Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

I owe a lot to writing communities.  

I will never, ever forget the day I finished a 50,000-word novel draft with the support of the National Novel Writing Month community. When I finished, I asked myself--who can help me once my draft is finished? 

This week at LitPark, Susan Henderson is discussing writing communities that help writers with a completed project. She interviewed Karen Dionne, one of the founders of the writing resource site Backspace.

Read the whole article, it's chock full of good advice and links to other communities. But pay careful attention to this particularly juicy passage. I know I'll be sifting through that reading list all weekend:

 "if an author understands the business they’re trying to enter, their odds of success go way up — whether it’s knowing how to query, or knowing the advantages and disadvantages of signing with a new agent, or an independent agent, or a large agency; knowing what copyedits are, what happens at an editorial board meeting ... The other thing that I believe made a huge difference was the help I received from a handful of best-selling thriller authors I met through Backspace: Gayle Lynds, Jim and Carolyn Hougan, David Morrell, Douglas Preston, John Lescroart, David L. Robbins, Lee Child, and David Dun."