Pitch Wars is gone. Here’s what I know: when something that big disappears, it leaves a vacuum, and the only thing I remember from science class is that nature abhors a vacuum. So something (or more likely, somethings) are going to show up in the space. So, here’s some advice from someone who has seen...

One of the most ubiquitous pieces of advice in the publishing world is to not give up. It’s everywhere. There are a few versions of it. There’s the ‘I got rejected 3073 times, but the 3074th is the one that got me there! Don’t give up.’ There’s the more generic ‘There is no finish line....

I have a lot of friends who are debut authors, and listening to them panic about the things that debut authors panic about makes me nostalgic. You see, with my fourth book coming out, I panic about completely different things. I thought it might be fun to look at the differences between what I panicked...

Have you ever seen actors promoting a movie and it’s clear that they’re just over it? I’m not talking about big spots, like when they’re on with Kimmel or Fallon. I mean when they’ve obviously had a long day talking to random reporters for magazines you haven’t heard of and everybody is asking them the...

I’ve had a lot of people ask how they can best support me as an author, or support authors whose work they like in general. And while I can’t speak for all authors–for example, I have no idea how you support a NYT bestseller, because I’m not one–I have one key thing you can do...

As a veteran who writes about soldiers, I inevitably get questions about whether any of my stories are true. People find different ways to ask: Are your characters based on real people? Did this event really happen? And, my least favorite, are you really Colonel Butler? Sometimes, if I’m being a bit of a dick,...

You see the term ‘Mid-List’ author thrown around a lot, but we don’t ever really talk about what it means, so I thought I’d share my thoughts about it from my perspective. After all, I am a midlist author, so I probably have some insight. As with everything publishing, this is just an opinion. Midlist...

I wrote a twitter joke about needing people to read my book so they could tell me if it’s good or not. I mean…I was kind of joking. You know the type of thing where you throw it out there and sort of mean it but ha ha, yeah, I’m joking. Mostly. I’ve got a...

So I made a poll on twitter and asked people to choose my next blog post. I gave them three choices. A post about science fiction books, a topic on which I am well-versed and somewhat of a minor expert. A post on writing craft, on which…well, I’m pretty good, if I do say so...

You might have seen the phrase vet agents (and/or editors) before submitting materials. It gets thrown around a lot in the writing world, especially around pitch contests and such. The premise behind it being that anybody can call themselves an agent (or an editor.) So what do we mean when we say that? What is...