Fairy Tale Retelling
In this article from the Fairy Tale News blog, Tahlia Merrill, editor of Timeless Tales Magazine, shares six tips for ensuring that your remixed fairy tale adds something fresh and interesting to the original. For example, she suggests reading multiple versions of the fable to pick out intriguing details, or considering a different setting or point-of-view character.
Screech Poetry Magazine UK Forum
Created in 2017 by poet Sue Benjamin, Screech Poetry Magazine UK Forum is a free online community for poets of all experience levels. Topic threads include love, politics, humor, erotica, and verse for children. Free themed contests offer prizes of Amazon UK book tokens (gift certificates), usually 15-25 pounds.
Writer Advice
Writer Advice is a resource site managed by B. Lynn Goodwin, author of Talent and You Want Me to Do WHAT? Journaling for Caregivers. The site includes links to markets and contests, craft essays, and quotes from famous authors. They also offer contests with modest prizes and fees.
BookFunnel
BookFunnel is a reasonably priced subscription service for authors. It handles the technical aspects of distributing e-book review copies in multiple e-reader formats.
Wave Mechanics
By Dana Curtis (i) I don't have the math and I become more and more convinced that no one has the green ribbon given to everyone just for participating. When we were undressed by the water, satisfied as if this was anything other than a revolutionary new interpretation that might be called: pastoral or pictorial or labyrinthine and what question will finally be revealed as our shadow, our hours in the light cast by the new oven, the old reality—castanets are what we hear in this endless ocean of grass dotted with horses and fish—they're still flipping on the oxygen and they might never stop. I take down my hair. I take the final dictation. I have not taken the temperature of what will come. (ii) I don't have the math and I don't see much chance of ever receiving a line of integers like diamonds. There seems more... [continue]
The Long Winter of 2014
By Janet Ruth Heller
Winter attacked us like a mugger,
battering us with frigid winds, hail,
whiteouts that closed roads
and shattered the power grid.
Snow piled fifteen feet high
obliterated mailboxes and froze solid,
blocking letters from friends,
jailing us in our homes.
The cold and storms
held us hostage for three months.
Even deer hunkered down,
unable to walk through high drifts.
Then we had a brief thaw
followed by rain
that turned into a blizzard
and axed tree limbs.
Now in late March, winter slowly frees us
from bondage. Snow begins to melt,
but the compressed crystals
resemble harpoons.
Today, the crocus blooms,
displays lavender petals
that dare winter to strike again.
May I Have Several Hours of Your Time?
Writing professor Karen Craigo's poetry books include No More Milk (Sundress Publications, 2016) and Escaped Housewife Tries Hard to Blend In (Hermeneutic Chaos, 2016). In this blog post, she shares strategies for setting boundaries and time management when asked to mentor emerging writers. A very useful read for people on either side of the mentor-student relationship.
Forgotten Child
By Ruth Hill Alex Gervais committed suicide at the age of 18, after 11 years in British Columbia's child welfare system. - Dirk Meissner, Canadian Press When young you wanted everyone to know you sirens call; sirens fall You should've learned to swim, not run to any him splashing, dashing Those throwing lifelines only there to rob you your marks for sharks It's the target missed, kissed, then missed again then machine-gunned It's the wondering if you'll ever be back again back where? nowhere It's the falling off the edge of granite mountain ragged, jagged It's the prick, the stick of chemical thick needles the wane, vein drain The drowning out of memory with new noises you fear they're here Soon even you'll forget what you were born for sour hour, no power It's the cost of being lost without a pathway gurney journey You're so tired that your... [continue]
Litopia Writers’ Forum
Litopia advertises itself as the oldest writers' colony on the internet, with members in the UK, US, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Germany and the Caribbean. It was founded by literary agent Peter Cox of Redhammer Management. Free to join, Litopia includes critique and discussion forums, podcasts about publishing industry news and book reviews, and craft essays.
Blue Collar Review
Published by Partisan Press, Blue Collar Review is a quarterly journal of poetry and prose whose mission is "to expand and promote a progressive working class vision of culture that inspires us and that moves us forward as a class." Read sample poems on their website. There is an annual poetry contest with a $100 prize.
Prison Writers
Co-founded by journalists from USA Today and CBS News, Prison Writers is a nonprofit organization that advocates for prison reform through sharing true stories by incarcerated writers. The group's goals are to encourage prisoners in learning marketable skills and to educate the public about life on the inside. Volunteer screeners give feedback, edit, and publish work by prisoners on the website. All contributors receive $10. There is often a large backlog of submissions, so more volunteers are always needed.
Requiem for David
By Patrick T. Reardon. Plain-spoken and poignant, this memoir in verse pays tribute to a brother who committed suicide, and ponders the unanswerable question of why some survive a loveless upbringing and others succumb. Pat and David were the eldest of 14 children born in the 1950s-60s to an Irish-Catholic family in Chicago. Immersion in the church trained the author to search for sacred beauty in times of suffering and mystery, yet the weight of parental and religious judgments overwhelmed his brother. The collection is illustrated with archival family photos that prompt the poet's hindsight search for clues to their fate.
