"I grew up in New York, and for the first ten years of my life, we lived across from the Metropolitan Museum. When I was an adult, I moved back to that neighborhood and lived there again."
"I might have created the phrase 'memory tools', but people have always found talismans to help them meditate into a state of hypnosis where they can access their past lives."
"In my novels, there are twelve ancient 'memory tools,' all now lost. Each of the 'Reincarnationist' books revolves around a different tool."
"When writers stop to sharpen pencils or get up and make coffee to procrastinate, they still stay in their heads with their characters. But when you zip over to read email or check your Facebook page, you get zapped out of the fictive dream. It's brutal on my writing."
"All the marketing and advertising sells the book as what it is and hopes that the book will be displayed so that your readers can find it."
"I just want to sit in my room and write books."
"I think the most important thing we as writers can do is figure out how we define what success will mean to us and focus on that."
"I'm realistic about my career as a novelist. I'm certainly not a superstar and far, far from a household name, but I feel successful."
"From the very beginning, I envisioned success as selling enough books so I could keep getting published and continue to write what I wanted to without compromising."
"Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners."
"Find out if your radio interviewer has read your book, or you are going to have to do that part of the job on air. It's okay if they haven't, but it's always better to be prepared for what's coming."
"Ask your editor or ask your agent to find out what the house's goals are for your book before it comes out. Get some sense of expectations so you are prepared."
"Save yourself some grief. Check with the publicist you hire to see what other books he/she has coming out at the same time as yours."
"Estimates are that in 2012, more than 32 million books were available - the explosion, thanks to the ease of self-publishing; 2013 could see even more titles grace our virtual bookstores! That means we are going to be awash in covers and titles, plot descriptions and characters."
"We need to write books that publicists and marketers and booksellers and book club leaders and librarians and readers can get excited about. That have something about them that makes them stand out. That makes them shine."
"PR and marketing doesn't sell books. It gets attention for them. It sends readers to bookstores and websites to read a few pages."
"With so many millions of titles available, the books that will get talked about are the books that make readers talk about them."
"Social media buzz can lead to huge successes when people spread the word about something they love and want to share. But authors creating their own buzz? Making their own noise? It's hard to make a lot of noise on our own about our own work. Except, sadly, negative noise."
"It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking our careers will come to a standstill, or worse, crash and burn if we aren't social media butterflies."
"It's so easy to look foolish online."
"Twitter is worth it if you like tweeting. Same is true of Facebook. Or Pinterest. Nothing wrong with having a social presence."
"Sometimes what you mustn't do is just as just as important as what you must do."
"I've had a dozen novels published and have made far more than a dozen mistakes. Which is why Randy Susan Meyers and I wrote a guidebook to help authors avoid making our mistakes."
"Don't spend more than 10% of your marketing/PR budget on a trailer. Trailers have to be marketed, too. So, far too many authors wind up marketing their trailers instead of their books."
"Don't use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson's cellar instead of investing in your book."
