The Loft Blog

So you're getting ready to pitch an agent. Nervous? Wondering what to say? The tone in which to say it? Questions you should ask? If it's all even worth it? (Am I getting too real yet?) Try not to worry too much; almost everyone gets nervous to pitch. That's why you've got this post to help.

The reality is that not every idea will find a publishing home. Maybe it’s due to the timeliness of the idea, or your book is just not fully ready. There’s no specific standard for when to shelve a book, so here are a few things worth considering.

The hardest thing is figuring out how to begin a story. It's your one chance at a truly pure and vulnerable reader. The reader knows nothing, and must trust everything—or not—and you can work with that in the best ways.

It’s that time of the year, in which I now get projects ready for the Fall, while also ensuring any materials requested before the summer were read. I personally set aside two personal deadlines every year to ensure I can make a dent in the requested reading materials...

Manuel Gonzales's The Regional Office is Under Attack is about forces of darkness, those out to stop those forces, and others out to stop the forces stopping the forces. It has assassins, oracles, and robot arms. And it's riveting.

How do we ensure the action is happening at the right time, in the right order, and quickly enough?

When fiction refuses to look at non-centered characters, it teaches us to do the same in our lives, normalizing the erasure of real human beings.

One of my favorite things when I meet new writers and other creatives, is learning how they found themselves in that place. Usually this will spark an interesting conversation that takes many unexpected turns.

It goes without saying that we should put aside a wait-and-see approach to building a diverse writing community, and that we need to reach out to writers of color, the LGBTQIA community, and those with disabilities, so that everyone has a space to share their stories.

The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon is about a college student (Phoebe) who becomes enmeshed in a violent religious cult, while her boyfriend (Will, the narrator) grapples with his own discarded faith in God.

I remember at the age of 18 finally getting my first bookstore job. It was quite the process, with many applications, but finally a bookstore opened its door. Of course this was a game changer in my career choice, of which I’ll always be grateful that Kim the bookstore manager gave my young adult se

It was just two hours. Yet, since class, I feel a quiet confidence. I’m more protective of my time. In fact, that’s what led to the grumpy robot doodle. Throughout Wordplay I noticed authors talking about the time they needed to create their works, the quiet.