Recommended Reading for Career-Minded Writers

This tip is from my newsletter, but when there is good news out there that I know will help my writing friends, well, what can I do but shout it out--as often as possible!  Anyone who wants to subscribe to my SharingwithWriters newsletter can do so on my Web site; the subscription form is in the upper left corner of almost every page.

Favorite Tip: June Casagrande is my favorite grammar guru and former student at UCLA and she has her third grammar book coming out on April 15^th.   It is The best punctuation book, period. Yes, no caps. And the title includes the punctuation. It's published by Ten Speed.

June also writes a syndicated column for newspapers, A Word Please. AND she gave me blurbs for my The Frugal Editor, both the first edition and the newly released Kindle version of the second. I think I’m as excited as she is about this. Go by her buy page on Amazon and at least add her book to your wish list. It’s a way to support fellow authors.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

Little Jewels: Seven Gifts for Writers

Little Jewels: Seven Gifts for Writers That Writers Are Unlikely to Have in Their Libraries (So They Don't Have to Return Your Gift!)

Books are gifts that keep on giving. Gift books give back to the publishing industry which keeps writers in work and readers happy! So here are some books you can give to writers this holiday season, books that they may not already have on their shelves.

You will note that all these books are not on writing per se. We all know a writer must know lots about a whole lot of things, so these books can help your writer better her craft, her promotion skills, her grammar or publishing skills or just plain give her information that can make a difference in her writing career.

• Mortal Syntax 101 Language Choices That Will Get You Clobbered by the Grammar Snobs--Even If You're Right by June Casagrande (ISBN 9780243113324)

• Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande (ISBN 0143036831)

• Speak with Passion Speak with Power! Transform Inexperience and the Fear of Public Speaking into Energy, Know-How and Results! by Pamela Gilbreath Kelly, M.A. (ISBN 9780979100109)

• The Solution is at Hand: The Dottie Walters Story, by Dottie Walters and Terri Marie, Foreword by Jack Canfield (ISBN 094347714x)

• The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write by Mark David Gerson (ISBN: 9780979547553)

• The Complete Writer's Journal (ISBN 9780974375892)

• The Well-Fed Self Publisher by Peter Bowerman (ISBN: 0967059860)

• Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling by David Wolman (ISBN: 978-0061369254)

• A Book Is Born: 24 Authors Tell All, Edited by Nancy Cleary (ISBN: 9781932279504)

• The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, Edited by John Gross (ISBN 0192804685)

Of course, I hope when you go to your favorite online bookstore to order for the holidays that you'll add one of my books to (frugally!) fill out your order to get free shipping.

They are:

*The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't (ISBN: 193299310X) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193299310X/

*The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success (ISBN 9780978525874) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0978515870/

*"The Great First Impression Book Proposal: Everything You Need To Know To Sell Your Book in 20 Minutes or Less," An Amazon Short for only 49 cents (ISBN: B000YG6O5U)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000YG6O5U/

And please make suggestions of your own in the comments! That's part of the fun!

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal." Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com and AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at www.TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com.

A Rant: Let's Cheer for the Loss of Hyphens

An Answer to My Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies Pal


In today's issue (Oct. 3) of the Glendale News-Press, June Casagrande, "A Word, Please" columnist, noted the sad (or not-so sad) loss of the hyphen due to the influence of the Web. Technology has thrust all manner of bad grammar habits onto those who love correct English. Many of these habits are enumerated in The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. Some are worried that the hyphen may go extinct! Well, I for one will cheer.

As June--who is also the author of Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies --notes, the Brits don't agree with Americans on some points of hyphen-using anyway. Worse the style guides can't agree and the dictionaries don't either.

But the Net is promulgating worse than just this distressing disappearing-hyphen syndrome. It has encouraged us to push all kinds of words together. That comes from what I call the "domain name influence." Or domainnameinfluence, if you will. Book or bookcover? Bookfair or book fair. Backmatter or back matter? Hard copy or hardcopy? You get the idea.

Even with the zero-tolerance approach to grammar I use to keep authors out of hot water with agents and publishers (and therefore make it more likely they'll get published), I am making combined-word style choices everywhere else but in query letters.

Simply put, I love to stick words together. Word-bonding is a time-honored tradition in English. As an example, the word therefore. So word-gluing is sort of back to the Germanic roots we came from! (The Germans use Fingerhut for finger hat--or, in translation, thimble).

Poets have pushed words together for ages, too. So, do I care? Not a whit. In my deepest recesses, I think grammar snobs are great big meanies, too. It's just that I don't want any of my readers to get caught in a net spread by those meanies--and they are everywhere waiting to put a kink in your career.

Back to the zero-tolerance thing. If you want to impress a literary agent or prospective boss, please don't put hyphens in words they are convinced are correct only one way. They believe it's nonfiction, not non-fiction. Though I don't get a red squiggle with either version of the word on my Amazon wordspeller 'cause it isn't as fussy as your run-of-the-mill agent or future employer will be.
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author THIS IS THE PLACE; HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF STORIES REMEMBERED; TRACINGS, a chapbook of poetry; and two how-to books, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER: HOW TO DO WHAT YOUR PUBLISHER WON'T; and THE FRUGAL EDITOR: PUT YOUR BEST BOOK FORWARD TO AVOID HUMILIATION AND ENSURE SUCCESS.
Her other blogs include TheNewBookReview and Authors Coalition, a blog that helps writers and publishers turn a ho-hum book fair booth into a sizzler.