Elly Zupko's Blog, page 3

A Thousand Times Yes.

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A View of ROOM

I don't do a lot of book reviews on this blog. I tend only to review books I read when they knock me over with a wrecking ball, or when I have extremely high expectations that don't reconcile in any way with the experience of reading it. (And even then, I don't always; I have yet to write a review of Watchmen [the former] or The Hunger Games [the latter].) The motivation is sometimes to drive people to drop what their doing and go change their lives by reading a certain book, and sometimes it...

Semantics

I recently had a brush with the effect poor word choice can have. In the wake of all that, now I’m wondering: are we really all speaking the same language?
I used to think that the terms “self-publishing” and “independent publishing” were interchangeable terms, albeit with different spin. I typically favored “indie” because it has less baggage, but used “self” when I wasn’t thinking too hard about it (or needed that one extra character).
But thanks to Kriss Morton, who recently commented here...

El Libro Que No Puede Esperar

"Books are patient objects. . . . That's okay for books--but not for new authors. If people don't read them, they'll never make it to a second book."

Reconsideration

When I posted my “Open Letter to Book Bloggers” I had no idea it would make the splash that it did. And for the first couple days it simply laid dormant, getting the same 30 or so hits I get on most posts. Then yesterday, I logged into Blogger and notice that my hit count had spiked precipitously with nearly a thousand hits on the post. By this morning, my hit count had increased over 10% from the all-time total of a blog that’s coming up on its 5th anniversary.
I quickly realized the post had...

FREE Summer Read

Need to upload something fresh to your e-reader before vacation?


The War Master's Daughter has been included in Smashwords' July Reading Promo. Use code SSWIN at checkout to get the e-book in the format of your choice for FREE.

If you choose to take advantage of this great offer, please take a moment to leave a review of the book on Amazon or Goodreads. If you really enjoy the book, you can get a signed copy of the paperback to keep for posterity by ordering through SMLX Books.

Happy summer read...

Paperbacks Available Again!

After some time on backorder, paperbacks of The War Master's Daughter are now available for shipment. Orders through my publisher come with a signed paperback, bookmark, postcard, "WMD" sticker, and a coupon code to download the eBook in the format of your choice. AND you're supporting independent publishing. What could be better??


"Rife with philosophical metaphors on the nature of man and humanity, Zupko tackles heavy themes with grace. . . . Zupko surprises and engages the reader....

Must a Novelist Read Mostly Novels?

I love math. I know this is strange coming from a writer, but it’s true. I think that, when so often mired in the vast gray area that is language and narrative, I find solace in the black-and-whiteness/wrong-and-rightness that math offers. I find elegant beauty in a spreadsheet, the way you can put in the numbers you have, arrange them just so, and find answers—real answers, correct, indisputable answers—to big questions. I love statistics and charts, and (while they can be interpreted in man...

The Child-Free Question

I typically focus on writing and publishing in this space, but every once in a while something important comes up that demands a forum here. Recently, one of my favorite online magazines, Slate, began running a series of articles about women who choose not to have children. They invited readers to "submit your testimonies on why you are child free and happy."

From Slate:

Recently, Slate columnist Katie Roiphe raised the possibility that the choice not to have children remains a t...

An Open Letter to Book Bloggers

Dear Book Bloggers:
I am setting up a blog tour to promote my independently published novel, The War Master’s Daughter. Through this effort, I have had occasion to visit many of your sites to learn about what you do, how you connect readers to great books, and what your reading interests are. I think, by and large, what you do is a really terrific service. However, I must say that I was particularly dismayed to find so many sites where I read this or a similar line, sometimes bolded or underli...