Article: Slushpilereader.com

For the November/December issue of Poets & Writers magazine, I wrote an article about Slushpilereader.com, which is a website aiming to work around the typical "it's who you know" mechanisms of publishing. If you've ever been frustrated by rounds of rejection letters from agents and publishers (ugh, don't they hurt?) you might want to check out the site, or at least the article, which you can read here.

I started my agent hunt in 2002 with a completely different non-fiction book than The Jersey Shore, Atlantic City to Cape May: Great Destinations: A Complete Guide: Including the Wildwoods (Great Destinations) . The proposal went through a lot of agents, from those who sent back a form rejection to those who were excited about the book...until they read the manuscript after which it was rejected.

I guess there's a happy ending to that story if not that particular book since my first book is coming out in May, but I still don't have an agent. I brokered the deal with Countryman Press on my own because I wanted to write this book for them instead of, for example, shopping it around to other publishers. I'm was also comfortable negotiating the book contract since I handle my magazine contracts solo.

I don't know if I'll try to get an agent for book two, whatever book two may be. If I go back to that original non-fiction manuscript? Absolutely. Hopefully I'll have better luck the second time around.

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Book 12 of 52: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi is an author and graphic novelist who grew up in Iran and, as a tween and teen, lived in the country through the Iranian Revolution before her parents sent her to Europe for school, and for her safety. As an adult, she wrote Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood , a nonfiction graphic novel, originally in French. I read the English translation, which was published in 2003, three years after the original. It was a critical success, won a slew of awards, and became a movie . I haven't read the sequel, Persepolis 2 , but I hope to (you can also buy them in a set . I found Persepolis in a Little Free Library, or I'd have bought them combined). In the tradition of Art Spiegelman's Maus , which is about the author's father talking to him about the Holocaust, Persepolis is a memoir of trauma told through a mix of images and words that when combined, combust into powerful, beautiful and soul cracking art. For example, Satrapi portrays the 1978 Cinema R

Book 23 of 52: Because of Miss Bridgerton by Julia Quinn

More romance? Of course! The world is on fire, and I can't ingest all the fires all the time. Sometimes I want to turn to genre fiction as an escape, even if an escape is into a patriarchal society where it's SCANDAL that a woman sometimes, when riding a horse, wears pants. Because of Miss Bridgerton is the first book in Julia Quinn's Rokesbys Series , which are prequels to her enormously popular Bridgerton Series (and now a Netflix show ). These books are similar, of course, but instead being set in the Recency era of the 1810s, these books take place at the same time as the American Revolution (though still in England). Here we meet Sybilla "Bille" Bridergton, who is stuck on the roof of a building because she chased a cat up there. She climbed up herself (scandalous woman!) but also twisted her ankle in the process, which is why she needs help to get down. That help comes from George Rokesby. Their families are neighbors, and they've known each other

Book 26 of 52: The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil by Tina Brown

I'm not going to write a long review of Tina Brown's The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil for two reasons. First, it's been hashed to death already, as anything about the royals is, by people who are far more invested in this whole thing than I am. And second, I'm in the frantic "do I really need a jean jacket AND a windbreaker" level of packing before a long trip. I can say that I didn't mind listening to this nearly 18 hour audiobook while the rest of the world is on fire, although of course they are not insulated. We can pretend that the Royal Family lives in a bubble, but they are enormously influential; touched by the same issues of race, class and gender; and Queen Elizabeth II is one of most influential politicians of modern times — and she is a politician, no matter what anyone says. Her death will be a global, cultural moment. Same thing with the Pope, on both fronts. I listened to Brown's The Diana Chro

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