Q : Why is the first line so important?
A : Agents and acquiring editors will quit reading if your opening sentence doesn’t zing. Any writer seeking publication or the devoted attention of a reader browsing in a bookstore needs to craft that first sentence, revising, revising, revising, until it […]

“I’m eager to discover writers who aren’t famous yet but will be,” says San Francisco-based literary agent Elise Proulx.
“My mission is to promote literature and make some money for deserving authors,” said Proulx, whose five tips for unpublished writers appear below. “My specialty is both high quality fiction and what I call “pragmatic nonfiction”, meaning […]

By Contributor Lisa Haneberg ~ I wobbled into the Kennewick, Washington, Barnes & Noble after a 300 mile motorcycle ride from Boise, Idaho. This was to be my 30th and last signing on a 9,400 mile solo motorcycle cross-country publicity tour for my book Two Weeks to a Breakthrough, and most of the earlier […]