Mistakes Were Made

Long ago, I attended a publishing dinner, where the more seasoned editors started to pick at a favorite scab: successful books they’d turned away. (I was still counting myself lucky to get submissions at all, let alone have the option to pursue or pass.)  At the time, a book of political humor was a surprise [...]

Where I Write: Emma Rathbone

This post concludes the first installment of our series The Writer at Work, and we’re grateful to Emma Rathbone for taking part in it.  Here she shows us where she works—a place that we at Reagan Arthur Books are calling “the world’s most organized desk.” This is the desk at which I write. It is [...]

Emma Rathbone: Influences and Inspiration

When people ask me what my influences are I always go blank. It’s like when people ask me what my favorite book or band is. Suddenly everything falls away and the only thing I can remember is the thing that I just read, and then something completely random like A Kiss Before Dying, a dusty [...]

Emma Rathbone: On Being Edited

It seems that there are many different ways the editing process can go after the contract is signed. I’d actually talked to my editor on the phone before he’d even made an offer. I believe this is a common practice in publishing: interested editors will call the author, discuss the manuscript, and make sure that [...]

Emma Rathbone: How I Got the Idea for My Novel

This is the second post in an ongoing series.  Check back tomorrow for Emma Rathbone’s thoughts on the editing process. There’s that old story about how Keith Richards came up with the idea for Satisfaction in a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida. Apparently in the early morning hours he woke from a dream, his head [...]

The Writer at Work: Emma Rathbone

This post inaugurates a new series called The Writer at Work, looking behind the scenes at our writers’ lives: how and where they write, how they landed their first book deal, what it’s like to be edited, where they draw their inspiration. Our first entry comes from Emma Rathbone, whose debut novel The Patterns of [...]