The Forest for the Trees

Posted on July 11, 2017 by authorpaulafriedman

This is a guest blog with some good points about queries. Another point of course is to be sure your lead paragraphs mentions (along with a good hook and the book title, genre, word count, and any super-major (short] blog you may have for it, the reason you are querying this particular agent or press.

The Brevity Blog

There’s a story in there somewhere…

I’ve been querying a book and it has not been going well. I had a few requests from conference meetings and Twitter pitchfests, but in the actual emailing-agents-I’ve-never-met process, I was just not getting the response I hoped for.

This was deeply puzzling.

I definitely workshopped the heck out of the actual book. It’s a Young Adult novel so I had kids read it (they showed up 40 minutes early for school to discuss it, perhaps the best compliment my work has ever received). Good adult readers read it and gave feedback I used.

And I workshopped the heck out of the query. I read all of Query Shark (highly recommended!). I participated in Twitter pitchfests. I ran the query by query workshop leaders.

But not too many nibbles.

A couple of weeks ago, two of my writer buddies and I were sitting in…

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Five Reasons You Can’t Get Your Novel Published – And Why It’s Not Your Fault

Posted on May 22, 2016 by authorpaulafriedman

This is a fine article that I hope is helpful to my author friends. I wish it spoke more to the fact that only 5 or 6 publishing corporations, themselves part of huge conglomerates beholden only to stockholders, control all US “major” publishers (and of course the “major media” (and their book reviewers) as well). So here’s Kahaner’s blog–and a useful one it is.
by Larry Kahaner

Dear Author: Thanks for sending us your manuscript. The plot is unique, the characters are compelling and the writing is top notch. It’s one …

Source: Five Reasons You Can’t Get Your Novel Published – And Why It’s Not Your Fault

Where Were You?

Posted on January 23, 2016 by authorpaulafriedman

This account–NOT by me but by a very courageous and eloquent participant in the MLKing Day Black Lives Matter civil disobedience action on the Oakland Bay Bridge–is so right on! As some of you know, my novel of the late-1960s antiwar demonstrations at Port Chicago now nears completion, and I am struck how alike are the challenges then and now for those who would, nonviolently,change the social structure.

mostly * danger

I was shaking as we loaded into the cars. I was shaking as we went through the toll plaza. I was shaking as the cars started to slow down, and when they stopped in the middle of the Bay Bridge. I was shaking when the cops pulled my arms behind my back and my voice shook as our voices lifted up the names of the dead. I was terrified, I was furious, I was inspired.

And by the time we got to the Highway Patrol office, I also really, really had to pee.

I was pleading with every cop that walked by to let me use the bathroom. They told me they had to find a female cop to take me, and that there were none on duty, though I could see several gathering outside our makeshift cell and knew they were lying. Finally the comrade sitting next to me…

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I’m an Old Woman Now and I Still Remember

Posted on April 27, 2015 by authorpaulafriedman

first posted by me in Aisenbe’s blog bullyingstories
[Note: “Polly” is pen name I used on Aisenbe’s blogsite.]

Bullying Stories

I am always grateful for the adults that share the stories of their past here, because it is the same reason I chose to. We don’t forget. We don’t forget the bad and we also don’t forget the good. Sometimes, as in the title of this story, someones we don’t forget the ones that didn’t beat us up or pick on us. Not only that, but I am grateful for a writer that shares such clarity in their words as Polly has below. I am honored to share her story. ~Alan Eisenberg

I’m an old woman now, and I still remember one girl didn’t beat me up that day

I’m an old woman now, and I still remember that one girl, pretty and blond and from the South, didn’t beat me up that day the others jumped me in the alley, going home at lunch time. In fact, Lucy–I don’t…

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Reunion–a mother and child reunite

Posted on March 3, 2015 by authorpaulafriedman

REUNION, OR THE HOLE IN TIME

Confronting sociopolitical denial

Posted on March 26, 2014 by authorpaulafriedman

“It’s fine–I’m fine–everything’s fine,” says Theo parodically (Theo is the hero in Cuaron’s politically brilliant film Children of Men), whenever something particularly terrible occurs. For indeed isn’t “Everything’s fine” the claim of power, stupidity, and/or denial through the years?

This comes to mind, this late-March 2014, as we read of the county officials ignoring hydrologists’ and army engineers’ warnings of the deadly hillside that fell, 4 days ago, on the town of Oso, WA. I am reminded of it, too, by the county officials and new neighbor here who continue to ignore concerns that the neighbor’s excavations may harm my easement and home. I am reminded further when I consider the “deaf ear” turned to the dangers of noise (such as constant television noise in hospitals or apartment buildings) just as, for decades, the dangers of air-particle pollution were denied.

Above all, I am reminded of the Cold War years, not only the crazed denial that more nukes would bring more security, but, worse, the all-permeating claim–enforced especially through “freudian” psychology and its popularizers (including the too beautifully made but inimical films The Snakepit and The Goddess, and that worst-of-the-worst pop-psych books, Generation of Vipers)–that, especially for women, blacks, and the powerless, If You Think Something’s Wrong, It Means That Something’s Wrong in You.

The greatest internal liberation of the 1960s, for many of us, and of the early 1970s for many women, was to see that No It Isn’t Wrong in Us–We Are Whole and the Problem Is the System.

Yes, the problems, as we learned, were and are in our political-social system(s). Part of what we–as persons, as writers, as woman or man or trans or other, and of any age–continue to learn, and each generation learns anew, is what–and how pervasive, and at how many levels–these systems are.

A Writer’s Life

Posted on July 29, 2013 by authorpaulafriedman

Wow work at home! A writer’s life, an editor’s life, oh hey. Sit around at home, take your good time, concentrate in silence, work! Oh joy.

Take a work break skiing in the yard

a 10-minute drive to a mountain lake

kick back . . .

Problem is . . .

construction noise next door
phone solicitors
running out of office supplies
billing clients
looking for clients
too many clients at once
taxes
getting everything done
feral dogs

But there are joys, especially when you finish, as I did yesterday, a final edit of another book!

Author Readings in Berkeley, California, June 13 and 14

Posted on May 16, 2013 by authorpaulafriedman

This longtime Bay Area activist will be in Berkeley, California, to read and sign copies of my recent novel, The Rescuer’s Path, on June 13 and June 14. Be great to see you at either reading; both include Q&A–discussion and socializing time.

*June 13, 2013, 7-9 pm, I’m reading in the Aquarian Minyan Author Series, St. John’s Presbyterian Church (Fireside Room) (this is a benefit for the Minyan, small donation suggested but not required. Light refreshments included).

* June 14, 2013, 12:15-1:15pm, Berkeley City College (in the Atrium), Center St. between Milvia and Shattuck Ave. (free).

The Rescuer’s Path is the tale of a Holocaust survivor’s daughter who, in Nixon-era Washington DC, aids an Arab-American antiwar leader suspected by the FBI in a lethal truck-bombing. It is the story of their budding trust and friendship, and of their tragic love. And it recounts the search of their birth daughter, thirty years later in the shadows of 9/11, for the truth of her origins.

Ursula K. Le Guin calls this novel “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Cheryl Strayed, acclaimed author of Wild, says “The Rescuer’s Path held me from the first page to the last.” Flannery O’Connor Award winner Carole L. Glickfeld says “I could not stop reading this novel–I love it.” Small Press Review says “The writing is lyrical and poetic, the characters vivid, and the story captivating.” Berkeley activist/songwriter Carol Denney says “This is the book you can’t put down, the people you will remember, the vibrant story we all share.”

And more: “These characters will break your heart and put it back together again,” notes Portland author Heather Sharfeddin. FirstMotherForum calls The Rescuer’s Path “a compelling tale with universal themes of separation and reconciliation.” It is a novel, notes Jewish Transcript (JT) News, “that asks us, How do we make peace, in ourselves and in the world?”

Come hear the reading, ask questions, and perhaps take home a signed copy of The Rescuer’s Path (2012, PVP, trade paperback $15.95).

Questions about the readings? Send as a comment here or visit me on facebook at Paula Friedman (same photo as author photo for this blog).

Remembering November 3rd

Posted on November 6, 2012 by authorpaulafriedman

Very strangely, it was only after I got back in touch with an old boyfriend and friend from my pre-Jurassic college days that I learned, from one of his chance comments, that the “possibly correct” account my brother once told me of my cousin’s ex-husband’s death was true.

I was very moved by this, both because I do care for these persons, and because in a strange way the tale parallels part of the plot of my recent The Rescuer’s Path novel–the part about the murder of a radical activist.

You may have guessed by now, this being a November 3–the real event, the killing, to which I refer tonight is what is now known as the Greensboro Massacre, and my cousin had been, at the time, for some years divorced from the by-then remarried doctor who was one of two doctors shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan, that November 3, 1971, while organizing textile workers, in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Why do I recount this now? Because this is our heritage. The Struggle is yours too, if you will join in it.

In these struggles, we have, so many, loved, lived, fought for justice and peace, felt empathy for one another; too many have died. La lutte continue, as we say, like so much else in life. Remember.

A Working Writer: Paula Friedman's Blog

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