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The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop
Edited by Diane Lockward. This anthology, suitable for both individual and classroom use, features craft essays and exercises for poets of all skill levels. It includes model poems and prompts, writing tips, and interviews contributed by 56 well-known American poets, including 13 former and current state Poets Laureate. Volume II is also available. Lockward is the editor of Terrapin Books, an independent publisher of poetry collections and anthologies.
The Mystic Blue Review
The Mystic Blue Review, founded in 2017, is a bimonthly online global magazine of writing and art, open to both emerging and established writers. It is currently edited by undergraduate creative writing students at the University of California.
Bloom
Bloom is a website that showcases authors whose first book was published at age 40 or older. Contemporary authors can contact the site to request a feature. There are also articles on late-blooming greats of the past. Editors say, "Bloom's mission and intention are not to critique or detract from the success of young writers; our interest is in contributing to the conversation about literary life and creative process, offering up a diverse range of paths as models. Our hope is to present some counter-balance to the disproportionate attention paid to precocity by exploring and presenting stories of slower, zig-zag, later-life, development...Bloom seeks to challenge any narrow or uniform ideas about what constitutes literary success or authenticity."
Family Reunion
By Deborah LeFalle
New moon
midnight sky
tall trees obscure
desolate road
in back woods
of small southern town
Darker than black
can't see hands
arms' length away
frightening—
indescribable
uneasiness
Hard imagining
ancestors' anguish
ruthless attacks
on their very being
hatred, bigotry
inhumanity
Lifetimes of
oppression
crooked necks
from looking back
over shoulders
to see next day
Acquiescence
all too common
yet better than
dangling bodies
numbed to death
by knotted nooses
Courageous folk
who endured the
unthinkable
for survival's sake
It's a miracle
we’re even here.
[First published in What Brings You Here? (2016)]
Write Me Letters
By Ndaba Sibanda
You have filled me in on what makes you tick,
took me on a tour of your culture and creed.
You have taken me to places where they dish
out delicacies and glamour and glitz.
I cannot thank you enough for the body
of knowledge you have shared with me.
I cannot thank you enough for the superb cuisines
and places of interest you have exposed me to.
But now, please waste not your breath and time,
for time for buts and blah blah is over.
But now, please dish out your fragilities,
your you-ness, for I pour out my me-ness.
Write,
write me letters...
Write,
write me letters...
Words whose meanings and sounds
are spelt out in the dictionary of you 'n me.
Those whose font sizes dance a lively tap
to the melody and therapy of my soul.
Words whose meanings and sounds
are meaningless and soundless to all.
Write me letters at the centre of my heart,
letters so hot they burn into eternal blazes.
Write me letters whose glorious memories
time and distance will not shrink or erase.
Write me letters in the hidden bowels of my mind,
letters so mad they invent and reinvent my world.
Draw me pictures whose shadows and sounds
and colours I will follow and fall for forever.
Draw me diagrams of the unseen and untouchable
only seen and touched in the depth of your heart.
Diagrams reflective of the effectiveness of vibes,
those that sweep one off one's heart and mind.
Please me tell that our walks and chats and outings
are the fruit we are beholden to honour and nurture.
Please tell me I am the letters and diagrams
that have snowballed and sailed away with you.
Write me letters and diagrams about denials
and the writing off of reality at one's risk.
Write me letters and diagrams about what lies
beneath the wholeness of you and your life.
Let me drown in their transcendence and elegance,
so that our deficiencies see the light of fondness.
Let me plunge into the blast furnace of adoration,
and deal with its heat, lows and highs with conviction.
Bring me the honour and privilege to take a sneak peek
into our lifetime displeasures and treasures and pleasures.
Bring me all our baggage of staggering secrets and frailties,
bring them on—for these are to be in the mirror of frankness.
Write me letters slated in for victory and celebration,
write me letters endorsed and sealed by our hearts.
Write me letters whose weight is weightless and sight
sightless in the face of our resolve and affection.
Write,
write me letters...
Write,
write me letters...
A Very Basic Primer for Reviewing Favorite Books Online
Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of the How to Do It Frugally series of books on marketing and editing for indie authors. Her blog The New Book Review reprints positive reviews submitted by authors and reviewers. In this blog post, she explains the basics of writing a helpful review on Amazon, Goodreads, or similar sites to promote your favorite books by other authors.
Romantic Comedies: When Stalking Has a Happy Ending
In this 2016 article from The Atlantic, health and psychology editor Julie Beck discusses findings that the romantic comedy trope of persistent pursuit makes both men and women more likely to believe that stalking behaviors are an acceptable part of romance. Writers of romance novels, particularly heterosexual romance, should take care not to normalize behavior that would be threatening in real life.
Reedsy’s Best Book Review Blogs of 2017
Reedsy is a networking and resource site for book marketing. This curated list features 174 book review blogs that were active as of 2017, searchable by genre and openness to indie books (self-published and print-on-demand).
Do Daily Deal Services Work?
In this 2017 article at Writer Unboxed, Laura Heffernan, self-published author of the romantic comedy novels America's Next Reality Star and Sweet Reality, compares sales figures and Amazon rankings from 19 "daily deal" sites where she advertised her 99-cent e-book sale.
Tripping with the Top Down
By Ellaraine Lockie. Prolific poet Ellaraine Lockie has a gift for revealing the spirit of a place with a perfectly chosen character sketch or a quirky interaction that invites us to think twice about how we move through the world. In her work, travel produces enlightening friction between an unfamiliar environment and the unnoticed edges of ourselves. This collection, her 13th chapbook, takes us along on her tour of the American West, from her Montana birthplace to her native California and points between.
Don’t Make Violence and Abuse Just Another Plot Device in Your Novel
Rene Denfeld is the bestselling author of the novels The Child Finder and The Enchanted, as well as a journalist, nonfiction author, and death penalty investigator. In this 2017 essay at LitHub, she discusses how to depict sexual violence and trauma responsibly, from a perspective that humanizes victims and restores their agency, rather than exploiting and objectifying them.
Body Without Organs
Launched in 2017, Body Without Organs is an international English-language online literary journal for teen writers. They publish poetry, literary fiction, essays, and artwork, and are also looking for teen editors. "Pieces that are character-driven and/or emotion-focused have a higher chance of acceptance. Genre fiction including science fiction, fantasy, and romance is almost never accepted, and we strongly prefer free verse poems over those that rhyme, but feel free to challenge or change this." The journal's name comes from a term coined by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and he used it to reference this essential question: if you stripped an object of every physical trait it uses to define and communicate itself, what would be left? What is the "real" truth at the object’s core?
The Lovecraft Reread at Tor.com
H.P. Lovecraft was an influential early 20th century writer of horror and weird fiction, best known for his Cthulhu Mythos tales. In this online column at speculative fiction publisher Tor.com, modern Mythos writers Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth revisit classic Lovecraft tales and discuss other stories being written in the Mythos tradition.
Jerusalem Slim
By Michael Topa
I did not know it was Joy
And her fingers
Blessing me from words
Trapped in stone
Now in Gethsemane
You who could not wait
One hour sleep like salt
Scattered on the ground
But even now I forget
Where the difference falls
Some say Elijah
Some say John
But Joy you say nothing
And take me on
*This is what my father called Christ, alone
and muttering to himself, while nursing his
Four Roses whiskey at the kitchen table.
Originally published in America: The Jesuit Review, June 26, 2017, as one of three runners-up for the Foley Poetry Prize
Q&A With Amy King from VIDA, Feminist Watchdog
The Riveter is a magazine of narratives and longform journalism by women. In this August 2017 piece, magazine co-founder Joanna Demkiewicz interviews poet Amy King about her work with VIDA, an organization launched in 2009 to track gender disparities in the top literary publications and book reviews. VIDA has since expanded its surveys to break down the data by race, ethnicity, sexuality/gender, disability, and neurodiversity.
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 under thirty.
I'm nervous—
I'm nuts—
I'm just a "little" crazy.
Ha. Ha.
Why else would I be in 2 North?
(2 North is a walk in psychiatric clinic, 2 South is the lockdown ward)
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 the geraniums? The colors more precious
for being smaller, fewer.
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.
The condo and the country house. The peonies and the lake.
While her resentment foments like the mulch he piled on the roots.
Now that he's gone, her loneliness blooms. Tissue thin,
She is married to the million petalled profusion of pink.
The peonies are her private toro nagashi, his soul reunited
With hers. She needs, him, and his perfect peonies.
"Besides," she cries, "It's such a short season."
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 have a special section to highlight great trailers for self-published and indie books to help self-published and indie authors get more exposure."
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 the broken beaks, the perfect feathers, but a few will be released to wing again into the treacherous sky. Now the wayward daughter dances for a slab-faced man whose fists bristle with folded dollars, or she washes laundry for beans and oranges, or she has lain at the bottom of a rocky ravine since the morning of the slammed door, since her father's words were spoken; that can't be undone. But here a scarlet-throated bird is cupped in a man's rough palm, a thick finger strokes its bright breast, and in response, a trembling.
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.
