How to Find the Perfect Agent

Today we continue our Publishing 101 series with a look at finding the perfect agent. “Finding the perfect literary agent” starts – like everything else in publishing – with understanding the author-agent relationship. The author-agent relationship includes much more than merely selling books and negotiating contracts. In fact, a functional author-agent pair looks a lot like a business partnership, with each person fulfilling important related tasks. In addition to identifying the proper publishers (and editors within the house) and making the publishing deal, the agent often functions as the author’s sounding board and advisor. Agents provide their author clients with

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Reef Retrospective, September 2013

I know it’s technically the second Tuesday in October (no clue how time flies like that) but here are a few of September’s best images from the reef: Emperor Maximus Angryfish let Emo know that some territorial boundaries can’t be crossed without consequences: Banzai the Halloween Hermit discovered the seahorses’ feeding dish (and now shows up there precisely at feeding time every night): As always, the sight of seahorses eating dinner makes me smile: Ceti still doesn’t know quite what to make of Tesla, the flame scallop:  And, last but definitely not least, Red the cleaner shrimp gives Flappy a

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Era and Setting: Bringing Historical Forensics Alive

This post continues the Historical Forensics series I started last Monday.. Three cardinal facets of historical mystery are the era, a setting, and the detective, all of which have critical impact on the forensic information the author can utilize. Fortunately, story parameters generally require making these selections first. Let’s take a closer look at the way the author’s choice of an era and setting impact the story’s forensics: 1. Era: the time in which the story happens. The choice of historical era impacts every part of an author’s story, including forensics. Technology, a society’s reaction to murders, the murder methods

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Shinobi News (October 5, 2013) – CLAWS on the Denver Post Bestseller List!

This week in Shinobi News: I was delighted to learn that CLAWS OF THE CAT was #8 on the Denver Post’s Denver Bestseller List for the week of 9/29/2013! In new Shinobi series news, the second Shinobi Mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI, now has a release date: July 15, 2014. We hope to have cover art soon, and I’ve got some special plans for the reveal! Thanks to Kristen Lamb and WANA International for inviting me to speak at this weekend’s WANACon. My talk on 10 Publishing Contract Pitfalls was great fun. I had a wonderful time – and the

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Own Your Business As You Own Your Book

When my son was in the third grade, his teacher asked him to write an essay (ok, a paragraph) about the person he most admired and why. At the end of the year, the teacher sent home a folder with each student’s best work – work she held back for that purpose, which we as parents hadn’t seen before. Front and center in my son’s folder was a paragraph titled “Owning it,” in which my son explained that he admired his mother because she taught him to “own it” – both the good and the bad, his mistakes and also

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Welcome to Publishing 101

Two weekends ago, at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers 2013 Colorado Gold conference, I delivered a two-hour workshop titled “Publishing 101.” After the workshop, several people requested that I carry the content over onto the blog, to create a more permanent resource for writers just starting into traditional publishing. This is the start of that series. For the next few weeks, I’ll take you on a tour of  the traditional publishing process, as seen through the eyes of a publishing attorney and debut author. We’re not ignoring alternative paths, or trying to say that one is better or worse than any

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Cooperation on the Reef

Last night, while working on the third Shinobi Mystery, I glanced at the tank and noticed something I rarely seem to see with a camera handy: Red the fire shrimp cleaning Flappy the mandarin dragonet. A couple of days ago, I snagged this photo of the process just before the aquarium lights came on: It’s rare to see a cleaning when I can film a video, because Red (like most fire shrimp) prefers to stick to the safety of his cave during “daylight hours” on the reef. Last night, however, everything aligned, so here’s your Tuesday aquatic treat – bath

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