M.L. Desir's Blog, page 22
September 29, 2019
Teachers Are More Stressed Out Than You Probably Think
When I was just a new teacher, I remember my doctor asking me if I had a high stress job.
I said that I taught middle school, as if that answered his question. But he took it to mean that I had it easy. After all – as he put it – I just played with children all day.
Now after 16 years in the classroom and a series of chronic medical conditions including heart disease, Crohn’s Disease and a recent battle with shingles though I’m only in my 40s, he knows better.
Teachi...
Things You Shouldn’t Say In A Query Letter
Query letter writing isn’t easy. Last week on the blog I spoke about some of the things you should include in a query letter. So today, I thought it’d be neat to write about some of the things you shouldn’t include in a query letter.
Remember, the letter should be a product of your own, and different things will suit different writers and different agents and different stories. But this is some general advice I’ve learned at writing events and through agent interviews and...
September 22, 2019
11 Haitian Women to Celebrate During Hispanic Heritage Month
In “Herstory” (Remezcla) France François writes about eleven Haitian women to celebrate during Hispanic Heritage Month—a great reminder! Read the full article at Remezcla to read about Adbaraya Toya (or Victoria Montou, originally from Dahomey), Cécile Fatiman, Suzanne Sanité Belair, Alice Garoute, Yvonne Hakim-Rimpel, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Catherine Flon, Edwidge Danticat, Marleine Bastien, and the women protestors involved in the PetroCaribe Challen...
26 Magazines Accepting Sci-Fi/Fantasy Submissions
Dear Writers,
If you’re in the quest for publication, like I am, then knowing where to submit your short stories may be daunting.
Many of the periodicals listed by the SFWA are closed to submissions for the foreseeable future, and many of the smaller non-qualifying markets I saw on other guides were also closed (some permanently and others temporarily).
To share my efforts with you, here are 26 magazines accepting submissions as of September 2019 or in the near...
September 11, 2019
A School Massacre and Toxic Heroism
Based on my first reading of this post the following is one of my favorite parts: “And I want to emphasize here again that this is not about pathologizing individuals. This is not about anyone’s personal mental health. This is a cultural problem of dysfunction and social organization that has neither simple explanation nor simple solution. We need to change the stories we tell about ourselves and each other; we need to educate our community from birth about how our minds work and how narrativ...
September 9, 2019
The Perverted Character: An Anime/Manga Staple?
One of my favorite manga/anime series was Ranma 1/2 saturated with misunderstandings, gender-bender hilarity, ridiculous martial arts/dancing duals with a poor hero, Ranma Saotome, smack-dab in the center of it. Why? Because he was cursed after falling into the “Spring of Drowned Girl” and every time he is splashed with cold water he transforms into a girl (temporarily). The world of Ranma 1/2 is filled with pseudo-perverts (misunderstandings) and actual perverts who get the taste dragon punc...
Deep POV: What IS It & Why Do Readers LOVE It So Much? – by Kristen Lamb…
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog
Deep POV. Deep, man. So…um what is it? Maybe you’re bee-bopping along on the inter-webs, clicking on blogs, checking out writing resources when you see the term ‘Deep POV’ drift across your tweet deck.
Or perhaps you’re at a writing conference looking all intellectual and stuff, and in the conversations this phrase Deep POV keeps floating past. Deep POV. Deep POV. You keep hearing it, seeing it…
And, if you are anything like me, you don’t want to look like...
How a book deal works
So I ran a Twitter poll the other day asking people what topic would be the most useful for me to write about, as I really want to try to make this little blog as useful as possible. When I was trying to get published, I spent HOURS trawling the internet for information about the publishing process (before I was working in it as closely as I am now) and so any light I can now shed on things for other people is hopefully a good thing. Anyway, the majority of people chose ‘how a...
September 6, 2019
How To Turn Your Novel Into A TV Series – by Tim Hawken…
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog
on The Creative Penn:
As more streaming services come into being, stories are needed more now than ever. Tim Hawken shares his experience turning a book into a TV series, what (and who) you need to know, and how to bring that dream closer to reality.
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Having your book turned into a film or TV series is every author’s dream. With streamingservices like Netflix, Amazon, and more buying up content left, right and center, there has never been a bett...
