Peevish Penman

Small Press Browser

2011-12-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

Small presses are an excellent way for early to mid-career authors to publish manuscripts. A small press is one that generates less than $50 million dollars annually. When preparing to contact a small press remember: Research submission guidelines, previous publications by the press, and other significant information about each company before sending an email. Understand and follow the submission

Writing With Meniere's Disease

2011-11-30T15:32:00.000-08:00

by Carrie Bailey This probably should have been the first article I wrote, because I know more about living with vertigo and hearing loss than I do writing. How? I've been a writer for 2 years and I've had balance issues for 17 years. If you've never heard of Meniere's disease, take a quick moment to add "Meniere's Disease" to your list of things-in-life-to-be-grateful-haven't-impacted-you. If

The Cost of Books in New Zealand

2011-11-21T20:44:00.000-08:00

by Carrie Bailey I'm writing about this topic, because I'm thinking about this huge glaringly immense problem that I face on a daily basis. Kiwis (that really is the term they prefer to call themselves) buy most of their books online and I don't blame them. Actually, online or they post them with a trading website similar to Craig's List. The fact is that their bookstore selection is so poor

Small Presses v.s. Self-Publishers: So What Are You?

2011-11-03T21:09:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey If you're not sure whether to call yourself a self-published author, a small press or a fool (sometimes when sales are down I wonder this about myself), I've established a few distinctions for a research project I'm doing at Victoria University in Wellington. Notice: you can be both a self-publisher and a small press, a small press and a vanity publisher, a traditional publisher

Hard Times: Great Writing

2011-08-31T18:15:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey I’m often asked, “Why call your site Peevish Penman? You aren’t peevish at all.” Oh, but they are wrong. Minor injustices cause me endless irritation. By minor, I mean events that devastate only me and by irritation I’m talking about intense and unbearable suffering. It’s inspiration. But you won’t find this muse’s pamphlets and cheap goods sitting around my apartment

The Search for New Zealand Writers

2011-08-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey Something about kiwi culture makes New Zealand literature hard to put down and harder to forget If you've been looking for something different or trying to locate a New Zealand author you've read before, the search widget at the end of this post will be of service. The search tool will locate all information designated by the keywords "author" and "writer" in the New Zealand

Ereader File Formats

2011-08-11T21:30:00.001-07:00

by Carrie Bailey Here's another useful tool to help writers, readers and bibliophiles in general better understand basic eReader technology. This slide presentation shows what file formats the most popular eReaders accept. A good strategy is to choose a few file formats used by most of the eReaders and invest the time and effort necessary to create each document separately, although, using the

Ereader Basics: What Writers Need to Know

2011-07-26T18:23:00.000-07:00

R.I.P: My Kindle February 2011 - February 2011 by Carrie Bailey It's not my fault and it's not your fault that ebooks and digital technologies have unnecessarily complicated our lives as writers. We're master story tellers who feel at home with the written word, but many of us cringe and cower when we faced the inevitable dilemma: Do we publish our work online? If so, HOW? As more

Databases for Writers

2011-07-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey Currently Peevish Penman is preparing to upgrade our author resources. If you haven't already viewed our small press list, click on this link. One of the challenges of being a successful writer is researching which publishers to query. The small press list allows you to view the homepage for each publisher without visiting each site and enduring the tedium of opening a new tab

Printer's Key: for Writers, Readers, and Collectors

2011-05-24T17:28:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey Opposite the title page in almost every book printed after the middle of the last century, on that one page with the publishing and copyright information...yeah, you know the one...where you look to find the information you need to cite your sources in a bibliography... lie the perplexing and seemingly pointless series of numbers called the "Printer's Key." Unless you're

Freelance Writing Scam Alert!

2011-04-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

As freelance writers, we come across scams every single day in the hopes to find a real writing job through all the icky scams. So occasionally, I'll look on Craigslist in the 'Writing' section. I know, I know, Craigslist is one of the worst places to find any kind of job, especially writing jobs. In bigger cities like New York and LA, you can find a gem or two, but it's usually rare to find

Promotion and Marketing: Video Trailers

2011-03-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

I'm totally excited about the release of my new book, Give the Lady a Ride. Marketing it has proven both challenging and fun. Not being a famous author, I have a harder time bringing the traffic to my sites than those who have "made it." Give-aways help, but my best promotional tool so far is my book trailer.Although tons of folks know how to make a video, I'm not one of them. I hired a pro and

Copyright Infringement and Google

2011-03-24T00:56:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey I want to be Google right now, who wouldn't? Google has scanned and digitized millions of books to be made available from their ebook platform. That's clearly copyright infringement, but having agreed to pay royalties to the authors and owners of the work, Google has attempted to....well, be fair to writers who created the work. The problem? Many of the authors and owners cannot

Using Foreign Languages in Dialogue

2011-03-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey Writing dialogue challenges some writers, bores others to tears and sometimes sinks an otherwise publish-worthy manuscript. The reasons are too numerous to mention, but the right phrase, carefully crafted, may be remembered and repeated ad nauseam-often by teenage boys. Try this. Here's four phrases... A) "Hasta la vista baby." B) "Please Sir, can I have some more?" C) "

Writing Sites to LOVE

2011-03-18T23:13:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey Across the web we find, discover and love writers and their sites, their blogs... We follow, get offended, unfollow, fall in love again, refollow, make friends, learn, and become better writers together... Here's a few places to go worth storing their cookies: Black Heart Magazine Black Heart is a full-on literary rebellion based in Austin, Texas, where it is edited and

15 Reasons to Write Today

2011-03-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey I seem to have misplaced my motivation. Maybe this has happened to you. A goal is set and you start... clickity clackity... you're banging the keys like champion, but midway through the exhaustion sets in and you find yourself at standstill... Well here's 20 reasons to write and write right now...today: Writing is the most noble profession in the world. It's not a day job,

Writing Everyday: New Habits Die Easily

2011-03-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

by Carrie Bailey The weekend passed in a blur of drama spent wasting my time with internationals at a backpacker's hotel in Wellington, New Zealand. What a great atmosphere for literary research. I've got accents from every country permanently burnt onto my memory and can now distinguish not simply between countries, but regions within countries. The heightened awareness of sports team rivalries

Peevish Penman Peevbody: February and March 2011

2011-03-09T23:26:00.001-08:00

by Carrie Bailey This month (and last) The Peevish Penman Peevbody is being awarded to two exceptional writers. For February in the category of Improvement of Writing, Wookies Girl aka Dorothy Figenshaw nominated by Paula Kelly and Terry Hoffman who testify: I have been working with Wookies Girl, copy editing and proofreading her poetry and prose, since April of 2010. When we began our

Writers: Read Between the Lines

2011-03-09T16:09:00.000-08:00

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The Imperfect Writer

2011-03-09T03:08:00.000-08:00

by Carrie Bailey Apparently I have weaknesses as a writer... I write too much or too little, but never steadily, but that's the reality of the creative life. Inspiration plays an important role. The question I ask myself as I embark on the challenge I've undertaken to write every weekday for 28 days is whether or not consistency matters. Certainly meeting deadlines makes a difference. Fulling

Blogging Challenge for Writers

2011-03-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

by Carrie Bailey It was going to happen sooner or later, because writing has everything in common with a greased slip n' slide facing downward on a steep hill. Yet, it all started out innocently enough. I wrote a few articles, started a magazine, published a poem, then a book and then BAM! Challenged. Yes, I've been challenged. The sort of challenge that feels exactly as if I've been pushed down

How Do You Know When Your Story Is Finished?

2011-03-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

by P.J. Kaiser This question has been weighing on my mind so I thought I'd do a post about it in hopes of getting some input from others. How many times have you written what you think is a complete short story only to have readers comment that you should consider writing a longer piece. This has happened to me a lot and I am never quite sure how to take this feedback. This could, in my mind,

Book Review: Wild Mind

2011-02-25T22:18:00.000-08:00

by Emily Hutto Like most of Natalie Goldberg’s writing, Wild Mind took me a long time to read through –not because her language is elevated or her sentences or complex (actually she writes rather simply), but because all I want to do when I read her words is write. She’s so passionate about what she does, and writes in a point-blank way, nearly commanding me to find pen and paper –

Research 101: Interviews

2011-02-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

For those of us who don’t write fantasy or Sci-Fi, research is imperative. We need to know our settings, eras, props–anything that could ruin our credibility should it be discovered that we didn’t do our research. Even things we think we know or we think people won’t notice.For instance, I once read about a man who stopped reading a police-procedural novel when the author had his character “throw

The Writer Lifestyle is Sedentary

2011-01-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

by Carrie Bailey I have to admit that there is one aspect of being a writer that isn't as glamorous as I imagined it would be when I started daydreaming about my career years ago. As I was considering all the places I would like to be published and how I would spend my time in between writing novels, I started to notice something was missing. The fantasies were filled with beaches and long walks