Rachelle Gardner

One of the most common complaints about traditional publishing is how long everything seems to take. We’ve heard these grumblings for as long as I’ve been in this business, but it’s certainly increased in this digital age where immediate gratification rules.

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Author Media , owned by Thomas Umstattd, Jr., is the company that built my new site - and all authors should know about them! They do so much more than build websites, and you can benefit from their incredible knowledge for FREE by following the blog, Author Tech Tips, and following them on Twitter (@AuthorTech). You'll get a constant influx of up-to-the-minute tips, all aimed specifically at authors.

It’s been a lot of work but we're finally putting the finishing touches on the new website. There are a few things that need smoothing out, and I'm still working on some of the pages, so please bear with me as we get this finished. Feel free to let me know if you see anything that should be fixed. There are a number of reasons I’m excited about the site, the first being that I finally have my own domain name, rachellegardner.com. Easy to remember! And the other most exciting thing is that we will finally—FINALLY!—have threaded comments, meaning you'll be able to respond directly to someone else’s comment, and they can respond directly to yours. I’ve wanted this for so long—I think it’s going to make the blog so much more fun!

By now most of you have read the Wall Street Journal article that appeared on June 4th called “Darkness Too Visible” by Meghan Cox Gurdon, which decried the dark themes in today’s YA literature. After it came out, the Internet erupted with responses, including over 15,000 tweets and many blogs posts and articles from YA authors and others in the writing/publishing community. (Nathan Bransford gave some good links.) All of this happened when I was on vacation and blissfully unaware, but now I’ve read the article, dozens of the tweets and a handful of the posts and I do have something to say.

It’s time for another installment of my kids’ favorite car game, in which you get to choose between two hypothetical options. If you’re lucky enough to have played this game with kids, you’ve probably had to choose between lovely alternatives like: “Would you rather be hairy all over or completely bald?” or, “Would you rather…

(And Other Annoying Devices) When I’m editing manuscripts, I somehow turn into the cruel and heartless eliminator of… exclamation points!!! Seriously, I’ve developed a hatred for them! People tend to WAY overuse them! Not to mention italics and bold, and that oh-so-effective use of ALL CAPS!!!!!!! Here’s a hint to avoid coming across as amateur: Use the…

I just returned from my summer vacation and am still trying to re-integrate into normal life so I don’t have any profound insights for today’s blog post. (My last seven posts were pre-scheduled before I left town. I love modern technology.) But I do have a couple of observations from my time away, and here they are: 1. People…

Dear Rachelle: You’ve blogged about how to write a good query letter, but what about the stage after a successful query, when several agents have requested partials or fulls? How many requested partials or fulls become clients? Could a dozen agents be interested enough to take a look, but none of them love it enough…

I’m taking a blogging break this week. Hope you enjoy this post from my archives. I received a letter from a writer who said that one of the great joys of his life was creating ideas and playing around with characters in fantastic worlds. But when he decided to try transferring these thoughts into stories,…

I’m taking a blogging break this week. Hope you enjoy this post from my archives. One of the biggest challenges for novelists—new and seasoned alike—is avoiding too much backstory in the opening of the book. A lot of people ask me questions about backstory, and often argue with me about it. So I wanted to…

I’m taking a blogging break this week. Hope you enjoy this post from my archives. As I go through queries and partials, I’m often thinking about the two elements of a good novel: craft and story. Craft refers to all the mechanics of fiction: plot, characterization, dialogue, pacing, flow, scene-crafting, dramatic structure, point-of-view, etc. Story…

I’m taking a blogging break this week. Hope you enjoy this post from my archives. “Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to…