6 Easy Ways to Publish a Novel in 20 Years!

Recently, a thread in an online writer’s community popped up, beginning with someone (who hadn’t begun querying) asking why folks sent query letters to so many agents. Did they have that many “dream agents? Why not send to just one or two top choices? And, really, how long does it take? Answers flew in—achingly honest … Read more

Ferocious Love When We Need It

I started Jesse, A Mother’s Story twice. The stark beauty of this memoir hit me the moment I began. Marianne Leone’s narrative, written with an unrelenting immediacy, yanked me into her world. Leone’s son Jesse owned me from his first moment on the page. By the end of the prologue, Leone had so engaged me that … Read more

Are You Jammed Into a Literary Chokehold?

I love books; I love them more than bagels, jewelry, or cashmere sweaters, and that’s a lot. Reading kept me from teen pregnancy, heroin, and robbing convenience stores with a badass boyfriend. I’ve read great books, good books, mediocre books, and books so awful they damaged my eyes, and it was never the genre that … Read more

How to Fail at a Cookie Party

When I was newly married (19!), my then-husband and I moved to a farm between Binghamton and Ithaca, New York. His job was being a farmhand. Mine was reading, watching the only television station available (whatever was playing—whether competitive bowling or I Love Lucy re-runs), and gaining weight. The cookies below helped enormously in that last endeavor. We … Read more