Archive for the 'Essays' Category
I started a Why I Read/Why I Write series earlier in the year but couldn’t sustain enough submissions to keep posting them. Courtney Milan sent this to me earlier in the year and I promised to post it near her release date.
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 Insert the depressing numbers of your choice into this paragraph: Of the wannabe authors who start a novel, only one out of a gazillion will finish. Of those who finish a novel, one out of a thrillion will find a publisher. Maybe one out of a bobillion will get a second contract, and of those, a mere snarkful will make more than thruppence per hogshead of sweated blood.
Another depressing fact: In order to write a novel, an author must sweat many hogsheads of blood. So why would any rational person ever voluntarily write a book?
Here’s the socially acceptable answer: “The pleasure of writing is compensation enough, and publishing is just be an added bonus! I write for the sheer joy of it.”
Um. Sometimes writing is a joy for me. But sometimes I despise it, and so I harbor dark suspicions whenever anyone claims writing …
No first sale today. Instead we have two essays. Later by an author on why she writes but right now, a very very special Why I Read.
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I learned to read when I was 4, just as my 4-year-old best friend Danny became sick (he was dying of leukemia) and I was starting to be sexually abused by a next-door neighbor. I quickly discovered that when you open a book you could jump into a new world and escape the world that you are forced to live in.
Danny was the one who first made me realize the power of books. No matter how crappy he felt if you read him Put Me in the Zoo he would giggle and glow with enjoyment. I read him that book hundreds of times before he died when we were 6 and it never failed to make him feel better.
By the time I was 6 and raped for the first time by that neighbor, I was reading at a 6th grade level and the books I devoured were the likes of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Brothers, Trixie Belden, the Box Car Kids, Little Women and The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil …
Introduction
This is a long article. Grab a cup of coffee and settle in. I wrote this article and sent it to the RWR but it wasn’t suited for publication so I thought I would share it with you. The right to sever a copyright grant after 35 years came to my attention when Evan Schnittman mentioned it briefly at the end of one of his articles. I went off to research the issue because I found it fascinating. This is what I learned.
A new author enters a publishing contract with very little negotiating power. She is presented with a contract with stock terms and an offer of an advance in exchange for an assignment of her intellectual property rights to the publisher. Often she is in the position of either taking the contract with little changes or not publishing. The Supreme Court noted that “authors are congenitally irresponsible, [and] that frequently they are so sorely pressed for funds that they are willing to sell their work for a mere pittance.” Fisher Music Co. v. Witmark, 318 U.S. 643, 656 (1943).
Congress, who is responsible for setting the parameters of the copyright law in the United States, recognizes the economic imbalance …
Last winter, I posted that I would love to hear from readers, writers, bloggers about why they read, write and blog. Gail Dayton, author of the new book, New Blood, offers up this personal account.
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I love to read. No, I looooove to read. And I read fast. I read about 300 books a year (counting re-reads). So when I saw the Ja(y)nes offer to post essays on reading, writing and the love thereof, I got to thinking—WHY do I love reading and writing so much.
It’s the stories. My cousin Diane taught me to read when I was just four, and from that moment, I’ve been caught up in the worlds opened up to me by books. But I think my addiction to story must go earlier than that, because my mother likes to talk about taking me to see Bambi with my multitude of cousins when I was three. (Mama is the youngest of four sisters, each of whom had four kids, except for Aunt Bettye, who had six…The family Thanksgiving is massive.) For weeks afterward, my invisible friend Bambi went everywhere with me. Hey, at least Bambi was a deer and didn’t require his …
Last winter, I posted that I would love to hear from readers, writers, bloggers about why they read, write and blog. Keishon, avid book reader, is one of our favorite bloggers here at Dear Author. Three of us here are participating in her monthly TBR challenge. Keishon is the reader who introduced me to Julia Spencer Fleming’s writing, among others.
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Let’s see, why do I read. A little background is in order. First off, I come from a family of readers. I started reading in high school, way back in the 90’s and it more or less came out of curiosity. A friend of mine would come to school everyday with a book in her hand and one day she was crying her eyes out. I asked her what she was reading and she said, V.C. Andrews, the book was SEEDS OF YESTERDAY. I went to the school library the next day, located the first book, FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC and after that I was well on my way to reading. I read the entire series and understood my friend’s uncontrollable tears. Moving on.
I went to my mother next and asked …
Last winter, I posted that I would love to hear from readers, writers, bloggers about why they read, write and blog. Bev Stephans was one of the first to come forth and share her story with our community about why she reads.
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I don’t have a blog and I don’t write books, but I love to read and I love to talk about what I read.
I have been reading since I first learned how in school. My Dad used to take me to the library once a week and it was a magical place. All those books and I could only choose a few each time. In time, I had read all the books at my reading level and started on the next level.
Then we moved and we had a library nearby that I could walk to all by myself. What a treat. This wonderful library not only had more books than the previous library, but they had a marvelous doll’s house that I spent hours looking at.
Then we moved again and there was no library nearby. I was devastated and started stealing my mother’s …
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