• PublishAmerica, Literary Agent: An Inside Look

    Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A little while back, I blogged about yet another of the ways in which PublishAmerica was attempting to extract cash from its authors: a fee-charging "literary agency." In the announcement that introduced...

  • Review of DEARLY, DEPARTED by Lia Habel

    Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel My rating: 4 of 5 stars Sexy teenage zombies? Yeah, I was skeptical too. But in Dearly, Departed Lia Habel just about made me believe it. This is a fun adventure/romance with an intriguingly unusual take on the zombie theme. Yes, there’s a zombie plague, with hordes of ravening flesh-eaters–but some zombies wake up with their minds intact and are able to refrain from gobbling flesh. Of course they require a lot of medical and mechanical intervention by sympathetic living people to keep them from, well, rotting away–Habel comes up with some ingenious steampunkish scenarios for zombie maintenance–but otherwise they can live pretty much like normal people. This YA debut novel is well-plotted and paced, with exciting action scenes and a host of appealing characters (and, of course, some pretty horrible bad guys). The romance between the living heroine and the zombie hero develops believably,…

  • To Our Readers: Thank You

    Sometime over last weekend, the Writer Beware blog passed the 20,000 subscriber mark! We'd like to offer a heartfelt thank you to all our readers and subscribers for their attention, support, and participation (we love comments! We love questions!) ...

  • Another Great Quote for PASSION BLUE

    Fellow YA author Lesley Livingston was kind enough to read Passion Blue and give it this wonderful blurb: Passion Blue is a lush, vibrant read that is utterly transporting. Full of heart and heady imagery, it is a luminous tale that swept me back to another time and place and into the life of a brave girl struggling to find her true destiny. Victoria Strauss paints beautiful pictures with her words. – Lesley Livingston, author of the Wondrous Strange series

  • When is a Dodgy Publisher Like a Stopped Clock?

    Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A stopped clock is right twice a day. A dodgy publisher is right...well, less often. But sometimes. I'm thinking of one publisher in particular--about which Writer Beware has gotten a LOT of complaints--...

  • Another Great Blurb for PASSION BLUE

    Amazing author Jane Yolen has been kind enough to blurb Passion Blue: I am a huge fancier of historical novels, so when I began Passion Blue, set in late fifteenth century Italy, I expected to like it. It promised landscapes, art, architecture, romance. But I didn’t just like the book, I LOVE it. Though much of it takes place within the walls of a nunnery it has adventure, arguments, soul-searching, several villains, romance, hair-breadth escapes, dastardly betrayals, and girl power. I simply galloped through it. – Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic, Briar Rose, and other novels set in historic periods – I’m still pinching myself!

  • In the Garden Again

    Today’s the first day of daylight savings time (yay!). It was also the first gardening day of the season for me. We had very little snow this winter, but a lot of windy weather, so there were many downed branches to pick up. I also cut down the ornamental grasses that I left standing over the winter for visual interest, and dealt with the damage that some tunneling creature created around my compost bin. I have a terrible feeling that whatever it was ate the lily bulbs I had in that area. We shall see. All my bulbs are poking their heads up, and my hellebores are showing their snouts. I’ve even got some crocuses ready to bloom in sheltered spots. I love this time of year; it’s so full of promise. I love the prospect of returning to the outdoors after a winter spent largely inside (a stress fracture…