Authors’ Thoughts
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Sometimes I get asked by my partner how I get the idea for a fiction novel. Does it just pop into my head when I wake up? Do I steal the idea from something I’ve watched? Do I just write down my dreams? Do I write what I’ve experienced? The answer really falls in the…
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I was watching The Sopranos the other day (S5 Ep10) and Tony was losing his mind over a news channel coverage of Islamic terrorists trying to potentially sneak nuclear weaponry on unchecked cargo. This news unsettles Tony, and he tells his wiseguys at the strip club about the severe gravity of the matter, for which…
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A lot of fiction story protagonists are legitimately terrible people. For every ‘hero’ we see in a good story, there’s a Tony Soprano, Alex DeLarge, Joe Goldberg, Marla Grayson, and Dexter Morgan to boot with it. I’d even guess most of the stories that feature a legitimate “according-to-Hoyle” hero protag are almost always nonfiction in…
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If you’re looking to publish a book of any genre or style, especially a debut novel as an unknown author, you likely already know the competition that is already out there so you will need every possible edge you can get. Beautiful cover art is one such edge that has a major success rate for…
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Whether you fancy yourself the second coming of William Wordsworth or share the impossibly imaginative mind of Walter Mitty, you’ve probably hit an absolute wall at some point trying to write. During these troubling times, we’ve likely chewed pencils, scrunched papers, strangled computer monitors, jammed our keyboards, punched pillows, or taken long, tireless walks by…
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We’ve all been there. Sitting at our desks staring at our Word documents, our InDesign templates, our Penzu blurbs, or just a pen and paper waiting for us to write a story only for us to hit a wall and wonder “Will anyone even care?” While I am a believer of the saying “You shouldn’t…
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It’s no secret that even the greatest inspirations of our career such as Poe or Hemingway or Twain did not have wealthy, successful livelihoods. The J.K. Rowlings, James Pattersons, or Dan Browns of the world are more exceptions to the rule than the rule itself. The rule being: writing is not a lucrative business. While…
Donovan Levine | Agent, Writer, Copyeditor 