Craft on Draft presents – Writing Your Novel’s Biggest Moments at Trident Booksellers & Cafe

Going big can be a challenge. Write too loud and your big moments become melodrama, not loud enough and they can lose their punch. Come hear how authors Rachel Barenbaum (A Bend in the Stars), Mark Guerin (You Can See More from up Here), and Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne (Holding on to Nothing) found the right volume for their novels’ biggest moments.

Want in on the action? Submit one page from your own big, loud moment (max 250 words). Include a brief explanation of the problem it solved navigating the middle of your novel. One lucky winner will have their entry read and discussed by the authors, receive a GrubStreet pint glass + drink, and have their piece and an interview published on the Dead Darlings blog. Email submissions to info@craftondraft.org by October 24.

Reading from Forest Hills Cemetery-inspired Novel

BETH CATRODALE will read from her new novel In This Ground, which is set almost entirely in a cemetery. She will also discuss how Jamaica Plain’s historic Forest Hills Cemetery served as an inspiration for the book.

Call for Submissions – Embark: A Literary Journal for Novelists

Embark, a literary journal that features the openings of unpublished novels, is now accepting submissions for its third issue, which will be released in January 2018!

The submission deadline is December 15, 2017. These are the submission guidelines.

All you novelists out there, polish up your openings and send them in!

Sci-Fi/Horror authors DAN MOREN and LL SOARES at Porter Square Books

Porter Square Books welcomes journalist, podcast host, and author DAN MOREN in conversation with Bram Stoker Award-winning author L.L. SOARES.

MOREN’s The Caledonian Gambit is a throwback to the classic sci-fi adventures of spies and off-world politics, but filled to the brim with modern sensibilities.  The galaxy is mired in a cold war between two superpowers.  Thrust between this struggle are Simon Kovalic, the Commonwealth’s preeminent spy, and Kyle Rankin, a ‘lowly janitor’ happily scrubbing toilets on Sabaea, a remote and isolated planet.  However, Kyle Rankin is a lie. His real name is Eli Brody, and he fled his home world of Caledonia years ago.  The past that Brody desperately tried to abandon can grant Kovalic access to people and places that are otherwise off limits, even for a professional spy like Kovalic.

SOARES’s Buried in Blue Clay takes place in Blue Clay, Massachusetts— a city of 100,000, with more than its share of mysteries and urban legends (many of which are true).  Reddy Soames left when he was a kid and swore to never go back, but here he is, at the end of his rope, gathering stories for a book about Blue Clay’s legends.  It’s his last chance to get things right. Hek is a charismatic figure who will lift the veil and show Reddy the Blue Clay no one else sees.  Reddy will be drawn into his orbit, and witness things nightmares are made of.

This event is not ticketed.