Seminar: Get A Book Published

You’re invited to a Get-Published-in-Today’s-Market Seminar
on Saturday, August 14,
at my cabin in the woods, south of Chapel Hill, NC.

You’ll learn:

--How to think about your book or idea – however literary or personal – from a commercial perspective

--How to approach an agent (with fiction or nonfiction)

--The trends in publishing by the major houses and how to stay current

--How to choose and approach small presses

--Self-publishing’s new respectability—how and where to begin

--How to make the most of your credentials

--As well as up-to-date high points of: promotion, Internet and print resources, “building a platform,” networking, and aspects of getting a book out into the world.

(What we won’t cover: photo books, books for small children, poetry.)

My publishing credits include: two novels, Sister India published by Riverhead (Penguin Putnam), a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and Revelation (Simon & Schuster) with screen rights sold to Synergy Films. Co-authorship of a nonfiction book, The Healing Power of Doing Good, published by Fawcett Columbine (Ballantine Books). I’ve published articles, essays, and reviews in More, Ms., Cosmopolitan, Travel & Leisure, Family Circle, Motor Boating & Sailing, and other magazines, and in newspapers including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and most of the other major American newspapers.

Writers I’ve worked with in my consulting services for writers have found agents, published with major book houses including Simon & Schuster, Wiley, Workman, and St. Martin's, as well as smaller presses, literary journals, magazines (Gourmet, Newsweek), newspapers, and online publications.


Nuts and bolts:

Class hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hang out until 5:30 and socialize, if you like.
Lunch and drinks are provided.
Feel free to bring your laptop.
No prerequisites: you’re welcome whether you’re previously published, finishing a book, considering an idea, or looking for one.
Cost: $95
Reserve by sending a check to Peggy Payne, 410 Morson Street, Raleigh, NC 27601 or click on the payment button at the bottom of this page.

Did I leave out anything? Contact me with questions at peggypayne(at)peggypayne.com or in the comments section here. Thanks.

Peggy



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Spunky Mama: A Hospital Adventure

It's been a wild couple of days. At first, seemed as if Mom had had
a heart attack. Then it appeared to be an infection in a lung.

Then it was definitely a fairly weird situation. I won't encumber you with the medical details, but some organs had gotten kinda twisted up. And apparently, she has had this situation for decades, maybe even from having twins 57 years ago, and no one knows why it got painful at this time. (Also, no one could understand why it didn't affect her appetite at all.)

A couple of doctors were saying she needed surgery to fix it, but then the pain went away with one Tylenol. She said she saw no need for surgery for anything that could be cured by one Tylenol. And the last surgeon said: let it be, maybe it'll never be a problem again. If it is, then operate then. She liked him a lot. But he wanted her to have one more test to be sure.

So mid-afternoon Friday, she went downstairs to the outpatient surgery wing to have that. After more than an hour Brother Franc and I started getting worried. Then we learned, unbelievably, that the whole county had no water, a main line had broken and water had to be shut off and porta potties were being brought to the hospital and there would be no surgery except emergency because they couldn't wash instruments.

The whole hospital turned into a sort of convivial gathering the way a town does during a power outage or some such. It was during that moment that a lot more relatives arrived in Mom's room and a woman came in to announce personally to every patient not to drink the water and the CEO of the hospital decided to pop in for a visit and found Franc fully clothed lying on Mom's bed making phone calls. (He'd already told one caller that Mom was in for breast augmentation and a facelift because dating at 88 is so competitive.)

The CEO thought Franc lying in bed with his shoes on was the patient and said, So you're about to be released? Then Mom was rolled back into the room, and said she was going home, which she did. And I drove the three hours home to my house, back to where it was possible to take a shower.

Saturday Mom went out and ran errands and got her hair done. I, on the other hand, am exhausted. She's to go get the last test sometime this week after they've taken care of the more pressing cases. I still have a faint worry that it will show something bad, but the medical opinion is that it probably won't.

And one medic said that based on the tests they'd done, she has another good ten years, that nothing else is wrong with her at all and she isn't at any risk for anything. Energetic as she is, Husband Bob thought she'd be upset at the idea of only ten more years, but she thought making it to 98 would be fine.



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