Trying to Get Published on Toilet Paper
Here’s how the submission process goes when you’re an unknown and the publishing industry hasn’t yet realized that you’re a writer. You spend hours online, or sifting through The Writers Market looking for places where you have a chance of being published. Everyone has their own strategy, their system, and when you talk to other…
continue readingSearching for the Secret
Kaye Gibbons wrote an essay for the Winter 2005 issue of the The Oxford American about how amazed she is at the number of people who are writing. Or claiming to write. I feel the same way because it seems every person I meet is working on a novel, story collection, or screenplay. I always…
continue readingKeep Loading the Starting Gate
A form rejection slip came in the mail today which, given the outright silence of so many places I’ve contacted, is actually a welcome sight. Rejections don’t generally bother me. They are a fact of life in this business and you’d better get used to them, like a chef gets accustomed to hot grease popping…
continue readingBoD: House of Thieves
There???s a new feature we???re going to run here at Slushpile. We???ll highlight a Book of the Day and try to introduce you to some good books, some overlooked books, and some weird books that catch our attention. For the time being, I???m going to denote these posts with the acronym BoD, which is unfortunate,…
continue readingBoD: The Dark Fields
There were a spate of books and stories a short while ago about smart drugs (or other mechanisms) that made people become suddenly super-intelligent, or super-power, or even super-sexy. Even Thom Jones got into the act with a short story about a guy who finds this technique that makes him confident and irresistible. But the…
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