Writing Against the Darkness Team Will Be Writing on Winter Solstice!

Not a Pipe Publishing’s team, Writing Against the Darkness, will be participating in The Alzheimer’s Association’s annual The Longest Day fundraiser. And this year we’re getting ahead by writing on the winter solstice, too!

Join the team here.

For the last few years, we’ve started writing at dawn on the longest day of the year, summer solstice, and we write until sundown. By asking friends and family to sponsor us (with just a few posts from each of us on social media), we’ve raised more than $10,000 and written 142,268 words! Everyone writes whatever they want. In addition to working on their novels, members of the group have written beautiful memoires, poetry which has made it into published collections, and even the lyrics to songs that are now recorded singles. So bring your writing powers and join us in fighting Alzheimer’s disease. We’d love to double the size of the team, double the wordcount, and double the fundraising total this year. And we can do it, in part thanks to an idea from Stephanie Foster, the Development Associate at the The Alzheimer’s Association’s Oregon Chapter. We’re going to start building our team even earlier this year and kick-off by writing all day on the winter solstice. It’s a lot easier to write on the shortest day than the longest, so this is a great way to dip your toe in the water. Just go to this link and click on the green “Join Our Team” link.

Join Here

(Be sure you don’t accidentally click the “Donate” button. We’d love the donation to the team’s efforts, but we want you to join our team even more!)

We’ll get in touch with all the team members with details for the winter solstice. The Longest Day event has always been so much fun, and we’re excited to bring some extra light to the darkest time of the year, too!

Jason Brick on How to Write Query Letters

Jason Brick, your writing sensei

Not a Pipe Publishing's own Jason Brick, author of Wrestling Demons) has written a great guide to writing query letters. We're not open to submissions right now (Bonus hint: Sending query letters to agents and publishers who are not accepting them does NOT make you look like a go-getter. It makes you look unprofessional. We close submissions because we're focused on the authors we've already signed, and you should want to find a place that will prioritize you once they've signed you, so honor that). However, when we do open back up, please take Jason's advice. Our only other Not-a-Pipe-specific-addition: When Jason says, "Talk about things they’ve published that you read and loved (especially if they dovetail with your project)," this is particularly important to a small press. If you haven't read any of our books, that tells us you probably won't once we sign you, and that means you won't be able to blurb them, review them, tweet about them, or generally be a good team player. We're building a family of great authors, and we're picky about who gets adopted, so referencing our books tells us you'll take your turns doing the dishes and mowing the lawn in this family. 

Check out Jason's very practical advice, complete with templates, HERE.