As a child, I was always writing. I wrote lots of stories, and the summer I was eight, I put together several issues of a neighborhood newspaper, which my father copied at work so I could distribute it to the neighbors. I still have a battered copy of one of the issues.
I can still see it. A small plastic poinsettia in faded red with three tiny lights and six dull green leaves. It was such a cheap piece of junk it screamed against making anything out of plastic, ever. Still, it was a symbol of Christmas, and all I had to work with, so I put […]
I was one of those lucky few who was actually at the right place at the right time.
I have the best job in the world. I don’t keep office hours and I’m a writer. My work is published several times a week for a readership of over 13,000 people.
Since the early eighties, I have been a fairly successful freelance public relations writer. My career began because my daughter, Amber, needed toe shoes. No kidding. It was 1984. At that time I was working as the director of a non-profit agency, writing a bit on the side, and trying to raise five children mainly on my first husband’s meager teacher’s salary. Money was always tight.
Forget query letters for a while and think direct marketing instead. Not for you, you say? Perhaps you are a dedicated features writer, and certainly not interested in commercial freelancing? Even so, direct marketing can be a useful tool. Consider the Internet. Ever been amazed by the amount of markets available there? Or overwhelmed by […]
A little over a year ago ForeWord Magazine began a pay for review site that created quite a controversy. ForeWordreviews.com offered a review for $295 to any publisher or author who could afford one. Included in the price is the right to print the review in any marketing or publicity effort, lifetime archival of the […]
A boxing taco. That’s the subject of the first story I ever wrote, which I read to the other second grade students in Mrs. Moore’s class at Morningside Elementary. Their laughter was like medicine to me, a shy and often frightened child.
There are six major publishing conglomerates in the United States. Each conglomerate controls any number of subsidiary publishers. Rupert Murdoch, for instance, owns HarperCollins, William Morrow, and Avon, which, more or less, work as a unit, sharing resources and personnel. My first novel, Pretend I’m Not Here, is a romantic suspense published by HarperCollins in […]
My freelance writing career began with a poem that I never submitted. My father (also a writer) had sent it in on my behalf when I was 24. The interesting thing was, it was a poem I wrote at age 16. When the acceptance letter arrived, I thought, “Wow! If I can get something published that I wrote at age 16, what could I do now?”
