For writers, having a book published is a huge moment. Before that happens, we may spend years writing a book. I certainly have. The manuscript for A Stone for Bread was completed twenty years ago. Three New York agents turned it down. Then I turned it down, filing it away convinced it would never publish. Several years…
Getting a good review is always a heady moment for a writer. Usually these come from professional reviewers on the staffs of newspapers and other media, who are so important for getting the word out about our work. But getting a good review from a reader offers a different satisfaction, because we write for readers not critics.…
Chatting about A Stone for Bread. To hear the interview go to WUNC.
News & Record book reviewer Linda C. Brinson calls A Stone for Bread “a compelling story that’s hard to put down… By book’s end, Herin has led the reader to consider many questions, among them the essential role of literature and art, the elusive nature of truth, the complexity of the human spirit and the importance…
So I go check out my Amazon page in the run-up to my new novel’s release. To get to the page, I type in my name. And yes, I find my two novels at the top of the page, the two editions of A Stone for Bread and the Absolution hardback. And my author info. So far…
In Part 1, I talked about the editing and design of a new book. Now come the three “P’s” of book publishing: proofing, printing and publicity. Proofing is one of those tediously joyless tasks that requires a trained eye and a solid grasp of grammar and mechanics. It’s easy to want to just delegate the proofing to your publisher’s editorial staff. But it’s important for writers to proof…
The most exciting moment in a writer’s life is a publisher’s phone call. Your book or novel or collection of stories has been accepted for publication. For first-time authors, this may come after months, even years of submissions, not infrequently accompanied by intermittent bouts of despair. But then the phone call… The dream accomplished. You’ll soon be…
“Jean-Paul Sartre said that it takes 20 years for a writer to objectively read his own work as his audience does….” That vantage may offer the writer “the delightful experience of encountering himself as a stranger.” cited by Charles Johnson, author of MIDDLE PASSAGE, in a recent NY Times interview. For some of us, this may not…
Several months ago, my editor at Livingston Press asked for a few paragraphs telling how I came to write A Stone for Bread. Here’s what I wrote: My initial idea for a novel usually comes from a character or place, a striking image, a question to which I’d like an answer or some intriguing moment from history. But once…
In the spring of 1972, I was teaching Freshman English three nights a week at Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey. This was five years after the race riots that destroyed much of inner city Newark and led to a number of deaths. Essex College was situated in downtown Newark, and even after five…