Today’s post is by author Cynthia Swanson. My debut psychological suspense novel, The Bookseller, sold to Harper in 2013 in a pre-empt. I’m not going to lie—it was an amazing deal. The type of deal that compelled me to ask my husband, when I called to break the news, “Are you sitting down?” Amazon • Bookshop By the...

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich Today’s post is by author Joni B. Cole. As a long-time workshop leader, I’m in awe of how some writers are masters at putting themselves on a path of creative self-destruction. In a way, it’s a beautiful, albeit demented, thing to behold—sort of like watching Glen Powell wrangling that F-5 tornado in Twisters....

Today’s post is by historian, podcaster and writer Doug Sofer, Ph.D. This is a little embarrassing. I’m a historian who values logic and evidence, but sometimes I can’t help but believe in a little bit of magic—especially when it comes to building an author platform. Maybe you’ve felt the same way. Platform-building is...

Today’s post is by author KimBoo York. What is intuition? Specifically, what is creative intuition for writers? The dictionary definition for “intuition” usually goes something like this: “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.” But that does not lend itself...

Photo by Simon Bobsien Today’s post is by author Midge Raymond. While collaborative writing is common in many fields—science and academia, for example—it’s less common among creative writers, especially fiction writers. Yet I’ve noticed over the years that many novels are co-written, and I’ve always wondered how, exactly, that...

Today’s post is by author Amy L. Bernstein. Over the last several years, I’ve spent oodles of time submitting short stories, essays, poetry, and novels to literary magazines, contests, and publishers. We’re talking scores of hours devoted to searching, formatting, and submitting my stuff directly to the publishing gods (I’m excluding...