Cynthia's Blog
Submission Seduction
Submission Seduction For about five years my goal as a rookie writer was to build a short story collection, one hundred fifty pages long, to submit to The Loft’s Mentor competition. A copy of my first submission is stored in the back of a drawer of short stories, all unread by anybody outside early writing [...]
Women Without Makeup
At a certain age many women won’t leave their home without a partial social mask called makeup. Maybe tinted moisturizer and lip shimmer. Maybe the whole deal with shadow and mascara and real lipstick. Even in the grocery store or out walking the dog, that minor skim of cover marks a woman as someone who [...]
A Writer’s Worth
How much is a creative writer worth? The facts are harsh. Writers are like job seekers paying a potential employer to review a job application. We’re a class of professionals who will work eighty hours in a month merely for recognition. Writers produce the content that drives a market dominated by a handful of large [...]
Revision Time
Harvesting Ashwood: Minnesota 2037 will be delivered in one month. Before sitting back to admire the cover and enjoy the glow, my attention has shifted to revising the final book of the Ashwood trilogy. With a new website launching soon, promotion activities for June through August still in development and a calendar of short story [...]
Traveling Book Club
Every writer must be a reader. I won’t back down from that statement. A writer who does not read is like a person applying for a driving license who has never sat behind the steering wheel. I have my book club to thank for exposing me to literature that would not have crossed my radar [...]
To Blog, Or Not
Blogs are kind of like the New York Times of miscellaneous information when news crawls across the bottom of a screen fulfill some readers’ need for all the facts.
Book Trailers
Think about building a trailer for your next creative project. It’s a good way to think out of the box about your own work
Blog Book Reviews
Finding the best blogs to follow or query for a review is a bit like searching for a dozen blue gumballs in a bin filled with thousands of small, round candies.
Hunger Games Lessons
Hunger Games trilogy may bring young adult readers and their parents together for a summer of interesting discussions
Bookstore Appearances 2012
Publishers like writers to do the traditional bookstore tour. Friends have traveled as far as the Virgin Islands to do readings. With the right combination of store personnel and audience, a bookstore reading is a wonderful experience. In 2009, as a debut writer, I wandered around our metropolitan area visiting independent bookstores as well as [...]