Meet Amara Hoshijo

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Literary Agent, Soho Press, Writing Conferences, Young Adult

Amara Hoshijo of Soho Press, an independent book publisher based in Manhattan’s Union Square, will make a return visit to the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ on March 24, 2018, where she will be taking pitches (advanced registration is required).

Founded in 1986, Soho publishes 90 books a year across its Soho Press, Soho Crime and Soho Teen lists, and is known for introducing bold new literary voices, award-winning international crime fiction, and compelling young adult mystery and thrillers.

Amara took the time to tell us about herself.

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I was first drawn to New York at the age of five, based on little more than that it was the biggest city I knew. (I’ve always preferred big cities—more specifically regarding the above, I’ve lived in Honolulu, Paris, and LA.) Hawaii remains a special place for me, but growing up, I didn’t see any industries there that I wanted to be a part of. I came to New York the summer after college with no prospects and the sole objective of breaking into publishing. It is certainly a literary epicenter, which was the deciding factor in my cross-country move, but I was lucky in that my personality meshed well with the city itself. New York has the diversity and integration I’ve craved my entire life; I’d say the people there have been brought together by a similar drive.

As an editor at a traditional publisher, I do believe that authors benefit greatly from having an editor and publicist, but I do not consider the self-publishing movement counter to what I do; rather, I feel it’s complementary to it, and has a rightful place in the industry. (The closest comparison I can think of is crowdfunding’s role in general commerce.)

What we read shapes our perspective. This means that agents and editors act not only as “gatekeepers” of their own industry, but of a piece of broader culture. While I initially became an editor simply because I loved to help others express their ideas in a clear, engaging way, I’ve discovered that I also have a penchant for diverse literature. I would love to bring more work by writers of color, women writers, and writers in translation out into the world.

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Amara is a graduate of University of Southern California and has been with Soho Press since August of 2012, first as an intern, then as an editorial assistant, and since May of 2015 as assistant editor.

You can find Amara at Soho Press, contact her at ahoshijo@sohopress.com, and follow her on Twitter.

Meet Sheree Bykofsky

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Literary Agent, Sheree Bykofsky Associates, Writing, Writing Conferences

Sheree Bykofsky founded and is president of Sheree Bykofsky Associates, Inc. A long-standing member of the AAR and the first agent to have a web page, Sheree has represented over a thousand authors in all areas of adult non-fiction as well as literary and commercial fiction. Her non-fiction specialties include popular reference, business, health, psychology, poker, spirituality, self-help, humor, cookbooks, pop culture, biography, women’s issues, decorating; crafts, music, and much more.

From her “LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT.” – “I am a generalist and have eclectic and sometimes eccentric tastes. I represent all areas of non-fiction and commercial and literary fiction. I don’t limit myself to particular genres because I’m always surprised by what appeals to me. If I love it, then I’ll take it on. The only way to know is to try me. If it needs work and I want to represent it, I’ll tell you. If I choose not to agent you, you should know that I’m not judging you or your writing, or even your idea. I am saying that it’s just not right for me. Please also keep in mind that it is my strict policy not to give feedback when I pass on a book. What isn’t right for me may be perfect for another agent.

There are a few areas I particularly like in non-fiction: popular reference, business, self-help/psychology, humor, biography and current affairs, women’s interest, cookbooks, spiritual, multicultural, parenting, anything to do with games, movies, chronologies. In the past year I’ve sold over 15 poker books and authored three, the first of which, Secrets the Pros Won’t Tell You About Winning Hold’Em Poker, was published by Kensington in March 2006.  In fiction, I particularly like mysteries.  I’m always looking for a bestseller in any category.

Some of the genres I generally will not represent include poetry, thrillers, westerns, romances, occult, science fiction, fantasy, children’s and young adult.”

Sheree is the author, co-author, and editor of more than thirty books, including the best-selling The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published (Pearson), now in its fifth edition. She has written articles for a variety of magazines and newspapers, including The Writer, which featured Sheree’s cover story “The Six Secrets of Getting Published.”

Some of the genres I generally will not represent include poetry, thrillers, westerns, romances, occult, science fiction, fantasy, children’s and young adult. Series of Poker Ladies’ Circuit Event at the Showboat in Atlantic City in December 2005. Sheree won a seat in the famous World Series of Poker two times.

Sheree will be taking pitches at the 2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™, Saturday March 24 (advance registration required).

To read more on Sheree, click on the following links:

• Home:  http://shereebee.com
• Agency Website:  http://users.rcn.com/sheree.interport/

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     Article submitted by Dawn Sooy

A native of Eastern Pennsylvania, Dawn has plenty of experience with the best and worst four seasons have to offer. Armed with a Computer Science degree, she worked in the tech industry until 2012. She’s married to a great guy and between them, have four children, two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. As an animal lover, she volunteers at the local animal shelter, sneaking in treats for the four-legged residents.

Too full of energy to even consider a rocking chair, with an insatiable itch to write, Dawn published six short stories, the most recent, “Love Knows No Boundaries,” featured in the GLVWG anthology, Write Here – Write Now. She is currently working on a full-length novel titled, “From The Darkness,” scheduled for publication in early 2018, with plans to publish a horror anthology later in the year.

Dawn is a multitasker with the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, fulfilling the duties of Secretary when needed and Conference Chair for the 2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™.

You can find Dawn on:

• Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DawnMSooyAuthor/?pnref=lhc
• Website: http://dwstrange.com/dawns%20world/

An Interview with Claire McKinney

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PR for Authors, Public Relations, Self-Publishing, Writing, Writing Conferences

Claire McKinney has been working in public relations for 20 years. She has appeared on the Today show, and CSPAN as an expert on publishing and she regularly travels to speak to authors and audiences about PR and social media marketing.  Authors she has worked with include Della Reese, Toni Morrison, Madeleine Albright, Walter Mosley, Robert Dallek, Rick Moody, George Pelecanos, Plum Sykes, Noam Chomski, Richard North Patterson, and Kristin Gore.

GLVWG’s Emily Thompson spoke with Claire about public relations and what her company can do to help authors.

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Emily:  What type of services does your public relations firm offer for writers?

Claire:     We offer all aspects of public relations including publicity, content marketing, social media, image consulting, messaging, media training and design.

Emily:  Does your firm help create an authors platform? How can these help an author reach his/her goals?

Claire:     We do help a lot of authors who are being published for the first time and who don’t have name recognition in the consumer world.  Creating a social media platform using the right outlets for the author and subject, pitching the author for events, building a blog following for the author through reviews and posts are all ways to help the writer get established.  Different people have different goals.  Some are looking to generate business for themselves; others are hoping to educate and provide their ideas to the greater conversation regarding an issue; and then there are those people looking to share their imagination and creativity with readers through fiction.  In general, all authors would like to sell their books and a thoughtful pr strategy using media relations and the online tools that are available will provide the greatest opportunity for their books to reach a buying audience.

2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ Highlighted by Writer’s Digest

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Conference Scene, Don Vaughn, Writer's Conference, Writer's Digest, Writing

Michael Hauge – 2017 Write Stuff Conference™

Don Vaughan, author of the Conference Scene Column for Writer’s Digest, highlighted the 2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ in the February issue of WD magazine.

In the article, Don asked Conference Director, Dawn Sooy, what makes the conference unique.

“It’s an intimate atmosphere makes it easy for attendees and faculty to meet and mingle. Our conference is designed to be inclusive by encouraging participants to share ideas, pose questions and make connections with others who share the passion [for] writing.”  Dawn Sooy added, “The included lunches enhance the ready exchange of ideas and thoughts between attendees, presenters and agents, and the Friday reception is a great place to relax and network.”

Don summarized highlights of the conference with: Seminars address a variety of relevant topics and include: Mastering Suspense, Structure and Plot; Using Metaphors to Add Richness and Texture to Your Work; and A Marathon, Not a Sprint: Long-Term Marketing Strategies for Indies. Attendees can receive immediate feedback on a sample of their work at the Friday evening Page Cuts Critique Sessions. (Critique sessions are free but require advance registration; see website for details.)”

Don writes it’s perfect for: “Writers of every stage hungry for the most up-to-date info and insight on penning and publishing fiction.”

With headliners like NYT Bestseller, Bob Mayer, and a six other published authors as faculty, the Write Stuff Conference™ looks to have something for everyone.

You can get details at the GLVWG website, www.glvwg.org.

 

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Blog post by GLVWG’s Social Media Chair, DT Krippene.

 

Meet Veronica Park

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Book Marketing, Corvisiero Literary Agency, Writing, Writing Conferences

Veronica Park is an agent, author, journalist, and marketing consultant with more than ten years of experience writing and editing for publication. Veronica will make a return visit to the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ on March 24, 2018, to offer marketing advice for attendees  who sign up in advance.

Her favorite categories are YA (anything with a unique voice, but particularly romantic and/or LGBT at the moment), Adult (particularly Romance in all sub-genres) and Non-Fiction that is funny and/or centered upon current events and controversial issues. (Because real life is funny and full of issues.) Also, Middle Grade (MG) with a particular emphasis on diversity, high concept ideas, and graphic novels.

Themes to avoid: controlling boyfriends (unless your story is clearly anti), werewolves, vampires or zombies (unless you’ve somehow found a new spin I haven’t seen), Mary Sue heroines (look it up), edge for the sake of edge, or characters who do things for reasons which psychology can’t explain. Please pay special attention to accurate, non-stereotypical representation in your diverse stories. #OwnVoices preferred, particularly for concepts dealing with issues unique to marginalized communities.

An Interview with Richard White

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Fantasy, Science Fiction, SFWA, World Building, Writer Beware, Writing, Writing Conferences

Mitzi Flyte, a GLVWG member, had an opportunity to interview the multi-talented Richard White.

Richard will be at the 2018 GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™ on Saturday, March 24, where he will conduct sessions on Writer Beware, Writing Realistic Fight Scenes, and World Building 101.

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Mitzi: Who are your favorite genre writers and did they inspire you?

Richard:      How many pages did you give me for this interview? *grin*  Wow, that’s a tough question, but to try and keep this to a reasonable length, I’ll try and hit my top ten:

• Glen Cook
• Anne McCaffery
• Barbara Hambly
• R.R. Tolkien
• Gordon R. Dickson
• David Drake
• Brian Daley
• Tara Harper
• Katherine Kurtz
• Alan Dean Foster

 

I can track a lot of my current writing to these authors. In fact, I like to tell people that my current fantasy noir novella series I’m writing is my homage to Glen Cook’s Garrett, P.I. series. The Military Science Fiction novel I’m finishing is about an Armored Cavalry Regiment in the future, which is probably influenced by Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers series.  Any of my sword and sorcery or high fantasy stories could have links to The Dragon and the George, or The Armies of Darkness, or the Deryni series and so on.

Great books, great movies, and even great radio shows (both old-time radio and current works) can’t help but influence an author. Anyone who says they’ve created something completely unique is probably not being honest with themselves. We’re all influenced by everything around us – the object is to take the influence and make it something unique to yourself.

Mitzi:  Do any of your stories scare you. If so, is it while writing or after you’ve written them?

Richard:      Normally no. However, I just finished doing a short story for Green Ronin which is set in their Freeport role-playing game universe where I wrote the story from the POV of a serial killer. I found myself going into a very dark part of my mind to write this story. I also developed an appreciation for the writers on the show Criminal Minds, because I found myself actually not wanting to write some of the stuff that I wrote. I certainly edited and re-edited a few sections of the story to try and reach the fine point between being horrific and exploitive, and that’s before I received the edits from my actual editor.

I think this story reinforced in my mind why I’m not a horror author. I can go there, but I’d really rather not. It’s not so much that it scared me that I went there, but it made me uncomfortable that I could go there.

An Interview with Ben Sobieck

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Crime Fiction, Wattpad, Weapons in Fiction, Writing, Writing Conference

GLVWG’s resident Mark Twain, Charles Kiernan, spoke with Ben Sobieck, who will conduct three seminars at the GLVWG Write Stuff Conference™, on March 24, 2018, with Weapons in Fiction, Writing inside a Franchise, and Using WATTPAD to Build a Writing Career.

Ben Sobieck describes himself as a thriller writer, which encompasses several traditional genres: mystery, action-adventure, crime fiction, and noir. He has also written many short stories and numerous flash fiction pieces. He is also a big promoter of Wattpad. That might need a little explanation.

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Charles Kiernan: Thanks for this interview, Ben. Let’s start with what is Wattpad? Why should our conference attendees avail themselves of this service?

Ben Sobieck: Wattpad is a social reading website and app, which means it’s like a cross between Facebook and Kindle. Writers post short stories and novels on the site, and they don’t charge anything to read them. What’s the benefit of giving something away for free like that? Sixty million devoted readers from all around the world is what. They read, read, read, and they will follow the writers they love to the gates of hell (or heaven, if they’re not reading my work).

What this does is fill in the missing piece that a lot of writers have when building their careers. They need a platform of readers who care deeply about their stories. When they do, it’s a lot easier to pull agents, publishers and other partners into their orbits. For instance, a query letter might site that the story being pitched has 100,000 reads on Wattpad. That shows proof, and that’s powerful.

I’m happy to say that I’ve partnered with publishers, movie studios, TV producers, and more through Wattpad. I won a Watty Award for one of my stories. Not to toot my own horn (which means I’m about to), but the competition for the Watty Awards is the world’s largest online fiction contest. When I entered in 2016, there were 140,000 entries.

How does Wattpad work with that many entries? It’s all about the data. I’ll be going into more on that in my presentation.

Also, I am serving as editor of The Writer’s Guide to Wattpad, which will be out in the summer of 2018, and will be published by Writer’s Digest Books. It’s Wattpad’s official guide, so I must be doing something right. Or very, very wrong. One or the other.