Virtual Writers Inc.
» The Road to Publication
Published on Friday, March 26, 2010 by Michael Stevens
February 28, 2008
Date: 22 feb 08
From: bookgirl2@comcast.net
To: mike@strategicwriting.com
Dear Kimberley (and Elizabeth!),
Many thanks for sending Mike Stevens's ms. Original, indeed! But I have to be honest: the story just wasn't for me in the end.
But we will keep trying, of course!
Best,
Sally
Sally Kim
Harper Collins
* * *
Date: 27 feb 08
...
Published on Wednesday, March 24, 2010 by Michael Stevens
February 20, 2008
Thanks to the San Francisco Writers’ Conference, I am gradually getting a sense of what it takes to sell a book, and I am astonished at how much depends on the random impulses of a very small group: two or three dozen women who want to fall in love.
This is the terminology several of the acquisition editors attending the SFWC actually use on ...
Published on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 by Michael Stevens
February 16, 2008
Jennifer Enderlin of St. Martin’s Press is addressing the conference, and for me, it’s like that Russian video game where differently-shaped geometrical shapes fall out of the sky and you have to maneuver the shapes that have already hit the ground so that the new ones fall neatly into place. Suddenly, it all fits together. She is primarily ta...
Published on Saturday, March 20, 2010 by Michael Stevens
November 9, 2007
A brief digression. When you make your living as a creative director, you get used to clients wrecking your work. The depth of their misguidedness has never failed to astonish me. Again and again, I’ve seen companies act against their own best interest, insisting on headlines, graphics and strategies that could never work, and in the process, rej...
Published on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 by Michael Stevens
October 25, 2007
I’m just about through dealing with the edits Kimberley has suggested. Most of them are easy to handle. It is tedious plowing through the manuscript page by page to change a “he” to a “the” or “peace” to “piece” – I am amazed at how many of these changes there are – but they’re not challenging. I use a blue highlighter to ...
Published on Friday, March 12, 2010 by Michael Stevens
September 24, 2007
The Buckeye Roadhouse is located just north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It has been around a long time – who would name a restaurant “The Buckeye” today? - but the menu has evolved under the influence of its sophisticated Marin County customers, the ex-hippies who grew up to become therapists and contractors. We are shown to a table upstairs...
Published on Thursday, March 11, 2010 by Michael Stevens
September 24, 2007
Fog blows across the winding road as I climb the hill to Kimberley’s house, which is located in a town called Tiburon, once a sort of hippie enclave and now a bedroom community for wealthy individuals. I park at the top of the hill, then navigate the steps on the side of her home down to the separate structure that is the office of Reece-Halsey...
Published on Friday, March 5, 2010 by Michael Stevens
Sep 6, 2007
Dear Kimberley,
Fortuna is ready for you. (Can't believe it's been six months since we met at SFWC!)
Exactly what would you like to see -- first 50 pages plus synopsis?
Regards,
Mike
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dear Mike,
Yes, that sounds like a good start.
Please email it to me...
Thanks,
Kimberley
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Published on Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Michael Stevens
I have had a fling with Another Agent. This is how it happened. At the San Francisco Writers’ Conference there’s something called “speed dating.” For an additional fifty dollars, you get to have a series of 3-minute meetings with as many agents as you can do in an hour. The agents are located behind tables positioned against the walls of a relatively large bal...
Published on Friday, February 26, 2010 by Michael Stevens
February 16, 2007, The San Francisco Writers’ Conference
There will be two opportunities to meet agents face to face at the conference, the Friday night cocktail party and the “speed dating” sessions on Sunday, where you get three minutes in front of an agent under less-than-ideal conditions. So here I am, at the cocktail party, Chardonnay in hand (a Marketin...
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