http://writingbabe.com writing and reading, anecdotes and great quotes Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:19:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I'm an inveterate Dickens fan, so I'm reading Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens right now. The novel's mystery centers on Dickens' final unfinished manuscript, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which, like all of his novels, was published in serialization before appearing as a book. Serialization was once deader than Mr. ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/26/serialization-makes-a-comeback/ Tina Brown Asks Philip Roth About the Future of the Novel from The Daily Beast Video on Vimeo. Fall is a great time of year for books. It's the run-up to the holiday season, a time when lots of new titles appear and lots of publishing news is made. So here's ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/23/publishing-and-book-news/ I'm still mining great information from the panel discussion by small press publishers I attended at the Wisconsin Book Festival. As the discussion got deep into how to find a publisher for your chapbook, policies varied, from accepting unsolicited manuscripts to invitation-only, but all of the publishers the advice quickly ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/20/scrub-your-manuscript/ It all started with the decision to scrub the shower. Despite having a water softener and using Iron Out religiously, it still gets iron stains. So I donned my Nyplex gloves and started in with the cleanser. Then my hand, and the tile it was scrubbing, went through the wall. The rest of ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/19/characters-encountering-the-unexpected/ Publishers of all genres now expect, even require, writers to help market their work. When Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman of Verse Wisconsin posed the question, "How do you find an audience?" to the small-press panelists at the Wisconsin Book Festival, Charles Nevsimal of Centennial Press kicked off a round ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/15/finding-an-audience/ There was a fantastic panel discussion regarding poetry during the Wisconsin Book Festival. Several small-press publishers answered questions posed by Verse Wisconsin co-editors Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman. The publishers had a variety of takes on many questions, ranging from how long it should take to get a response on ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/13/what-is-a-chapbook/ Invariably, this question comes up at author events, and it came up Saturday at Doug W. Jacobson's reading and talk about Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II. Doug's presentation at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum was part of the Wisconsin Book Festival. I spent the day in Madison, attending ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/12/how-do-i-find-a-publisher/ Slate.com is running a contest for the best 500-word or less short story about the worthless object in the picture above. Deadline is October 16. The contest is inspired by the Significant Objects project launched by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker featuring writers including Nicholson Baker, Curtis Sittenfeld and Colson ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/12/contest-worthless-object-short-short-story/ The Wisconsin Book Festival kicked off yesterday, but tonight's events begin the big weekend of readings, roundtables and other book-related offerings, starting with readings by Wisconsin authors Lorrie Moore and Michael Perry. Moore will read from her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs, her first novel in ten years; ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/08/wisconsin-book-festival-preview/ Regular contributor Sarah Busse, together with co-editor Wendy Vardaman and advisory board members B. J. Best, Cathryn Cofell, Tom Erickson, David Graham and Angela Rydell, recently rolled out a print and online magazine, Verse Wisconsin. Sarah and Wendy stepped in when Linda Aschenbrenner, a seemingly tireless supporter of Wisconsin poets, decided ... http://writingbabe.com/2009/10/06/verse-wisconsin/