
Literary Agents: What I've Learned, Part Two
[Continued from part one] I should mention that before signing with my second agent, I had received an offer from a small publisher to publish my book. My agent said she’d negotiate the contract for me and guide me through the process. Great, I thought. Perfect. A few months passed. Finally, I contacted her. I received an email from her saying she was sorry my book deal had fallen through. What? Of course, I responded right away. Apparently, the publisher had gone out of busi

Literary Agents: What I've Learned. Part One.
I'm not an expert on literary agents, but I've had the dubious pleasure of being signed by two agents. Each time I wrote a query, submitted to targeted agents, and was asked to submit my manuscript. The first agent called me on a Saturday, saying she'd stayed up all night reading my novel. She couldn't put it down, she told me. Could she represent me? You betcha, I said, not bothering to investigate further. She thought I had talent! She was going to sell my book to a publish

Ahh, Social Media
Social Media. Right. They tell me it’s important for authors to have strong social media outlets. Blogging, Facebook, Linked In, Pinterest, Twitter—I should be active and posting to all these and more. What they don’t tell you is the massive time-suck that results. There are schedules to keep (post x times a week on FB, x times on Twitter), strict formatting rules to adhere to (Pinterest needs vertically formatted pix, FB square), and wording advice (get them to respond, damm

10 words for book lovers
From: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2015/08/unusual-words-for-book-lovers/ Here are ten unusual words that all book lovers should know. I especially like numbers 1 and 10. 1. tsundoku Tsundoku is a Japanese word that has no direct synonym in English. It means, ‘the act of leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piling it up together with other such unread books.’ This may be similar to being buried under a pile of unread books, which is every book lover’s realit

It's a book!
MOKI STEPS is available on Amazon Thanks to all who have edited, designed, proofed, and encouraged!