Hope you're doing OK right now. It's a weird time, isn't it? Just hanging in there is OK enough!
I'm popping in with two bits of news.
First: my first ebook, Notes from a Hired Pen: How I Made $135,000 in One Year of Freelance Writing, is on sale: $5 with code "summer."
Second: I'm working on another one. That's right! I hope to have a second Notes from a Hired Pen ebook out later this year. *When* exactly depends on my schedule, and that of my copyeditor and designer, though I'm hoping sometime this fall.
The ebook will be about where to find freelance clients. I have a fairly good idea of what I'm going to write about, but I still want to know: where do you find your clients. I'm especially curious where you find consumer publications (newspapers, magazines, websites). I know where I look them, but I'm old, cranky and set in my ways. If you have a suggestion fill out this very basic form! Or reply to this email. Those replies go right into my inbox.
Exciting stuff! I should get back to it, so on with the show:
Recent Bylines
"Where Do Ultramarathons Go from Here?" for The New York Times
"A Gut Feeling" for The Harvard Gazette
"Information for the People" for Medicine@Brown
"Ravi Gupta's Projects Impact Politics, Social Justice" for Binghamton Magazine
"Getting Cervical Cancer Screening Right" for Clinical Laboratory News
"Meet 4 Startups Automating Warehouse Picking" for Supply Chain Dive
"Why Lumber Prices are Spiking" for Supply Chain Dive
"For Companies Stuck on Transformation, Cloud May Be the Answer" for CIO Dive
"As Offices Consider Hybrid Work, Care Warehouses Operate Remotely Too?" for Supply Chain Dive
"Running Toward Fear" for The Lawrentian
What I'm Reading
- Hollywood Kryptonite: The Bulldog, the Lady and the Death of Superman by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. This is A Story. Has anyone done a true crime podcast series on it? Not that the book is lacking (the same duo wrote Furious Love about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, which will be your perfect dishy summer read if you haven't read it already). But it was published in 1996. It seems that the topic, and the genre, is ripe for another go round.
- The Art of Deception by Leonard Goldberg. Another enjoyable book in the Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series.
- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. Neat idea: a bunch of pensioners (as they're called in England) solve crimes. It wasn't my favorite book of the year, but I will probably read the second book in this series, which comes out in September.
- Finding the Dream by Nora Roberts. Long deep sigh. The third and final book in the Dream trilogy, which I think I've written that I have read four or five times. So so good. And it mostly holds up! When people talk about what other romance series to make into a show given the success of Bridgerton, I'd recommend this one.
- The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon. The public radio angle is different, but I didn't like this one all that much. I'll also add a content warning: you probably don't want to read this if you're sober and/or trying to stay sober. The book isn't about that, but the way alcohol is used by the characters stuck out to me, and not in a good way.
- Duck Tales. I think I've talked about how much I loved the reboot of this show before, but now that I've finished the third and final season: this was really well done, and really fun. I enjoyed it very much and am sad it's over.
- Hacks. I liked it but found it uneven because of the Ava character. I feel the same way towards her as I did the protagonists of the book Normal People: they're all unlikeable to the point that I just don't care. I also don't think she's that funny for a comedy writer. Everyone else is great, and I think you should watch it if you have HBO Max, but I think you could excise that character and make a better show. Obviously it would never happen, but that's my note on it.
Until next time!
Jen A. Miller
jenamiller.com
runningalovestory.com
twitter.com/byjenamiller
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