authors

The Querying Show, Episode 1

~ The Spinning Pen ~ 4 Comments

peter-lewicki-411606-unsplash.jpgWelcome to The Querying Show’s First Episode!

Each week for the next six months you will witness every juicy (or completely stagnant) detail of our SP Staff Member’s querying life in the SLUSH PILE!

(Check out our rules and reasons in our intro post here!)

Will CR’s/Write_Or_Left achieve AGENT success? Will it result with a querying and MS reboot? Follow us to see how Write_Or_Left ‘s querying journey will end up!

Today is the beginning of his journey. Let’s check in our with brave querying fellow and see how he began.

SP: Greetings, CR/Write_Or_Left ! First, we want to know how you’re feeling with this whole OPEN, VULNERABLE, POTENTIALLY EMBARRASSING, JOURNEY you started with The Querying Show? Continue reading →

Author Interview: Alexa Donne (& Author Mentor Match Founder)

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Pen friends, if you’ve spent much time around here, you know how much we love the writing community! One of our favorite ways of learning and growing within that community is by participating in contests and mentoring opportunities, and today we are thrilled to chat with one of the founders of Author Mentor Match, the lovely YA author Alexa Donne!

*The current round of submissions for AMM is open now through October 24th, so if you’ve been looking for a mentor, now is the perfect chance to apply!

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SP: Welcome, Alexa! We’re so excited to have you join us. Can you please tell us a little about who you are and what you write?

Hi! Thank you so much for having me! I am Alexa Donne, a YA science fiction & fantasy writer whose debut novel, BRIGHTLY BURNING, will be coming out from HMH Teen on May 1, 2018. It’s a retelling of Jane Eyre, set in space.  Continue reading →

Becoming a Better Writer: A Guest Post by Fiona Claire

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CloverWhen you’re surrounded by a lush, green landscape, crumbling medieval castles, and ancient stone circles, writer’s block isn’t a thing.

I live in Ireland. And I’m a writer. Those two things seem to go hand-in-hand. It’s no coincidence that some mighty scribes have lived here. William Butler Yeats, Anne Enright, Oscar Wilde, Roddy Doyle, C.S.Lewis and John Banville all called Ireland home at one time or another. I think that’s because the land on this island is fertile, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually too. It feels like stories come up out of the ground, grab me by the ankle, and demand, “Write me!” Continue reading →

Author Interview: Carrie Anne Noble

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Pen Friends ~ Today we have awesome YA Author, Carrie Anne Noble, to chat about the writing life and her newly-released novel, The Gold-Son!

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SP: Welcome Carrie Anne! Can you start out by telling us a bit of who you are and when you started writing?

C: Hi! I’m a stay-at-home mom/writer who lives in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania with my family and assorted pets (currently two cats, a dog, a lizard, a foster hedgehog, and some chickens). I’ve been making up stories for as long as I can remember, but I really got hooked on it when I was about eleven years old.

SP: Essential info next: Tea or Coffee? And one fact about yourself that we wouldn’t know by looking at you?  Continue reading →

Author Interview: Sarena and Sasha Nanua

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Pen Friends ~ We couldn’t be more excited to introduce to you two young twin authors, Sarena and Sasha Nanua, who have been wildly successful in their pursuit of writing, book blogging, publishing, and much more. (See below!)

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SP: Hi Sarena and Sasha! Thanks for being with us. Can you start out by telling us a bit of who you are and when you started writing?

Sure! First off—thanks for having us! We’re super excited to be here! To start, we’re Sarena and Sasha Nanua, twin authors, book bloggers, and, of course, voracious readers. We began writing when we were nine years old, when we were super bored on an airplane and thought, Hey, why don’t we write a book? We finished the first book the following year and began writing in lots of journals, but never really finished another book until we were fourteen. We decided to self-publish our book, The Gemstone, when we were fifteen, and the subsequent novels in the series came out when we were sixteen and seventeen. Since then, we’ve written and revised two novels and are very excited to see where they head in the future!  Continue reading →

Habits for the Wise Writer: Not a Master List

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Recent days of warm sunshine have inspired me to sit with all my writing notebooks and see what I’ve yet to type up. That’s always been the downside of being a pen and paper girl – the transition to an electronic format.

Bad Habit #1: Not consolidating your scribblings.

Whether you prefer to set up in a coffee shop, or write on the bus, or use a speech-to-text app on your phone, there are countless ways writers end up saving their work in several places. Make it a habit, either weekly or monthly, to check that you’ve moved your writing into your long-term storage spot.

Continue reading →

Between the Covers: A Look at Librarians, Part 1

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As writers, our thoughts are usually consumed with fantasy worlds, complex story lines and large casts of characters – and occasional daydreams about when we’ve made the New York Time’s Best-Seller List so we can quit our day jobs and write full time. Ahem. Back to reality.

But what happens when creation and editing and revising (and more revising) and publishing and printing are done? When THE BOOK is on shelves in bookstores across the world?

Obviously, you want to appeal to your readers so that they will A) buy your book, and B) want to read more! But what about those people who *gasp* help make your book accessible to an even wider crowd for free ? That’s right – we’re talking about LIBRARIANS!

Continue reading →