Much like my Friday Morning FYIs, I’ve slacked as far as writing this post, but this one is for good reason. Since signing with the amazing Kaitlyn Johnson, I’ve been writing the second book in my MG ghost series and working with Kaitlyn on revisions for book 1. To say these are exciting times is an understatement 🙂
BUT I always love reading these kinds of posts, so wanted to do one, too. I hope it inspires some of you struggling in the slushpiles like I did for so long.
Okay, enough preamble.
Everyone! Come here! Listen!
If you follow me on the Twitter you already know THIS, but if not, it’s my outstanding pleasure to announce I’ve joined the Corvisiero Literary Agency family, represented by awesome agent Kaitlyn Johnson. I’m thrilled to work with Kaitlyn on my middle grade ghost hunter novel.
NO! Not that kind of ghost story. I said Middle Grade. What’s wrong with you?
Dude, too soon.
Hmm. That’s not too far off. I’ll take it.
😉
I’ll write a longer post on how Kaitlyn and I came to join forces some time over the next week-ish.
GAH! SO excited!
Thanks for reading,
{RDj}
For whatever reason, I’ve always done my writing updates over on a dedicated page. Now that that page has gotten kinda long, it’s acting a little wiggy (and by wiggy I mean LOVES to crash while I’m editing it), so I’m going to do what I probably should have done from the jump and post updates as, you know, posts. Here we go!
WIP
I’m pleased as punch that my latest book, SILVER, is out to critique partners. It’s funny, quirky, a little sad in spots, a little angry in other spots, and hella different from what I’ve written before. I love it and can’t wait to hear what my readers think about it. I’d file it as literary Sci-Fi, if you’re curious.
WDC 2019
I’ve booked my trip to NYC (I live in Jersey so I’m using ‘booked’ loosely here) for Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in August. Looking forward to getting my learning on, catching up with friends from around the world, and seeing NK Jemisin give the opening keynote. I might even dip my toes back into the pitch slam this year. MIGHT.
Writer Friends Doing Writer Things
Lastly, some wonderful writers I know have recently put out books you should check out:
Equinox – Tabitha Lord
Renegade – Natasha Raulerson
That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll have more to post soon 😀
Thanks for reading,
{RDj}
Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI (something-like-a-year-since-the-last-one-of-these edition) – my chance to share observations/rants in short, easy-to-consume form.
I recently had a short story published (*shameless self back pat* – won 1st place) in a new annual anthology competition called The Bould Awards. It’s a small thing in the grand scheme and came after years of submissions, but it let me create an Amazon author page, which is kind of cool.
That got me thinking about all the paths to publishing available to writers today. It used to be that you’d type out your work (good god, how did people write anything without BACKSPACE, Cut > Paste, etc.?), somehow get the name of a publishing agent, stick your work in a yellow envelope, hand it to a smiling neighborhood postman, and pray. Now we’ve got blogs and online profiles, email, content-formatting submission forms, Twitter contests, live-pitching at conferences, small press open calls, Wattpad, hybrid publishing, a hundred forms of self-publishing, etc. This is good and bad, of course. With availability comes opportunity, but also mountains of content for decision makers to weed through and for your work to be compared against. Still, what a world!
That brings us to this week’s FYI:
The only thing worse for your art than comparing your work/struggles/achievements to someone else’s is assuming there’s only one path to whatever you define as success. Everyone’s golden ring is different. If you have one book in you, there’s options. If you have ten books in you or a bunch of short stories or fifty pieces of flash fiction or a poetry collection, same answer. Don’t get hung up on someone else getting picked over you for a contest, writer friends around you landing agents or selling short stories, or whatever. Focus on you and your art, craft it as best you can, and learn from every new sentence/paragraph/page/chapter/story. In the end the most important thing is to persist along your path, not trace anyone else’s.
Thanks for reading,
{RDj}
Here we are again, ya’ll, deep in the post con funk that is the week after the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in the greatest city in the world (don’t @ me, people from everywhere else, I didn’t come up with the nickname). This was lucky number five for me and, as always, it was a trip. New tips found, new writing depths explored, and new doubts over which to panic (I kid. *weeps*). Old friends and a metric ton of new ones, all there to get better at this insane make write words thing we does.
Maybe I should keep practicing.
Anyway, that brings us to my follow up post where I wax poetic about all the sessions I adored (like I did for past WDC cons here, here, here, aaaaaaaaand here). Let’s keep it tight this year, I think, yes? Simple day by day format, maybe? Okay, you convinced me.
Ron Writes Stuff 