Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives...

Welcome to my newsletter. The title comes from one of my favorite Mekons songs.

I’ve been working around books for my entire professional life. I’ve been a bookseller, a book reviewer, a journalist covering the publishing industry, a digital marketing director, a writer, and an acquiring editor. These days, I’m writing book reviews and essays, and doing developmental editing for other writers who are looking to whip their manuscripts into publishable shape.

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that there’s only so much you can read about writing itself—ultimately, the key to becoming a better writer is just to keep writing. But if there’s only so much any of us can say about the craft of writing, there’s also so much to be said about everything around it, whether it’s about the business side of publishing or about the psychological and emotional aspects of the writing life.

And that’s what I’m hoping to do with this newsletter. Some of the short essays I write for this newsletter will be free, but you can also sign up for a subscription—$5 per month, or $50 for 12 months—for all the essays. There will be still be roughly one free essay a month, but paid subscribers will receive an essay every ten days or so.

I hope you’ll read some of the free essays that will appear here in early March—and, if you like what you see, I hope you’ll consider subscribing!