What It Takes
[This Friday’s “What It Takes” is the first from my publicist Callie Oettinger. I’m sure the first thing most readers will think is, ‘Does a writer really need a publicist? How can you afford it? Isn’t that over the top?’ I first worked with Callie on a job-by-job basis. Her forte is the military; she’s based in Washington, D.C., and has done outreach for a number of successful military writers. She helped me on the launch of The Afghan Campaign. Her work has been invaluable. But what really got us working together full-time is this blog. “Writing Wednesdays” was Callie’s…
Read More[Continuing our “What It Takes” series, an inside look at the process of publishing and promoting a book in 2010-11 … here’s Post #3:] The first book signing I ever did was for The Legend of Bagger Vance. It was at a Books-a-Million store in Lakeland, Florida. I flew 3000 miles from Los Angeles. Nobody showed. Not a soul. I felt terrible for the store manager, who had set up a beautiful table with stacks of books and even a poster-sized photo of me. We were there at seven in the evening, all alone. It was like a scene out…
Read MoreI’m going to try something new over the next few months. Remember, a few weeks ago, we commandeered this Writing Wednesdays space to post a series called, with apologies to John Steinbeck, a “A Writer’s Journal of (Finishing) a Novel?” I was, then, in the final writing throes of a book I’d been working on for the past three years, and I posted a blow-by-blow account of that adventure. Well, now I’d like to do that for the next stage: the editing, publicizing and marketing process. This doesn’t mean the end of our regular Writing Wednesdays posts, I promise. But…
Read MoreIn the coming weeks, I’ll start posting on regular days, probably Mondays and Thursdays (I’m working on it), probably a long piece and a short one. On other random days I’ll post “I take it back” pieces, highlighting how comments or correspondence have changed or expanded my thinking. I want to share what’s gotten knocked into my head; that’s the whole point of this enterprise. Meanwhile here’s what I’ve learned in three weeks: Blogging is fast
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