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In Honor of National Poetry Month...

Help Us Give Back on #GivingTuesday

Have you read Love Sick by Cory Martin? Want to help us do more good in the world? All you need to do is click HERE scroll down and write a short review on Amazon and we'll donate $5 to the National MS Society for every review that appears online from today until January 1st. That's on top of the 10% we've already committed to donating from the sale of the book. So it's a win-win situation for everyone.

Plus, if you forward the Amazon confirmation of your review to publicity@writeoutpublishing.com we will enter you in a drawing for a chance to win a $50 AMEX gift card. 

The Unorthodox Author Interview with Nadia King

Writers don't always get to go on job interviews. We toil away at a story or a novel for years and then we send it off in the hopes that someone will say ‘yes, we'll publish this.’ But sometimes we fantasize about putting on a suit or a DVF dress so that we can get grilled by HR and negotiate our salary, so we thought we'd give our writers a chance to attempt to enter the real world.

In this video we’re bringing you answers from Nadia King the author of Disappointment a short story about a young teen stuck in a life she so desperately wants to escape. Reviewers are calling it “gritty, raw and real” a story that's not only “thought provoking and reflective, but vulnerable and sympathetic”.

To get your own copy of "Disappointment" click buy now below.

Cory Martin Discusses Love Sick on Media Mayhem w/ Allison Hope Weiner

If you like hearing author's stories and how their books came to be you'll love watching Cory Martin on LipTV's Media Mayhem as she discusses Love Sick and dating and dealing with MS. 

If you have yet to get your copy of the book you can buy it here with no delays. We ship the same day and the book will arrive in 1-3 days depending on your location within the US. If you prefer a digital copy you can buy the ebook here and download it immediately. 

The Unorthodox Author Interview with writer WP Newnham

Writers don't always get to go on job interviews. We toil away at a story or a novel for years and then we send it off in the hopes that someone will say ‘yes, we'll publish this.’ But sometimes we fantasize about putting on a suit or a DVF dress so that we can get grilled by HR and negotiate our salary, so we thought we'd give our writers a chance to attempt to enter the real world.

This week we’re bringing you answers from WJP Newnham the author of El Greco and the companion piece Gr:Easter a short story about a debaucherous trip down memory lane that reviewers are calling “strangely compelling” with “moments of almost hallucinogenic lyricism”.

Check out his answers to the top ten oddball interview questions as reported by Glassdoor below. 

"When a hot dog expands, in which direction does it split and why?"

Along the longitudinal axis to account for expansion

"Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses?"

A quote from ‘Rock-n-Rolla’ “come on boys I have the lot of ya”

"If you’re the CEO, what are the first three things you check about the business when you wake up?"

sustainability, accountability, responsibility

"What would the name of your debut album be?"

‘Why do Fools Suddenly Appear’

"How would you sell hot coco in Florida?"

With ice cubes

"If I gave you $40,000 to start a business, what would you start?"

Worm farms for dog parks

"What would you do if you found a penguin in the freezer?"

Worry that it was too warm for the penguin

"If you were a brand, what would be your motto?"

Just done it

"How many basketballs would fit in this room?"

That’s for you to decide

"If you had $2,000, how would you double it in 24 hours?”

All on black

Bonus: On a more serious note, what’s the best part about being a writer?

Writing is catharsis.

A note from the author about his photo above:

That's me drunk at ‘La Foridita’: Hemingway’s favorite bar in Havana for daiquiris with my arm around the bronze statue of el papa. Who would have thought that with all the bull fighting and marlin fishing that he was a daiquiri drinker- note that I am flicking my personal gang sign- fuck you and your dog?

 

 

How to: Send your short story/ebook purchases to your Kindle.

This is a copy of a post from Amazon. To see it in its original format click here.

Send documents to your Kindle as an email attachment

You and your approved contacts can send documents to your registered Kindle devices, free Kindle reading applications, and your Kindle Library in the Amazon Cloud by e-mailing them to your Send-to-Kindle e-mail address ([name]@kindle.com). Your Send-to-Kindle e-mail address is a unique e-mail address assigned to each of your Kindle devices and free Kindle reading applications upon registration.

How to send a document to your Kindle:

• To find your Send-to-Kindle e-mail address, visit the Manage your Devices page at Manage Your Kindle.
• Documents can only be sent to your Kindle devices or apps from e-mail accounts that you added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List. To add an e-mail account, visit the Personal Document Settings page at Manage Your Kindle.
• To send a document to your Kindle device or app, simply attach it to an e-mail addressed to your Send-to-Kindle e-mail.
• It is not necessary to include a subject in the email.

Supported File Types:

• Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
• HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
• RTF (.RTF)
• JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
• Kindle Format (.MOBI, .AZW)
• GIF (.GIF)
• PNG (.PNG)
• BMP (.BMP)
• PDF (.PDF)

PDFs can be converted to the Kindle format so you can take advantage of functionality such as variable font size, annotations, and Whispersync. To have a document converted to Kindle format (.azw), the subject line should be "convert" when e-mailing a personal document to your Send-to-Kindle address.

Upload short story/ebook direct to Kindle from computer:

• Turn your Kindle on
• Connect the Kindle to your computer using the USB cable that came with your Kindle
• Drag and drop the ".mobi" Ebook file into the documents folder on your Kindle
• When the USB activity indicator on your Kindle stops flashing, "Safely Remove Mass Storage Device (Windows) or "Eject" (Mac) the Kindle from your computer
• When the USB activity indicator on your Kindle stops flashing, unplug the USB cable from your Kindle

Your newly purchased title/eBook from Write Out should now appear in your Kindle library.

To find more information about how to use your Send-to-Kindle e-mail address, please visit Amazon's Help Page.

Love Sick by Cory Martin & MS Awareness Month

Did you know that March is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month? What does that mean for you as a reader? Well, it means you have a chance to help others and do good. Every time you purchase a copy of Love Sick (hardcover, paperback or ebook), 10% of the profits from the sale of the book will be donated to the National MS Society. That’s a good thing because the MS Society not only provides resources for all those living with the disease but also funds research to help find a cure. Why is this important? Because it’s part of the reason Cory Martin wrote Love Sick. She wants a cure, but more than that she wants to spread awareness.

“When I was told I had MS, I felt completely alone. I spent hours online scrolling message boards for any sense of hope and I turned to books to learn more. While there were some books out there that talked about the disease in the clinical sense there weren’t any I could connect with on a personal level. There were men who had written their memoirs, but these guys were middle aged and married and their situation was nothing like my own. While their books gave me some sense of the disease and were well written, I still wanted the Eat, Pray, Love version of them. I wanted to know how other young women were dealing with the disease in their daily lives. How they were dating. How they told others. How they dealt with symptoms. Everything. And that’s why I wrote the book. So that no one would ever have to feel alone again.”

While Cory Martin’s memoir, Love Sick, deals with her diagnosis and journey with multiple sclerosis, and will certainly educate you on its effects, it is not a book exclusively meant for people living with the disease. Her desire to find love is universal, and her hope and honesty are inspiring to anyone who’s ever been single, struggled with an illness or been on a search to find themselves. To purchase a copy of the book click here.

A Short Q&A with Cory Martin, author of Love Sick

The people have been asking, so we asked the author...

How did you come up with the title, for your memoir Love Sick?

The original title was M.S. to M-R-S. It was a play on words, or letters shall I say. I came up with it when I was twenty-eight and all my friends were getting married around me. I thought my time would come soon and wouldn’t it be clever if I wrote a book about MS and dating and eventually got married, thus turning the M.S. into an M-R-S in front of my name. Of course, years later when I realized this was not going to happen and making life choices based on trying to keep a title of a book was not the best way to go about life, I dropped that title and started searching for something new. I kept a little notes section going in my phone and whenever I had a title idea I would write it in there. For almost a year I did this and nothing was sticking. Then one day I was out for a walk and it hit me. Love Sick. It was the perfect play on words. A few days later I looked it up on urban dictionary and found this: “A deep often depressing feeling of wanting to find love. To be longing for love; to be without a companion to share one’s life with, though it is desired deeply.” And I knew I had made the right decision.

xo Cory

To purchase your copy of Love Sick (hardcover or ebook) click here. By purchasing direct from Write Out you help us donate more money to charity, in this case the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Love Sick by Cory Martin released today!

The day is finally here and our author Cory Martin couldn't be more excited!

Have you purchased your copy yet? 10% of the profits go to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Book is available here in Hardcover ($24.95) and Ebook ($12.99) formats.

Four Best Pieces of Advice for Writers

We get so many questions all the time about what makes good writing or, how can I become a better writer? Well, we put our noggins together and came up with the Four R Process. We’re trying to patent it as we speak, but we decided to give you a glimpse inside our heads for free because we believe in helping others. And since we still view ourselves as writers and not stodgy old publishing professionals we wanted to share this with you. Have a read and if you like it feel free to share it with your other scribe friends.

STEP ONE: READ. If you want to write, you have to be a voracious reader. We’re not talking about only reading the NY Times best sellers or sticking to one genre. Seek out everything you can get your hands on. The classics, the obscure, the cheesy, the great, the bad, the long, the short. If you can find it, you should read it. The more you read the stronger your own writing voice will become and that’s what you should be striving for.

STEP TWO: REWRITE. Never, ever, ever turn in a first draft. Unless you are nineteen and you have a term paper on termites and you don’t care if you pass or fail, you have to rewrite. We don’t care how good you are you must rewrite. We all have those moments where we feel like something is great (and a lot of times when you get that gut feeling you’re right), but you can usually add a few tweaks here and there and your piece will be spectacular. So please, rewrite. You don’t know how many times we’ve read things and just thought, man, if this person just took the time to rewrite this a couple times this would be soooo good.

STEP THREE: REJECT. Reject the notion that you are a terrible, horrible, no good writer. It’s not true. If you have the urge to write and you can’t step away from your laptop or your pen and paper then you can do this. Also, know that feeling like a terrible writer is an absolute normal feeling to have when you write. In fact, it’s a sign that you are actually meant to be a writer. If you didn’t have this feeling, you wouldn’t push yourself to rewrite and make it better and then your work would just sit there. So reject the notion that you’re bad, but embrace the notion that you can do this.

STEP FOUR: REPEAT. Are you with us so far? Good, now it’s time to do it all over.

READ: Once you’ve immersed yourself in all the literature you can find, start to narrow your focus. Do it based on what you want to write. Are you writing a memoir? Go find one hundred of the most varied memoirs you can find and read them all. Working on a YA novel? Do the exact same thing. But don’t read to freak yourself out and compare yourself to every other writer, read because you need to know. You need to know how the genre works, what sells, what doesn’t, what you hate, what you like, everything. Use it as a learning tool. Oh, and if you’re planning on submitting your work to a literary mag or an online journal or even our site, you should really read what’s already being published. Get a sense of what the editors are looking for. Not every site or mag is right for what you’ve written and that’s okay, you will find your niche. 

REWRITE: Okay, so we’ve got you away from that first draft, now guess what? Go write about twenty more. Then, once you’ve done that, ask a friend or a peer or an instructor or join a writing group or take a class and let those people read your work and give you feedback. Don’t take it as criticism. Simply see it as a way to help you keep writing. Often times we get too close to our own work and the best thing to do is step away and let someone else have a read. You’ll be surprised at what others will see in your writing that you never saw. And don’t be surprised if they see something fantastic in it that you had never noticed either. Feedback is your friend.

REJECT: Be willing to reject pieces of your own work. We have a writer friend who always says, ‘kill all your darlings.’ Even if you love, love, love that one sentence or that word or that piece of dialogue, if it’s not working to further your story, delete it. Don’t be afraid to start over. Also, now that you’ve opened yourself up to feedback from others, don’t be afraid to reject their notions either, but don’t reject them just to save face or prove a point. Sometimes the best criticism we ever got hurt the most, but in the long run helped our stories become far better than they ever would have had we not been open to the feedback.

REPEAT: Yes, you have to do it again.

READ: So now you’re nearing the end of your latest masterpiece. Guess what? You get to now read your own work. But we don’t want you to just read it to yourself. We want you to read it aloud. This is one of the tricks we use to make sure that our writing has a strong voice. You want your writing to stand out? Then it better have a voice and a style that’s all your own. When you read it, do you get excited? Do you hear differences in tone and reflection? Here’s a test. Try reading a user’s manual out loud. Then go read a piece of your own writing. Then read a piece of your favorite author’s writing out loud and see the differences. Which one do you like more? We hope it’s yours, if not, keep rewriting. 

REWRITE: Yes, you have to keep rewriting. When we’re working on a piece, whether it’s a short story or a novel or a screenplay we keep rewriting until there are fewer and fewer mistakes and awkward sentences. Then we read it out loud and rewrite some more. At some point you have to stop, but we only recommend this when you have fully exhausted all your options. If you’ve still got a nagging feeling that the thing your main character did on page 36 is still not flowing smoothly then you need to go back and rewrite it. Don’t give up. It will show and others will see it. Keep rewriting.

REJECT: Now that you’ve gotten through all of this it’s time to go out and send your work into the world. Why? So you can get rejected. Look, we don’t say that because we think you suck or we want to be malicious. We say it because any writer who’s ever become successful has been rejected. It happens to all of us. The first few were hard to take, but now we’re cool with it. In fact, we like to wear our rejections like a badge of honor. If writing were easy, everyone would do it. Writing is not easy, but if you wake up in the morning and can’t imagine yourself doing anything else but writing then you were born to be a writer and rejection is just par for the course. So go out and get rejected. And when you do, don’t worry about it. Just come back to these steps and keep at it. Because you can always do what?

REPEAT.