serial

At last! Glixman is available in the States!!!

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Copies of Glixman in a Fix are in the U.S. now, and they will be available for purchase starting this week at Jewish bookstores nationwide, and on the Menucha Publishers website. The continue to be available at select locations throughout Israel.

Glixman in a Fix is the novelization of my Binah Between serial (which concluded two years ago). Mendel Glixman is a teenager with a secret, a secret which prevents him from making – and keeping – friends. But when trouble comes along, he’ll need some friends to get out of his terrible fix.

At 278 pages, Glixman in a Fix, makes a perfect read for readers ages 9 to 14 years old – and anyone else who likes a book with a few thrills and a big heart.

See here for purchasing details!

(I’m still waiting for my copies to arrive, but nonetheless, this is a step in the right direction!)

Novelization of Glixman in a Fix: contract signed, book IY”H due out next year

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For a while now, I’ve been sitting on a little morsel of news, because I’m exceedingly paranoid about the evil eye (embarrassing, but true): I’ve signed a contract with Menucha Publishers for the novelization of Glixman in a Fix, my serial from Binah BeTween.

This morning, I received the list of changes the editor would like to see in the novelization. The list is totally reasonable, and mostly consists of changes I suggested in the first place, mostly fixing loose ends I dropped and introducing an idea earlier in the text so that it’s less surprising when it pops up near the end.

For some reason, I feel short of breath and ill to the stomach, like I’m about 5 minutes away from a panic attack. I’m not sure if it’s excitement or fear of failure triggering my parasympathetic nervous system. I’m pretty sure I’m experiencing both.

Assuming I complete the changes and everything else (editing, book design, proofreading, etc.) runs on schedule, the book will – G-d willing! – be published next summer-ish. You’ll get updates on all breaking news as the situation develops. 😉

A discovery! And what happens when you follow other writers’ advice.

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So, things today went better today than last week. In short, I wrote more today than I wrote in the entirety of last week. (Yes, that’s how bad things were going.)

One of the things I found helpful was focus@will’s new setting “Cafe focus Beta.” A few months back, I reported that researchers released data indicating that writers are more productive in cafes than sitting in a quiet office at home. Well, I guess the folks at focus@will read the same study, because not only can you use the site to enhance your creativity with baroque or ambient music — or to white noise — you can now listen to a re-creation of a busy cafe full of people.

And yes, I did indeed find it helpful.

I also relied on the advice of other writers today in order to increase my productivity. Continue reading →

Can we just get this over with?

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I am sick of writing my serial.

There, I’ve said it.

This week, I’ve resolved to crank this puppy out as fast as humanly possible, because I fear it has taken over my writing life. I haven’t written a piece of fiction in months other than episodes of Glixman in a Fix.

serial title image

Can I just kill off Mendel’s Aunt Rina?

If I didn’t have readers come over to me every couple weeks and tell me how much they look forward to each episode, I think I would have thrown in the towel already.

I have a bad, baaaaaad feeling that some editor will Continue reading →

Writing conundrum: Leaving behind that outline without creating problems

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So, I’m back to cranking out chapters of my serial this week, and this time, I hope to do it a little faster. The quicker I finish the serial, the easier it will be for me to focus on other projects, I think. Anyway, something is happening as I write that I think is worth mentioning, because I sincerely doubt that I’m the only writer to experience it.

In the beginning, there was an outline…

serial title imageIn order to secure my gig to write my current serial for Binah BeTween (“Glixman in a Fix”), I had to prepare an outline. Once that was approved (along with character profiles, the summary, and so on), I started writing. Generally, I write the serial episodes — I might have mentioned this before — in blocks of three, basing them on the outline. Because I’m working from an outline, with characters who are now well known to me, the writing goes relatively quickly. Then I revise the rough drafts once or twice and send them together in a batch to the editor.

Recalibrating

We’re now more than a third of the way in, and more and more often, I find that I’m diverging from the outline. Continue reading →