And while there are many resources out there on the "craft" of writing or how to find your creative voice as an "artist," there is little by way of practical advice on how to actually set about writing genre fiction for a career. Fiona McIntosh, one of Australia's most successful commercial authors across a range of genres, is here to set the record straight, and set aspiring novelists on a realistic path. She believes that if you have a tough hide and a philosophical attitude—as well as a damn strong work ethic—anyone can make a living from popular writing. And she's here to show you how.

    S. Lewis continues to speak to readers, thanks not only to his intellectual insights on Christianity but also his wondrous creative works and deep reflections on the literature that influenced his life. Beloved for his instructive novels including The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Chronicles of Narnia as well as his philosophical books that explored theology and Christian life, Lewis was a life-long writer and book lover.Cultivated from his many essays, articles, and letters, as well as his classic works, How to Read provides guidance and reflections on the love and enjoyment of books. Engaging and enlightening, this well-rounded collection includes Lewis’ reflections on science fiction, why children’s literature is for readers of all ages, and why we should read two old books for every new one.A window into the thoughts of one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time, this collection reveals not only why Lewis loved the written word, but what it means to learn through literature from one of our wisest and most enduring teachers.

    Wallace’s pieces for Harper’s magazine in the ’90s were, according to Lipsky, “like hearing for the first time the brain voice of everybody I knew: Here was how we all talked, experienced, thought. It was like smelling the damp in the air, seeing the first flash from a storm a mile away. You knew something gigantic was coming.”Then Rolling Stone sent Lipsky to join Wallace on the last leg of his book tour for Infinite Jest, the novel that made him internationally famous. They lose to each other at chess. They get iced-in at an airport. They dash to Chicago to catch a make-up flight. They endure a terrible reader’s escort in Minneapolis. Wallace does a reading, a signing, an NPR appearance. Wallace gives in and imbibes titanic amounts of hotel television (what he calls an “orgy of spectation”). They fly back to Illinois, drive home, walk Wallace’s dogs. Amid these everyday events, Wallace tells Lipsky remarkable things—everything he can about his life, how he feels, what he thinks, what terrifies and fascinates and confounds him—in the writing voice Lipsky had come to love. Lipsky took notes, stopped envying him, and came to feel about him—that grateful, awake feeling—the same way he felt about Infinite Jest. Then Lipsky heads to the airport, and Wallace goes to a dance at a Baptist church.A biography in five days, Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself is David Foster Wallace as few experienced this great American writer. Told in his own words, here is Wallace’s own story, and his astonishing, humane, alert way of looking at the world; here are stories of being a young writer—of being young generally—trying to knit together your ideas of who you should be and who other people expect you to be, and of being young in March of 1996. And of what it was like to be with and—as he tells it—what it was like to become David Foster Wallace.

    and covered in blood!Demonic possession! Haunted condominiums! Murderous babies! Man-eating moths! No plot was too ludicrous, no cover art too appalling, no evil too despicable for the Paperbacks From Hell.Where did they come from? Where did they go? Horror author Grady Hendrix risks his soul and sanity (not to mention yours) to relate the true, untold story of the Paperbacks From Hell.Shocking story summaries! Incredible cover art! And true tales of writers, artists, and publishers who violated every literary law but one: never be boring. All this awaits, if you dare experience the Paperbacks From Hell.

    I was there too, but now I have quit my day job and make a living selling fiction. Both my initial success and the sustainability of my book sales have come from Facebook ads. In this book, you'll learn how to find the cost per click and sales volumes you'll need to hit to know if an ad is profitable. You'll learn how to target your ads and how to tweak them for maximum returns by age, gender, region. You'll see how to write plot-based ads, character based ads, pure marketing ads, the whole bit. Stop losing money every time you run and ad and instead turn them into book-selling machines.

    McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear.A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them.These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art.

    Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings met each week to read and discuss each other's work-in-progress, offering both encouragement and blistering critique. How did these conversations shape the books they were writing? How does creative collaboration enhance individual talent? And what can we learn from their example?

    She proclaims, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. Using examples from literature, history, neighborhood signage, and her own imagination, Truss shows how meaning is shaped by commas and apostrophes, and the hilarious consequences of punctuation gone awry.Featuring a foreword by Frank McCourt, and interspersed with a lively history of punctuation from the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes a powerful case for the preservation of proper punctuation.

    Employing an accessible, example-rich approach, Wonderbook energizes and motivates while also providing practical, nuts-and-bolts information needed to improve as a writer. Aimed at aspiring and intermediate-level writers, Wonderbook includes helpful sidebars and essays from some of the biggest names in fantasy today, such as George R. R. Martin, Lev Grossman, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock, Catherynne M. Valente, and Karen Joy Fowler, to name a few.Praise for Wonderbook: “Jammed with storytelling wisdom.” —Fast Company’s Co.Create blog“This is the kind of book you leave sitting out for all to see . . . and the kind of book you will find yourself picking up again and again.” —Kirkus Reviews online“If you’re looking for a handy guide to not just crafting imaginative fiction like sci-fi, fantasy, and horror, but to writing in general, be sure to pick up a copy of Steampunk Bible author Jeff Vandermeer’s lovingly compiled Wonderbook."  —Flavorwire“Jeff Vandermeer and Jeremy Zerfoss have created a kaleidoscopically rich and beautiful book about fiction writing.”  —Star Tribune“Because it is so layered and filled with text, tips, and links to online extras, this book can be read again and again by both those who want to learn the craft of writing and those interested in the process of others.” —Library Journal

    But on her forty-sixth birthday she decided to stop running and start reading.Catalyzed by the loss of her sister, a mother of four spends one year savoring a great book every day, from Thomas Pynchon to Nora Ephron and beyond. In the tradition of Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project and Joan Dideon's A Year of Magical Thinking, Nina Sankovitch's soul-baring and literary-minded memoir is a chronicle of loss,hope, and redemption. Nina ultimately turns to reading as therapy and through her journey illuminates the power of books to help us reclaim our lives.

    Hawke - Australia's 23rd and oldest living prime minister - has welcomed Derek Rielly into his home to share fine cigars and irreverent conversation. On a sun-soaked balcony, the maverick young writer and the charismatic old master talk life, death, love, sex, religion, politics, sport ... and everything in between.On other days, to paint his subject's enigma from the outside, Rielly interviews Hawke's Liberal MP rival John Howard, Labor allies Gareth Evans and Kim Beazley, wife and lover Blanche d'Alpuget, live-in stepson Louis Pratt, and friends - diplomat Richard Woolcott, economist Ross Garnaut, advertising guru John Singleton, and longtime mate Col Cunningham.The result is an extraordinary portrait of a beloved Australian - a strange, funny, uniquely personal study of Bob Hawke ruminating on his (and our) past, present and future.

    This collection of unforgettable characters—including Anne Shirley, Jo March, Scarlett O’Hara, and Jane Eyre—and outstanding authors—like Jane Austen, Harper Lee, and Laura Ingalls Wilder—is an impassioned look at literature’s most compelling heroines, both on the page and off. Readers who found inspiration in books by Toni Morrison, Maud Hart Lovelace, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Alice Walker, or who were moved by literary-themed memoirs like Shelf Discovery and Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, get ready to return to the well of women’s classic literature with The Heroine's Bookshelf.

    His 1990 National Book Award-winning novel Middle Passage is a modern classic, revered as much for its daring plot as its philosophical underpinnings. For thirty-three years, Johnson taught and mentored students in the art and craft of creative writing. The Way of the Writer is his record of those years, and the coda to a kaleidoscopic, boundary-shattering career. Organized into six accessible, easy-to-navigate sections, The Way of the Writer is both a literary reflection on the creative impulse and a utilitarian guide to the writing process. Johnson shares his lessons and exercises from the classroom, starting with word choice, sentence structure, and narrative voice, and delving into the mechanics of scene, dialogue, plot and storytelling before exploring the larger questions at stake for the serious writer. What separates literature from industrial fiction? What lies at the heart of the creative impulse? How does one navigate the literary world? And how are philosophy and fiction concomitant? Luminous, inspiring, and imminently accessible, The Way of the Writer is a revelatory glimpse into the mind of the writer and an essential guide for anyone with a story to tell.

    The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing – behaviours inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.

    Now she brings her vast experience, good cheer, and finely sharpened pencils to help the rest of us in a boisterous language book as full of life as it is of practical advice.Between You & Me features Norris's laugh-out-loud descriptions of some of the most common and vexing problems in spelling, punctuation, and usage—comma faults, danglers, "who" vs. "whom," "that" vs. "which," compound words, gender-neutral language—and her clear explanations of how to handle them. Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer, as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn. She takes us to see a copy of Noah Webster's groundbreaking Blue-Back Speller, on a quest to find out who put the hyphen in Moby-Dick, on a pilgrimage to the world's only pencil-sharpener museum, and inside the hallowed halls of The New Yorker and her work with such celebrated writers as Pauline Kael, Philip Roth, and George Saunders.Readers—and writers—will find in Norris neither a scold nor a softie but a wise and witty new friend in love with language and alive to the glories of its use in America, even in the age of autocorrect and spell-check. As Norris writes, "The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around."