I reached a point this week where I was fed up with all the emails about how to market, buy this, subscribe to that, hire this consultant, or sign up for that course. “Become a best selling author!”  Most are from people I never heard of before. Clearly many of these people made all their money […]

A recent library fundraiser featured Abraham Verghese, author of The Covenant of Water. Instead of standing at a podium talking at us, he engaged in conversation with Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers. . They sat in easy chairs on a dais and discussed Verghese’s book, writing habits, and philosophies of life. For the release of my historical novel, Courting the […]

In the recent and pending Anthropic $1.5B settlement, a lot of writers were disappointed that their work was pirated, used, yet they did not qualify for this settlement, which amounted to about $3,000 per pirated book. One of the main disqualifiers was not having filed a formal copyright with the United States Copyright Office. https://www.copyright.gov/ I […]

Well, I have bronchitis from Covid, my third week of having this damn bug. I am not particularly happy about the situation, but I am trying to see the bigger picture. I am better, just not BETTER. Some would say Covid is the bigger picture, but it’s not. The bigger picture is who I am […]

Last week I wrote in my weekly newsletter how I was dealing with COVID, on my 8th day of it, as a matter of fact. Well, I returned to the gym and three days later I had a bit of a relapse. Guess I jumped too soon. But that meant my world slowed down, during […]

I’ve spent a lot of time recently trawling through directories of agents and publishers, and I’ve learned some things. Some of these no-nos are golden oldies, but others are newer. Tech avoidance They receive a lot of stories set in the near past – say 20 or 30 years ago – which they put down […]

What writer hasn’t wished for regular income from a regular column? This year is my third year as a columnist, and I love it. Believe it or not, some markets are looking for columnists. They are also open to serials, which are similar to a column. You can pitch column ideas to your local newspaper, […]

I received a sweet email from a fan of my novels. “Hi Hope.  I just wanted to thank you again for your newsletter and to let you know I requested Murder in Craven at the Vancouver, WA library. I have a goal to read forty books this year and am hoping to add the Craven […]

Artificial intelligence has led to job losses and client cut backs. However, it’s important to notice that AI has been used mostly to replace impersonal, cheap copywriting or content jobs. High-quality sites and news-worthy publications won’t replace their authors with artificial intelligence anytime soon. If you’re an author, your stories are still human enough to sell […]

While at a recent writing retreat, an attendee cornered me, asking questions about entering the freelance writing industry. She told me what she’d like to write about, but she felt she really wasn’t an expert at anything. So I mined her life. That lady left floating off the ground, so thrilled, so empowered, and so […]

Do you have a passion for video games? If you do, breaking into the video game article market could be a good way to expand your freelance writing business. Countless video game websites and magazines cover console, mobile device, and Windows PC gaming, many of which are open to freelance article submissions. I have been […]

The new reason you need a website is going to be different than you might think. Artificial Intelligence – AI. Many writers these days deem themselves “writers” because they’ve learned to access AI programs, tell it what they want to pitch, and have it either write the query letter or the article itself. Some call […]