Author Heather McCorkle

Start stretching, it was a good week on Twitter! This first one is from agent Vickie Motter about query letters:  @Vickie_Motter #queries If you are going to personalize your query, add details. We both love the same books (such as?) You love my blog (fav post?) Writer Lisa Green brings us this great tweet about writer Angela Ackerman's post on blog tips:   @lisagailgreen AWESOME blogging tips! via @angelaackerman The Bookshelf Muse: Blogging Tip: 3 Fast Fixes   thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/ 2011/08/bloggi …   If you write YA and are looking for a good competition check this tweet from writer Julie Musil out:   @juliemusil Writer's Digest YA competition  bit.ly/qUQqdJ   #amwriting  #YA    Writer Monica B.W. brings us a tweet about an agent judged contest:  @Monica_BW Looky here, Pitch Contest with agent Mandy Hubbard!  we-do-write.blogspot.com/2011/ 08/pitch- … on @DorothyDreyer 's blog!   Editor Martha Miha...

Last week my antagonist went through a massive character arc where he turned out a completely different person in the end. Those have got to be the most interesting arcs to write. I loved his journey as much as the destination, more probably. Of course my protagonist was right in the middle of it all, growing and changing but last week it was the antagonist's arc that commanded by time and attention. And when I picture the guy like this can you blame me for having so much fun writing him? ;) I finished reading Across The Universe  on the airplane back from San Francisco. It was a great story and I would recommend it for teens and adults. There appeared to be one gaping hole in the plot but I'm confident that it wasn't a hole at all. I have faith it is a plot twist that will rear its head in a second book. If you like sci-fi or just a great story buy it, read it, you will enjoy it! Now I'm reading The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney and I'm really enjoying it. I love ...

The publishing world can appear gigantic but don't make the mistake of assuming it is so big that the things you do or say will not be noticed. This goes for good and bad things. The path to publication is a long one and it is paved with frustration and heartache. With footing like that it is easy to become disheartened and say or do things you might regret later. When this happens always think before you speak and think twice~or more~before you tweet, blog, or write on one of your network pages. Trust me, do it, you'll thank me for it later. People in the publishing world all know each other, and even if they don't it's safer to assume they do. Agent and editors go to a lot of the same conferences, workshops, and book fairs. Just like writers, they hang out with their own kind, and they talk. If you send an agent a rude, abrupt or threatening email after a rough rejection you can bet he/she will talk to their colleagues about it. They're not evil, they're jus...

The turmoil in the publishing industry has many authors and aspiring writers in a panic. There is talk that the industry is going down, that the novel is an endangered species. Don't put down your pencil or close your laptop just yet folks. Now is not the time to give up on your dreams of being published or publishing more books. The publishing industry is not like the dinosaur, it is more like the alligators. No matter what history has thrown at it, forbidding the written language, book burning, or book banning, it has survived. With each new major form of entertainment that has emerged, radio, motion pictures, and even television, it has survived. The Internet won't be any different. It won't wipe out the written word, it embraces it and nurtures it. Will it change the way we do things, the way we read things? Yes of course. It already has. But it won't stop people from reading, in fact it's doing the opposite. Nothing history has thrown at the publishing industry...