Erica Verrillo's Blog, page 94

How Stephen King Wrote Carrie: A Revealing Story

The best parts of Stephen King's book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, are when he stops talking about writing in general, and focuses on how he writes. Anybody who writes, in fact, anybody who creates anything - including the theory of gravity - will recognize the process through which King came up with Carrie. Creative works come from the sort of haphazard confluences that King describes.

It also helps to have somebody around who has unswerving faith in you.
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Stephen King: How I wrote Carrie

The Guardian, April 4, 2014

While he was going to college my brother Dave worked summers as a janitor at Brunswick High. For part of one summer I worked there, too. One day I was supposed to scrub the rust-stains off the walls in the girls' shower. I noticed that the showers, unlike those in the boys' locker room, had chrome U-rings with pink plastic curtains attached.

This memory came back to me one day while I was working in the laundry, and I started seeing the opening scene of a story: girls showering in a locker room where there were no U-rings, pink plastic curtains or privacy. And this one girl starts to have her period. Only she doesn't know what it is, and the other girls – grossed out, horrified, amused – start pelting her with sanitary napkins … The girl begins to scream. All that blood!

I'd read an article in LIFE magazine some years before, suggesting that at least some reported poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomena – telekinesis being the ability to move objects just by thinking about them. There was some evidence to suggest that young people might have such powers, the article said, especially girls in early adolescence, right around the time of their first...

POW! Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together, and I had an idea …

Before I had completed two pages, ghosts of my own began to intrude; the ghosts of two girls, both dead, who eventually combined to become Carrie White. I will call one of them Tina White and the other Sandra Irving.

Tina went to Durham Elementary School with me. There is a goat in every class, the kid who is always left without a chair in musical chairs, the one who winds up wearing the KICK ME HARD sign, the one who stands at the end of the pecking order. This was Tina. Not because she was stupid (she wasn't), and not because her family was peculiar (it was) but because she wore the same clothes to school every day.

Sandra Irving lived about a mile-and-a-half from the house where I grew up. Mrs Irving hired me one day to help her move some furniture … I was struck by the crucifix hanging in the living room, over the Irving couch. If such a gigantic icon had fallen when the two of them were watching TV, the person it fell on would almost certainly have been killed.

I did three single-spaced pages of a first draft, then crumpled them up in disgust and threw them away.

The next night, when I came home from school, my wife Tabby had the pages. She'd spied them while emptying my waste-basket, had shaken the cigarette ashes off the crumpled balls of paper smoothed them out and sat down to read them. She wanted me to go on. She wanted to know the rest of the story.

• This piece is taken from Stephen King's book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and his "Introduction to Carrie." It has been abridged by his British editor.

The Wattpad Prize - Free Contest!

Wattpad boasts that it is the world's largest community of readers and writers. The company is Canadian, so you know it's not an idle boast. Wattpad has over 23 million readers and 40 million stories. 

Do I really need to explain why it's a good idea to enter a Wattpad contest?

The Wattpad Prize closes on April 30. Go here for more details.
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The Wattpad Prize

Seek the acclaim that comes with winning Wattpad’s new, juried prize. The Wattpad Prize is the first contest to celebrate the achievements of both readers and writers in the community. We’ll be awarding our top readers with a spot on the Prize Jury, made up of Wattpad’s most dedicated, experienced, and engaged members. These distinguished readers will review the story submissions for originality, creativity, structure, and grammar, and decide which of Wattpad’s most talented writers will win the coveted Wattpad Prize.

Prize Jury

The jury will be carefully selected based on their level of dedication, expertise, and positive influence in the community. Jury members will review Wattpad Prize submissions and select the winning stories based on the following themes:
Best love storyBest escapeBest true storyBest inspirational storyBest comedyBest imaginative storyBest epicBest tragedyBest memoirBest suspense storyEligibility/Entry Requirements

The Wattpad Prize is open to all Wattpadders over the age of 13. Any English-language story of original fiction and non-fiction can be entered. Works must also be rated PG-13 or below and marked as ‘Completed’ by April 30, 2014.

Original Fiction: Original Fiction includes stories, characters, and settings that are entirely of the writer's own creation. These stories can focus on the everyday experiences and conflicts of a protagonist, with detailed characterisation and background.

Non-Fiction: Non-Fiction includes stories that are factually accurate and focus on real events, people, and experiences. These stories can include, but are not limited to, essays, journals, biographies, travelogues, self-help and advice.

How to Enter

To enter, tag your completed work of original fiction or non-fiction with wattpadprize14 by April 30, 2014. Each participant may enter a maximum of three works. For more information, please read the official contest rules.

Prizes

The winning writers will receive a Wattpad Prize Writer Award, which will include a mailed hardcover copy of their winning story, official congratulatory letter, and be featured on the Wattpad website and mobile apps over the month of June.

Best Method for Handling Rejections (and getting published)

Nobody likes to be rejected. Even the most seasoned, thick-skinned, successful writers hate getting rejections.

Unfortunately, for aspiring authors rejection isn't just a passing disappointment - it's a way of life.

As a writer, you can count on getting hundreds of rejections. And - I hate to say this - your hundredth rejection will sting just as much as the first.

At some point, you will be tempted to throw in the towel.

Don't do it. Try my foolproof method instead.

The method

Before I explain my tried-and-true method for handling rejections, I have to preface it with the admonition that it will take a little organizational work on your part. Ideally, you should do this before you start submitting your work. After all, you want to avoid as much pain as possible. Of course, if you have already started submitting your work and are in the throes of an existential crisis, it still isn't too late.

1) Make a 'top 50 list.' Find 50 places to submit your work and rank them in order of desirability. (For example, if you are submitting a story, the top slot could be the New Yorker.)

If you are submitting a short story, go here, and find 50 literary magazines.

If you are submitting query letters to agents, go to Agentquery and make a list of 50 agents for your genre. (Be sure to check Agents Seeking Clients here.)

Resources for Science Fiction/Fantasy writers are here.

Resources for Children's and YA writers are here.

Resources for Romance writers are here.

Resources for Mystery/Thrillers are here.

2) If your top slot says "no simultaneous submissions" then, immediately after getting your rejection, submit to the #2 spot on your list.

3) If your top slots - or your remaining slots - don't say "no simultaneous submissions" submit to all of them at once. One of them will take you, and your waiting time will be considerably reduced.

4) If you are submitting to agents, make sure you revise and hone your query letter as you submit, but keep working your way down your list. Don't stop.

5) When you get close to number 50 (and I have done this more than once), make a new 'top 50 list.'

Do this doggedly - without pausing to contemplate the futility of writing or the pointlessness of existence -  and you will do just fine. And keep writing! Having several of your works making the rounds on your 'top 50' will increase your chances of success.

You may find, as I did, that by using this technique you will not only avoid the rejection blues, you will get published.

15th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Young Adult Fiction

Chuck Sambuchino has announced yet another free contest. This one is for YA fiction.

The good thing about a contest that only allows you to submit the first 150-200 words of your book is that it forces you to really look at that first page.

How many extraneous words do you have in those first few paragraphs? Have you captured the attention of your readers?

Any manuscript, or portion of a manuscript, you send to an agent or publisher will be judged on those critical first paragraphs. 

Polish them until they shine.
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15th Free “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest: Young Adult Fiction

Chuck Sambuchino, GLA Blog, 3/23/2014

Welcome to the 15th (free!) “Dear Lucky Agent” Contest on the GLA blog. This is a recurring online contest with agent judges and super-cool prizes. Here’s the deal: With every contest, the details are essentially the same, but the niche itself changes—meaning each contest is focused around a specific category or two. So if you’re writing young adult fiction, this 15th contest is for you! (The contest is live through EOD, Wednesday, April 9, 2014.)

WHY YOU SHOULD GET EXCITED

After a previous “Dear Lucky Agent” contest, the agent judge, Tamar Rydzinski (The Laura Dail Literary Agency), signed one of the three contest winners. After Tamar signed the writer, she went on to sell two of that writer’s books! How cool! That’s why these contests are not to missed if you have an eligible submission.

HOW TO SUBMIT

E-mail entries to dearluckyagent15@gmail.com. Please paste everything. No attachments.

WHAT TO SUBMIT

The first 150-200 words of your unpublished, completed book-length work of young adult fiction. You must include a contact e-mail address with your entry and use your real name. Also, submit the title of the work and a logline (one-sentence description of the work) with each entry.

Please note: To be eligible to submit, you must mention this contest twice through any any social-media. Please provide a social-media link or Twitter handle or screenshot or blog post URL, etc., with your official e-mailed entry so the judge and I can verify eligibility. Some previous entrants could not be considered because they skipped this step! Simply spread the word twice through any means and give us a way to verify you did; a tinyURL for this link/contest for you to easily use is: http://tinyurl.com/pcmopmq.

An easy way to notify me of your sharing is to include my Twitter handle @chucksambuchino at the end of your mention(s) if using Twitter. And if you are going to solely use Twitter as your 2 times, please wait 1 day between mentions to spread out the notices, rather than simply tweeting twice back to back. Thanks. (Please note that simply tweeting me does not count. You have to have the contest URL with your mention; that’s the point.)

WHAT IS ELIGIBLE?

Young adult fiction. The agent judge did not choose to exclude any subgenre, so everything is fair game.

CONTEST DETAILS

This contest will be live through the end of April 9, 2014, PST. Winners notified by e-mail within approximately three weeks of end of contest. Winners announced on the blog thereafter.

To enter, submit the first 150-200 words of your book. Shorter or longer entries will not be considered. Keep it within word count range please.

You can submit as many times as you wish. You can submit even if you submitted to other contests in the past, but please note that past winners cannot win again. All that said, you are urged to only submit your best work.

The contest is open to everyone of all ages, save those employees, officers and directors of GLA’s publisher, F+W Media, Inc.

By e-mailing your entry, you are submitting an entry for consideration in this contest and thereby agreeing to the terms written here as well as any terms possibly added by me in the “Comments” section of this blog post. (If you have questions or concerns, write me personally at chuck.sambuchino (at) fwmedia.com. The Gmail account above is for submissions, not questions.)

PRIZES!!!

Top 3 winners all get: 1) A critique of the first 10 double-spaced pages of your work, by your agent judge. 2) A free one-year subscription to WritersMarket.com ($50 value)!

MEET YOUR (AWESOME) AGENT JUDGE!

A literary agent for close to fifteen years, Andrea Somberg represents a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, including projects aimed at a young adult and middle grade audience. Previously an agent at the Donald Maass Agency and Vigliano Associates, she joined Harvey Klinger Inc. in the spring of 2005. Andrea has also been a MediaBistro instructor, teaching courses on writing nonfiction and memoir book proposals.

Do you know what an author brand is? And do you actually want one?

At last, I understand what an author brand is! It's Heinz! It's Dinty Moore! It's Walmart, Home Depot, McDonald's!

What do all these things have in common?

They are completely uniform, completely predictable, and completely marketable.

To create an author brand, just do what any of these other brands have done. Write a series (Dijon mustard, honey mustard, German mustard). Make sure each book provides the same reading experience (mustard). And churn your "products" out on a schedule (New this week! English mustard!). The combination of predictability and availability (more, more!) is what is known as "trust." And once readers develop "trust," you've got yourself a heap of consumer loyalty.

Frankly, I find the application of assembly-line consumerism to literature to be somewhat appalling. But that did not prevent me from reading the article below. (Or from reading every single one of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.) At least, I now know to avoid agents who talk about developing "author brands" for their clients.

Ouch.
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The Strongest Brand In Publishing Is ...

By David Vinjamuri, Forbes, March 4, 2014

When comparing authors, publishers tend to focus on book sales.  But sales figures tell only part of the story.  Expensive advertising and a strong push for distribution and display at bookstores might yield strong initial sales but create lots of returns and low profitability.  An early and fortuitous movie deal might overexpose a book that doesn’t meet the promise of the movie.

A thousand other externalities make sales data inadequate to measure the strength of an author’s franchise.  To understand which authors are worth investing in, publishers need a better measure of an author’s value.

Brand, Not Platform

The metric often used to evaluate new or developing authors is platform – roughly defined as the social reach of the author though Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog views and speaking engagements.  But according to Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group, which polls thousands of readers to determine their preferences and purchase behavior, platform is a misleading metric.

"We’ve seen celebrities with extremely high name recognition and very large platforms fail miserably in book sales.  Being famous or having millions of Twitter followers alone is not enough to build a strong franchise as an author."

Hildick-Smith points out that only about half of adults read books and just a fifth are regular book buyers.  So a celebrity with a large and dedicated following will not automatically become a bestselling author.

Read on to find out which author has the strongest "brand"  more...

2 Agents Looking for Clients

These two agents are looking for new clients. Read their bios and websites to see if your work is a good match for them. Check  Preditors and Editors to find out if any complaints have been lodged against them. (It's not likely in these cases, but you can never be too careful.) Absolute Write is another good source of information about agents.
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Lisa Gallagher

About Lisa: "As Senior Vice President & Publisher of William Morrow, I published many New York Times bestselling authors, both fiction and non-fiction. Having worked for Bloomsbury UK prior to moving to New York in 1998 to launch Bloomsbury USA, I have publishing experience and insight from both sides of the Atlantic. Now as an agent, being a champion of authors and their work continues to be my passion."

What she is looking for: Lisa represents both fiction and non-fiction writers. She is actively seeking new clients who are great storytellers, delivering both narrative urgency and dramatic tension, combined with multi-faceted characters and a transporting sense of place.

How to submit: Please submit your manuscript or proposal on her online form as a PDF: double spaced, 18pt, Times New Roman. No hard copy submissions accepted.

"I will do my best to read and respond to you within eight weeks of receiving your submission. Unfortunately due to the volume of submissions received, I am unable to respond to every one personally, so if you haven’t heard from me at all by then, it means that I am unable to offer you representation. If your query is a multiple submission and you get an offer of representation from another agent before hearing back from me, I would be grateful if you could let me know by sending an email with the subject line “Offer received”. Thank you very much."
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Caitlen Rubino-Bradway

About Caitlen: “I joined the LKG Agency in 2008, thereby disproving the theory that no English major ever does anything with their degree. I have enjoyed my apprenticeship under Lauren Galit very much, and I am now actively looking to build my own list."

What she is seeking: “I personally am looking for middle grade and young adult fiction. In teen novels, Sci-fi/fantasy is my sweet spot, but I’m open to anything as long as it doesn’t have zombies.

“Also, the LKG Agency [which has one other agent] is always on the lookout for nonfiction, both practical and narrative. We specialize in women’s focused how-to, such as parenting, lifestyle, health & nutrition, and beauty, but we are open to a lot of nonfiction genres. (For a full list you can check out the submission guidelines on our website.)”

How to submit: “We are looking for email queries only. Nonfiction queries should be sent to lkgquery [at] lkgagency.com; we ask that you please mention any publicity you have at your disposal in your query letter. For middle grade and YA queries, email crubinobradway [at] lkgagency.com.”

Nook: Still Asleep at the Wheel

Shortly after hearing that Russia had now become the world's third largest ebook market - after the US and China - I received this email from Nook.

Dear Publisher,

You may notice some changes the next time you log into NOOK Press. We've been working hard to get NOOK Press ready for some new guests – starting today, publishers in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium will be able to publish with NOOK Press and reach Barnes & Noble's millions of book-loving customers. This means even more great indie content for customers and increased visibility for you and your NOOK Books in the months to come!

Of course, I am absolutely thrilled that Belgians will now be able to publish on Nook, but Nook books are still available only in the US and the UK.

What about reaching the second and third largest markets in the world?

Yesterday, I filed my 2013 tax return. I received $4712 from Amazon. Nook netted me a grand total of $75. The numbers speak for themselves.
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In Britain and especially abroad, ebooks are booming

By James Bridle, The Observer, Saturday 25 January 2014

Over the past year, more and more people have been reading ebooks. Hardly a surprise, but after years of hand-waving by enthusiasts and detractors, we're finally getting to the point where we can actually measure what's going on. We can see, for example, that in 2013, Russia overtook the UK to become the world's third largest ebook market after the US and China – largely thanks to a site called LitRes, which was founded in 2006 with a stated mission to fight book piracy. Before LitRes, the only ebook market in Russia was the black market. Today, LitRes is the only serious seller on the market. A similar effect can be seen occurring in Brazil and China and elsewhere.

Read the rest of this article here.

Bad Reviews of Classic 20th-Century Novels

I enjoy reading bad reviews of famous novels - almost as much as I enjoy getting them. It comforts me to know that if a book of mine is called "lugubrious," I will be keeping company with Aldous Huxley.

(Unlike Brave New World, not one of my books has been called "lugubrious," or even "nauseating," but this is probably due to an avoidance of polysyllabic adjectives on the part of contemporary reviewers.)

These books were panned primarily because they broke new ground. Innovative writing is rarely well received in the short run. However, in the long run, these books have stood the test of time, and are now considered classics.

Here are some truly harsh reviews of 20th-century classics assembled by Sean Hutchinson for Publisher's Weekly. If your book has the good fortune to be called "silly," know that you are right up there with Richard Wright.
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Really Harsh Early Reviews of 20 Classic 20th-Century Novels

By Sean Hutchinson

Ulysses – James Joyce

Joyce’s magnum opus redefined literature and was a major event upon its release in 1922. Some bought into its radical structure, but others didn’t—including fellow modernist Virginia Woolf. In her diary she called Ulysses “an illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, and we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, and ultimately nauseating ... never did any book so bore me.”
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Cited by many as the Great American Novel, Fitzgerald’s inimitable The Great Gatsby remains a staple in classrooms and on bookshelves the world over. Critic and journalist H.L. Mencken, however, called it “no more than a glorified anecdote,” and that “it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf, with, say, This Side of Paradise [Fitzgerald’s debut novel].” In her review for the New York Evening World, critic Ruth Snyder said, “We are quite convinced after reading The Great Gatsby that Mr. Fitzgerald is not one of the great American writers of to-day.”
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov’s novel about a literature professor who becomes obsessed with a 12-year-old girl wasn’t without controversy when it was published in 1958. Orville Prescott’s review in the New York Times listed two reasons why Lolita “isn't worth any adult reader's attention.” “The first,” he said, “is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.” Later in the same review, he called Nabokov’s writing “highbrow pornography. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

The ritualistic and drug-filled dystopian world created by writer Aldous Huxley may have been too much for some when it was first published in 1931, but the New York Herald Tribune may have missed the point of the book altogether when their review called Brave New World “A lugubrious and heavy-handed piece of propaganda.”

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Heller’s satirical novel about World War II is so popular that the phrase “Catch-22” has become a ubiquitous modern idiom meaning a type of no-win situation. Heller was in a no-win situation, according to critic Richard Stern, whose New York Times review called the book “an emotional hodgepodge.” He added, “No mood is sustained long enough to register for more than a chapter.”

Under the Volcano — Malcolm Lowry

Lowry’s novel—about an alcoholic British consul in Mexico during the Day of the Dead celebration on the eve of World War II—has both dazzled and frustrated readers since its debut in 1947. The New Yorker only reviewed it in its “Briefly Noted” section, saying, “for all [Lowry’s] earnestness he has succeeded only in writing a rather good imitation of an important novel.”

To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

The New York Evening Post’s cleverly snide review of Woolf’s highly abstract Modernist masterpiece managed to praise her and shoot her down all in the same sentence: “Her work is poetry; it must be judged as poetry, and all the weaknesses of poetry are inherent in it.”

An American Tragedy – Theodore Dreiser

This sprawling tale of love and deceit's influence has been made into an opera, a musical, a radio program, and more. When the novel was first published in 1925, the Boston Evening Telegraph called its main character, Clyde Griffiths, “one of the most despicable creations of humanity that ever emerged from a novelist’s brain,” and called Dreiser “a fearsome manipulator of the English language” with a style that “is offensively colloquial, commonplace and vulgar.

Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, cementing its reputation as one of the most important books about race and identity ever written. In its 1952 review, however, the Atlantic Monthly thought it suffered from “occasional overwriting, stretches of fuzzy thinking, and a tendency to waver, confusingly, between realism and surrealism.”

Native Son – Richard Wright

Richard Wright’s Native Son is another classic American novel about the African American experience, but the New Statesman and The Nation found the book to be “unimpressive and silly, not even as much fun as a thriller."

Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow

Bellow’s uniquely comic and philosophical novel about an American millionaire who unwittingly becomes the king of an African tribe was the author's personal favorite. But it wasn’t a favorite for critic Reed Whittemore. In his review for the New Republic, Whittemore posed this question to himself: “The reviewer looks at the evidence and wonders if he should damn the author and praise the book, or praise the author and damn the book. And is it possible, somehow or other to praise or damn, both? He isn’t sure.”


Read the rest of these really harsh reviews here.

3 New Agents Seeking Clients

New agents are a boon to writers looking to break into the publishing world. They are hard-working, and eager to find and nurture new talent.

Three of my books were picked up by Random House because of the enthusiastic endorsement of a new agent.

Check out these agents, and, as always, read the websites of their agencies to see if your work is a good fit for them.
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Cate Hart

About Cate: Cate Hart is a Junior Agent at Corvisiero Literary Agency, where she started as an intern working closely with Marisa Corvisiero and Saritza Hernandez. A Tennessee native, Cate earned her B.F.A. from the University of Tennessee. Before joining Corvisiero Literary Agency, Cate worked in financial management.

What she is seeking: Cate's primary interest is YA. She will consider any genre, but is looking especially for Fantasy and Magical Realism. For Middle Grade, she is looking for Fantasy, Adventure and Mystery with a humorous or heart-warming voice and a unique concept. For Adult, she is only accepting Historical Romance. Cate will also consider select LGBTQ and Erotica. For Non-Fiction, Cate will consider select histories and biographies. She is looking for secret histories and little known facts and events. She enjoys reading about the everyday heroes of the American and French Revolutions, something more beyond the tactics of war.

How to submit: Please send a query letter addressed to Cate with “Query” and your title in the subject line. Attach a 1-2 page synopsis and the first five pages of your manuscript as a doc file. Cate will respond to every query. You can check her website catehart.com for “current through” dates as well as updated wishlists.

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Rena Rossner


About Rena: Rena handles foreign rights for the Deborah Harris Agency, a literary agency based in Jerusalem. She is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars Program, where she double-majored in poetry and non-fiction writing. She studied at Trinity College, Dublin and holds an MA in History from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She worked at bookstores in four countries, has written extensively for The Jerusalem Report and The Jerusalem Post, and worked in PR, grant-writing, and website development at The Jerusalem Foundation. She is a writer of both fiction and poetry.

She is seeking: "I am most interested in representing Fantasy and Science Fiction in all its permutations - Adult, Middle Grade, Young Adult etc. I also look for Middle Grade and Young Adult contemporary stories and I'd be open to MG/YA mysteries and thrillers as well. I represent quite a few picture books and I'm always looking for those. In terms of adult books, I look for Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, multicultural books, and I'd also consider adult mysteries, thrillers and psychological suspense, but not cozy mysteries. I specifically look for literary work (in any genre,) and books with elements of magical realism and the fantastic. You will steal my heart for sure if it's set in the Middle East, in Israel or if it has Jewish or Israeli themes and characters, but I'm open to all themes, settings and characters. You've got to have a really good reason to send me nonfiction, or cookbooks, but if you have a reason that seems to fit with who I am and what I'm looking for, I'll take a look."

How to submit: Please include a synopsis of your book, a short biographical note and the first two chapters of the work— or an equivalent of up to fifty pages. Email: rena@thedeborahharrisagency.com
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Holly Lorincz of MacGregor Literary

About Holly: Holly has a degree in Journalism as well as a MAT focused in writing and literature. She was the editor of the literary magazine Perceptions, and then became a high school and college instructor. During that fifteen year run, she was named Teacher of the Year in Oregon, won two national awards from the National Federation of Schools, coached her high school speech team to two State Championships and nine individual Champions, began an editing service, and published various short works.

She is seeking: "I am currently only accepting general market submissions in these areas: historical romance, literary or classic westerns, political or conspiracy thrillers, women's fiction, or literary fiction."

How to submit: Email queries to holly [at] macgregorliterary.com. Please include the genre in the subject line.

How to Buy a Top Spot on the New York Times Bestseller List

I have long suspected that the rank of 'bestseller' could be purchased. Now, there is proof.

Does this mean you can buy a bestseller slot for your upcoming book? Not unless you have a couple hundred thousand dollars to spare, and know 6,000 people.
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How to Buy a Top Spot on the New York Times Bestseller List

By Dennis Abrams, Publishing Perspectives, March 10, 2014

Carolyn Kellogg reports in the Los Angeles Times that while every author wants to get a book on the bestseller list, “those who can pay for the services of ResultSource Inc just might get one.”

The company which describes itself as “a boutique marketing firm that works with today’s thought leaders to build bestsellers” apparently has done so. In 2013, Kellogg reports, the Wall Street Journal talked with the authors of two books who paid thousands of dollars to ResultSource and soon ended up on the Journal’s bestseller list. “Precisely how [ResultSource] goes about [its business] is unclear, Jeffrey Trachtenberg reported at the time.

Now, Warren Cole Smith reports at www.worldmag.com that “Seattle’s Mars Hill Church paid [ResultSource] at least $210,000 in 2011 and 2012 to ensure thatReal Marriage, a book written by Mark Driscoll, the church’s founding pastor, and his wife Grace, made the New York Times best-seller list.”

Smith writes that a document obtained by WORLD shows that ResultSource Inc. (RSI) entered into an agreement with Mars Hill “to conduct a bestseller campaign for your book, Real Marriage, on the week of January 2, 2012. The bestseller campaign is intended to place Real Marriage (Thomas Nelson) on The New York Times bestseller list for the Advice How-To list.”

ResultSource also promised Mars Hill that they would be able to help place Real Marriage on the Wall Street Journal Business, USA Today Money, BN.com (Barnes& Noble) and Amazon.com bestseller lists.

Find out how they did it HERE.