Category: Fiction
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The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 2
Tony and his Salvadoran-Appalachian family attend his uncle Jack’s funeral, where the mourners aren’t mourning–either the men are running in just to make sure he’s dead, and the two dozen women are lining up to look at their old lover one more time. Here, we learn why Uncle Jack is so important to Tony–we go…
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Audio Book: The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones, Part 1
In the first pages of the novel, we meet Antonio “Tony” McCaugh Villalobos, an Appalachian-Salvadoran writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee, and far from his Salvadoran roots. He’s just published his first book, a literary novel, which means he didn’t get any money for it. He’s trying to write his next novel, but has writer’s block.…
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Next Week: Audio Book Podcast
The last few weeks, The Writing Bull Podcast has focused on different tricks of the fiction trade, from creating interesting characters to outlining your plot. Those were writing classes. Now, it’s time to take a field trip. I’ve recorded my novel The Holy Spirit of My Uncle’s Cojones for the podcast, and will play it all next…
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Marketing your novel: The Query Letter
Don’t spend two years writing the Great American Novel and two weeks marketing it. It’s time to look at your novel differently: it is no longer your little baby, your creation, your Precious. It is now a product. Treat it as such; this professional mindset might help a little, when you start getting rejections. Which…
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Fiction: Outlines
Outlines can be dicey, to say the least. Here’s my first fear: if I write out an entire outline for a story, will I feel forced to stick with it, even though the narrative might be going another way? Because, if things are really grooving, and you’re in the zone for weeks at a time,…