The Book Cove

My name is Andrew Joyce and I write books for a living. Jessi has been kind enough to allow me a little space on his blog to promote my new novel RESOLUTION: Huck Finn’s Greatest Adventure . I think it’s a good book, but what do I know? Anyway, I’m kinda shy about tooting my own horn. So I think I’ll turn things over to my dog Danny—Danny the Dog. He always has a bad attitude and usually does not speak highly of me. But please understand that we co-exist as the old Soviet Union and the United States once co-existed. We tolerate each other. So without further ado, here’s Danny. Andrew dragged me through the pouring rain so that I could be here to help him out. For a person that works with words for a living, he has very little to say in real life. He wants me to tout his book for him, but I don’t think I will. I’m in a foul mood today, so this communiqué will be short. It’s been raining for three days and three nights. One more day of this miserable weather and I’m going to have ...

Feeling rather giddy when I sent my manuscript to my editor, I wrote the following: “It feels like my child’s first day at school and I'm hoping she's remembering her manners, showing the teacher what a clever girl she is, and making friends. And now I'm going to have to be patient until she returns home, climbs onto my lap and shares with me how the day has gone.” OK, I may have stretched the metaphor a little too far, and I have sons not daughters, but it started me thinking about other parallels between parenthood and self-publishing a book. I hope I don’t alienate people who are not parents with this post, as I proceed to take the comparison even further. I wouldn’t dream of suggesting that the effort that goes into publishing a book is anywhere near as profound as having a baby, but launch day is a big day. I remember looking out of the window of the hospital on the morning I’d given birth to my first son. I saw a man in a suit running for the bus, a lady jogging with ...

Truth in fiction? I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Now that my book, Dancing to an Irish Reel  is out, I’m being asked the inevitable question, “How much of the story is true?” Everyone who knows me personally knows I picked up and moved to the west coast of Ireland without much of a plan, and that I stayed for a year. Add that to the fact that the book is written in the first person, that the narrator’s interior monologues in the story are unabashedly confessional to the point of unnecessary risk. I’ve been told the book reads like a memoir, and for that, I can only say I’m glad because this was my intention. I can see why readers might think the entire story is true.  But writers make a choice in how to lay out a story, and in my case, I wrote the book based on the kind of books I like to read. I’m a one-trick pony kind of a reader. I want an intimate narrator’s voice with which I can connect. I want to know exactly whom I’m listening to so that I can align w...

THANKS, Jessi and L.A. for inviting me to hang in The Book Cove today . Very cool. Appreciate the chance to write a guest post on your site. What I like around here are the blogs and reviews of writers writing and doing what they love to write and do. That works for life same as art, no? Whatever your thing is. And around here you have a lot of love for NA and YA books. So I thought I’d write a little about how “adults” reading “kidlit” is somehow now a thing. Lots of bloggers and trad-media-types speculate as to why so-called grown-ups (or anybody older than thirteen, basically) is all over some of the big books of the last few years that feature teen protagonists: The Hunger Games, The Harry Potters, The Maze Runners, the Divergent et al. Or why mags that no Millennial ever reads, like TIME, continue to proclaim the “golden age of young-adult literature” and generate their top-100 lists of YA fiction, new and old, featuring books that we already know are great. I mean, is...

Part IV: Letter to my Earlier Self about #Blog #Hops and #Virtual #Book #Tours By Sally Ember, Ed.D. This is Letter Four of Four of my "open letter to my earlier self" series that first appeared on The Book Cove Reviews , http://www.thebookcove.com , late November - December, 2014. Other posts in this series: Letter to my Earlier Self about #Preorders An Open Letter to my Earlier Self about #Book #Reviews and #Reviewers What I wish I had known for indie #publishing and #ebooks - an open letter to my earlier self Letter One appeared on my site, http://www.sallyember.com/blog , on 3/26/15. Letter One posted on 3/26/15; Letter Two appeared on 4/4/15 and Letter Three on 4/11/15. image from http://phyllisiturner.com I published my first ebook in December, 2013, and my second in June, 2014. I intend to publish my third in April, 2015. What I wish I had known before my first ebook went into pre-sales in November, 2013, about Virtua...

Part III: Letter to my Earlier Self about #Preorders By Sally Ember, EdD This is Letter Three of Four of my "open letter to my earlier self" series that first appears on The Book Cove Reviews , http://www.thebookcove.com , late November - December, 2014 on consecutive Mondays.  Letter One will appear on my site, http://www.sallyember.com/blog , on 3/26/15, Letter Two on 4/4/15; Letter Four re-posts on April 18, 2015 on consecutive Mondays as well. I published my first ebook in December, 2013, and my second in June, 2014. My third will release late in the Spring of 2015. This is a letter to describe all that I wish I had known about Pre-Orders before my first ebook went into Pre-orders in November, 2013, and what I used somewhat for Volume II's Pre-order period in the Spring of 2014 before its release in June of 2014. I will certainly build upon these experiences for subsequent releases of Volumes of The Spanners Series in preparation for their Pre-Or...