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PASSION BLUE Cover Reveal (Plus a Giveaway)
******************************************** The giveaway is closed. Congratulations to the winners: Catherine Stine of New York City, and Brian Bedard of Brockford, MA. ********************************************* I’m proud and thrilled to reveal the gorgeous final cover for Passion Blue! (Click on the image for a larger view. For info about the book, plus reviews and excerpts, click here.) I’m incredibly pleased with the way it came out. Historical novels for teens often have bland, predicable covers that announce “I’m a historical novel and I’m going to teach you something,” and I hate those interchangeable big-dress covers you see so often in adult historical fiction, where the models have their backs turned or half their faces missing. But I think the designer, Sonia Chaghatzbanian, did a fabulous job of suggesting the period without pigeonholing the genre. The photo model has a perfect face for Giulia, my heroine–not exactly pretty, but strong, striking, and determined. I love…
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Publishers Weekly Moves Into Self-Publishing
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware A couple of years ago, I blogged about the launch of PW Select, an online supplement to the regular PW magazine. PW Select, which is published quarterly, allows self-published writers to buy brief listing...
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Two Surveys
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Two fascinating surveys appeared this week. They look at opposite ends of the writing business, but dovetail in interesting ways. (This is going to be a long post, so please bear with me.) The Writers' Wo...
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Another Honor for Writer Beware
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Once again, the Writer Beware blog has been chosen as one of Writer's Digest's 101 Best Websites for Writers (the list appears in the June 2012 issue of the magazine, and can be downloaded here if you're...
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Victoria Strauss Wins for Writer Beware in First Annual Independent Book Blogger Award
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I'm thrilled and honored to announce that Goodreads and the Association of American Publishers have chosen me as the winner of the Publishing News category of the first annual Independent Book Blogger Awa...
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Editing Clauses in Publishing Contracts: How to Protect Yourself
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Over the past couple of days I've gotten several emails and Facebook posts alerting me to a blog post by writer Mandy DeGeit about her bad experience with a small publisher called Undead Press. When she r...
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e-Publishing Revo: It’s a New Electronic Self-Publishing Service, But There’s a Catch
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware Zooming into my inbox last week: a press release for a brand-new ebook self-publishing service called e-Publishing Revo. Per the website: What makes e-Publishing Revo different from the rest? 1. Perman...
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Vetting an Independent Editor
Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware I often receive questions from writers who are looking to hire an independent editor to polish their manuscripts, either for self-publication or for submission to agents and publishers, and want to know w...
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Review of SHIP BREAKER by Paolo Bacigalupi
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi My rating: 4 of 5 stars A coming-of-age novel that’s a bit slow to start, but ultimately engrossing. What stands out for me aren’t so much the characters–protagonists Nailer and Nita are complex and believable, but many of the supporting characters are sketchily drawn–or the plot, which has a familiar shape–shipwrecked rich girl rescued by gutter rat, flight from bad people wanting to use rich girl as pawn, a big fight, a hairsbreadth rescue–but the meticulously detailed, multi-layered post-climate change world in which the action takes place. Bacigalupi presents a scenario in which our own “Accelerated Age” and the damage it wrought is just a memory, and a new society has grown up in and around its relics and submerged former metropolitan areas. From the hardscrabble coastal region where Nailer and his crew dismantle the rusted hulks of supertankers for salvage, to the drowned city…