Author Information
LaRocca
Member since 20th November 2006
Displaying 1 to 13 (of 13 articles)
18th December 2006
Here's something from my mailbag. "Dear Michael, do you need to do good in school if you want to be a writer? I stink at school and all my friends laugh at me when I tell them I want to write, but I'm serious." Followed by a sentence or two of "I need you...
16th December 2006
Let's pretend that you live in China. Perhaps not in my neighborhood, but in China. Let's also pretend that, unlike me, you own a car. A Volkswagen Santana, of course. Who do you honk the horn at?
Well, you honk at everyone who's in your way, and who y...
12th December 2006
If someone had told me in 2000 that I'd publish four books in 2001, I'd have called him an eejit.
The last time I'd been published was 1989, and that doesn't count because I paid someone to do it. I'd long since given up on getting published again. In ...
08th December 2006
Some of us write simply because we can't not write. Ideas grab us, move us, and demand to be written. We strive to make it as real as we possibly can, to improve at our craft every day, hopefully to make it into the realm of literature as well as entertai...
05th December 2006
According to one of my previous articles, whenever a Southerner says "Y'all watch this," get out of the way because those are probably the last words he will ever say.
Well, I'm a Southerner. I used to live in the southeastern United States, but I move...
29th November 2006
Don't they drive you nuts?
You can visit all the rules of style you want, and you can read all the books and articles you want. You'll still be confused. You'll see inconsistency. You'll see experts who don't agree with each other. And you'll pull out ...
27th November 2006
Most books aren't rejected because the stories are "bad." They're rejected because they're not "ready to read." In short, minor stuff like typos, grammar, spelling, etc.
I don't mean places where we, as authors, deliberately break the rules. Those are ...
27th November 2006
The Internet will not replace traditional promotional efforts, but it can enhance them. Before I go into the Internet, I want to talk about the old-fashioned marketing methods, because they're still your best source of readers.
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BOOKSTORES
M...
25th November 2006
A major "character" in Mark Salzman's first autobiography is his father. Sometimes his father paints. But his father hates painting. He likes it when his painting is done. He likes having painted. But the act of painting itself is, in his opinion, a big p...
24th November 2006
The big question. Do you submit directly to publishers, or do you find an agent who will do that for you? Based on anecdotal evidence I've heard, it can work either way. Many publishers refuse to read unagented submissions, but on the other hand Tom Clanc...
22nd November 2006
As a student of Spanish, my goal was to think in Spanish. Skip the word-by-word translation so I'd have the necessary speed to speak and listen. I know words in Spanish that I'd be hard pressed to translate. Usually profanity, I confess. Chingow!
For y...
21st November 2006
One of the nice things about being an author is that we can break any rule we want. (I just did.) It's part of our job description. Language changes through usage -- definitions, spelling, grammar -- and authors can help it do this. But on the other hand,...
20th November 2006
Here's everything I know about improving your writing, publishing it electronically and in print, and promoting it after the sale.
Two questions you should ask:
(1) What will it cost me?
(2) What does this Michael LaRocca guy know about it?
Answ...
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