Novel Writing on Edge - Development Notes From Algonkian Writer Conferences

The following is an interview between Charlene Castor of WE and an SFF author from Del Sol  Press , Warwick Gleeson, discussing the debut novel in his upcoming series: Piper Robbin and the American Oz Maker. DSP requested this interview, and we couldn't be happier about it after reading the actual novel. May the best evil win.   Beta readers were floored by this unique, face-slapping, mind fuck of a novel. As a writer of fantasy, or science-fantasy, you've birthed from the void, or so it seems. What is the origin of Warwick Gleeson? I've been writing screenplays, short and long fiction, and poetry for many years. I've used various pseudos, lived in LA, NYC, worried about being homeless, the usual. Much of my work has been published, most was never published. I love SFF in all its forms, especially work that pushes us out of the solar system for a few thousand light years. I was the major writer, creator, and senior story editor for another project published by DS...

The Golden Years of The Literar y Review In the mid nineties, The Literary Review , edited by Walter Cummins and published online  by Michael Neff of Del Sol Press , held the distinction of being the second traditional literary journal to ever be published on the Internet--the first being  Mississippi Review edited by Frederick Bartheleme. Like Barthelme, TLR editor Cummins was a visionary, and unlike most of his contemporaries at the time, quickly saw the value in making the superb and varied international literature of TLR available to the world via the Internet. As you will see below, we are linking here to as many of these  TLR golden age issues as we can discover, now all web-archived (thank God!). And why the web archive, you ask? Well, the originals, over a dozen issues, suddenly vanished overnight from the mainstream web once Walter Cummins retired from TLR. It was as if they never existed. The former editor, contributors, and w...

Lee Ann Ward , is an award winning author in the romance genre and now hopes to be a rising star on the women's suspense and thriller novel scene. She is also a former editor for Champagne Books . Log line for Devil's Bay : Known in years past as a courageous whistleblower who exposed billions in corporate corruption during the Iraq War, a high school teacher living a new life in small town USA finds her reputation smeared and her loved ones threatened after the corporate CEO she sent to prison begins to enact her merciless revenge. WE: So what made you decide to take a break from romance and move into thriller fiction with Devil's Bay ? LAW:  I was looking to write something different for a change, plus I'd heard the genre was a hot one for writers, but most importantly, the concept of a female version of Cape Fear was too good to pass up. The idea actually came up in a conversation at hotel bar in Seattle during the PNWA Conference... Matter of fact, the idea...

ALL THE DARK WE WILL NOT SEE , published by the distinguished Serving House Books, first appeared as "Year of The Rhinoceros," published by a popular and respected literary press in LA known as Red Hen Press. The initial birth of this story, fallen to earth as a big cracked egg, never possessed the proper edits or even a suitable cover. Not only that, but the lamination peeled easily, type was smudged in quarter-sized spots throughout the book, and the presence of it was generally rendered odd by "burn victim" artwork I was forced to swallow in order to prevent an even worse cover from potentially manifesting itself. But my intention here isn't to bitch about the staff of chickens at Red Hen, it's to make sense out of the emergence of a new edition of the novel now entitled ALL THE DARK WE WILL NOT SEE . As time passed, I became more and more determined to get my rights back and land a new publisher, and I was eventually successful. The new edition now ...

  Jenny Milchman I wish I’d known just how polished and perfected a work has to be to get published traditionally. I was lucky enough to get kernels from industry pros that allowed me to go back and hone my craft... How long did it take you to get published?   Here are my stats: 11 years, 8 novels, 3 agents, 15 almost-offers from editors . An almost-offer happens when an editor wishes to acquire a book, but gets turned down by her editorial board, or by people in the marketing or publicity departments, or even (as happened to me with my seventh novel) the publisher herself. My first published novel was the eighth one I wrote. And of course, there’s “long” in the non-numeric sense, too. It took an age, an epoch, forever. I thought I would never break through.  Why did you hang in so long versus, for instance, self-publishing? When I started out, self-publishing as we now know it wasn’t an option. There was so-called vanity publishing, and it cost a chunk of ch...

DISCLAIMER: the aim of this article is not to defame, it is to challenge the Iowa notion that an imaginary genetic pre-disposition is necessary before a writer can ever be defined as a really good writer, and secondly, to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that a writer does not have to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop in order to learn to write really well. "I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit."                                                                                           -  John Steinbeck "I feel that if I just br...