Who is more passionate than a mother about her children? Only a mother who is also a writer! Meet Corin Wiser, mother, wife, and successful author of the book Matters of the Heart: A Guide to Living and Loving Your Teen Years. As Corin puts it, her book “offers simple and straightforward tools to help the reader connect with her inner voice, or ‘internal guidance system,’ and to overcome negative influences on the way to reaching her full potential.”

Well, it’s definitely working. After publishing her book, Corin has seen it snapped up by mothers and daughters everywhere! A series of workshops have sprung up to accompany the book, and it’s even been embraced as required reading in some forward-thinking schools! Not bad for a mama with something to say, huh?

WordHustler sat down with Corin to get her opinion on what to do when the drive to write overtakes you, how to market yourself as a new author, and why sometimes breakfast for dinner is the best solution. Read on to find out more about this amazing mother/writer! Also, stay tuned - at end of the interview if you answer a fabulous trivia question correctly, you could win a FREE copy of Corin’s book!

WordHustler: You have a background as a speaker and have your Masters in Education- what made you decide you HAD to write this book?

Corin Wiser: That’s precisely how I felt - I felt that I HAD to write this book. A few years ago, I was drawn to my old journals, journals that I’d kept since I was nine years old. I sat on my bedroom floor for two days and just read, reconnecting with my younger self. What I discovered in those journals was a young adolescent who had a pretty good childhood, but who also experienced self-doubt and insecurity, feelings of uncertainty and insignificance, and plenty of unanswered questions and regrettable mistakes. Looking back, I wish I’d had a roadmap - a guidebook - to help me discover and focus on the things that really mattered to me, and to help me develop the strength and courage to live by those things.

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Ho ho holidays, Hustlers! While you’re hurrying to grab the last of those gifts and stuff those stockings, we wanted to remind you about our merry Holiday Shipping Schedule.

WordHustler’s Holiday Shipping Schedule:

Orders placed by 3 pm PST on Wednesday, December 23rd will be shipped that same day.

Orders placed AFTER 3 pm PST on Wedsnesday, December 23rd won’t ship until Monday, January 4th.

WordHustler will be closed from Thursday, December 24th - Sunday, January 3rd. All orders placed in this time period will be shipped on January 4th, 2010.

Thanks for making 2009 so bountiful and bright, Hustlers! Have yourself some fantastic holidays and get geared up for 2010- new WordHustlerInk Interviews with agents and editors, the debut of our brand-spanking new Digital Submission System, and some major publishing success for YOU!

Wishing you Happy Holidays and a Prolific New Year!

So you think you’ve been writing “forever?” Dan Jenkins, sports journalist and novelist may have you beat- he’s been writing for over SIXTY years. Successful at just about everything he has tried his hand at- columns for Sports Illustrated and Golf Digest, non-fiction golf retrospectives, and hilarious sports novels- Jenkins’ writing features his signature wit and sly observations.

WordHustler sat down with this sports writing legend to learn about his start in the industry and his adventures over the years. The real question is: how has Jenkins managed to stay on top of his game for so long? The answer: dedication, hard work, and…Twitter.

Read on to learn how you can score a touchdown for your writing career, with Dan Jenkins as your coach.

WordHustler: You have a journalism background, and have spent time writing for Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest and Playboy…what do you consider your first big break, writing-wise?

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by James Kaelan

When Opium 8 came out earlier this year, I was both excited and jealous. With a very simple technology-graduating layers of black ink, printed over white text, that degrades when exposed to UV radiation-the cover of the Infinity Issue promises to reveal a story over the course of 1,000 years, with one new word appearing every century. Opium got a lot of press out of that, and rightfully. The concept was very advanced, but the execution was simple. The cover might seem like a gimmick, but that’s a delimiting perspective. Books need to get people excited.

Flatmancrooked Publishing, which I co-own with Elijah Jenkins and Deena Drewis, and which is releasing my debut book, We’re Getting On, has a project in the works that aims to redefine how books get promoted in the 21st Century. For most publishers, an author tour is a loss leader. The cost to send a writer from city to city (airfare, hotels, handlers, rental cars) outweighs the monetary gains accrued from book sales during the tour.

Accordingly, most publishers have dispensed with tours-or they make the author foot the bill. But Flatmancrooked believes engaging directly with an audience is a major key to the success of a title. Therefore, the more people we can reach, the better. How, though, can a small company afford to send an author on a trip across the country? It’s simple: Make the tour as exciting as the book itself.

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We all know writing can be tough. So every once in a while, you probably surf around the Interwebs, looking for funny sites to distract yourself from your cursor blinking on your blank Word doc. Maybe in one of those comedic searches you’ve even run into a much-loved site called Pets Who Want To Kill Themselves. Maybe you’ve chuckled at a huge black terrier stuffed into a squirrel costume, or a chihuahua dressed as a turkey. And maybe, just maybe, you laughed.

Well prepare to chuckle again- WordHustler turned the mastermind behind this hilarious site, writer Duncan Birmingham, loose on WordHustlerInk to interview his most challenging subject yet: himself. Birmingham is a successful screenwriter who managed to turn his popular blog into an even-more popular humor book published by Random House! How did he do it? What’s the secret? And, most importantly, how did they get those boxing gloves on that pit bull?

WordHustler Duncan: Duncan, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. Can you tell our readers how this book deal came about?

Real Duncan: Sure, Duncan. I spent three years slaving away on a novel nobody would publish. A year later I started a blog with photos of pets dressed in sombreros and R-rated captions and I got a book deal within the month.

WHD: Why pets?

RD: Mailer, DeLillo, Roth; they’ve all focused on the human condition in America. I thought it was time that a writer was brave enough to tackle the pet condition in a post 9/11 America.

WHD: Oh boy, is this really going to be that kind of interview? Seriously, what made you start this blog?

RD: I’d gotten a couple holidays cards with the family pet all dressed-up in antlers or a Santa’s hat and just looking like they wanted to bite someone’s face off. Those are the only holiday cards I keep on my fridge all year long. I found similar photos on the internet, came up with a title that made me laugh and started a tumblr site-which is very easy even for a Luddite like me-where I linked to the photos and did little captions. Pretty soon people were sending me their own pet photos.

WHD: What kind of pet do you have?

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WordHustler’s Literary Storm Novel Contest- CONTEST DEADLINE EXTENDED!

WordHustler is taking our writing contests to a whole new level with the debut of our Literary Storm Novel Contest (ENTER HERE). Submit the first 50 pages of your novel and you could win BIG! The details:

Official Judge: Literary Agent Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary

Grand Prize: A Complete Manuscript Critique by Joyce Sweeney, who has helped 27 people get published! (Psst: this prize is worth over $500!) as well as publication consideration from brilliant indie press Flatmancrooked!

Second and Third Prizes: Barnes and Noble Gift Certificates

NEW BONUS PRIZE:  The Top Ten Entries will ALL be considered for publishing by Flatmancrooked!

NEW Deadline: January 25th, 2010

Entry Fee: $10

What to Submit: The first 50 pages of your finished novel, along with a cover letter. Manuscript critiques are also available for an additional fee of $20. All genres of novels are accepted, including Middle Grade and Young Adult.

Go to the WordHustler Literary Storm Contest listing RIGHT HERE to enter or hit the button below to sign in (or sign up) and enter!

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