MSI Press Blog

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  This week's conversation points out the reason why many authors get rejection after rejection with only the note that "it is not a fit for us." Chances are that is really, truly the reason, and it means that the author did not do his/her homework. Authors should only be submitting work where there is an apparent "fit." To do otherwise is a waste of the publisher's time and a waste of the author's time, efforts, hopes, and, often, money. So, how do you know that there is a potential fit? Check out the kinds of books that the author publishes. It is amazing how many fiction submissions we get. We do not publish

  Excerpt from Tucker & Me (Harvey) - RIDING THE WILD MATTRESS               I was a planned Cesarean birth. The doctor gave my mother a choice of several dates for delivery, and she picked the seventeenth. This was because her birthday was on the seventeenth, albeit in a different month. This was part of an inordinate role the number seventeen played in our family.                      I was brought home as a baby to our residence in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park. I only lived there until I was two years old, but it was always referred to as the Hermosa Vista House, in reference to the name of the street. The street number was 417, thus continuing an odd streak of the number seventeen in our family residences. After that house, we lived in the city of Alhambra, with a street address of 1717. The next home we moved to the address was simply 17. Ultimately, the family settled in another town, where the house numbers were 1728. That’s an awful lot of seventeens for one fam

  Excerpt from Tucker and Me (Andrew Harvey) PLAYING WITH FIRE               My father, George, had a rather odd love-hate relationship with fire. It reminds me of an old joke about a famous monster, which stated that Frankenstein’s primary form of problem solving was strangulation. Deadly effective, but not the most subtle approach. George never strangled anyone as far as I know, but he did use fire as a key solution for vexing problems around his property.             Fire is one of those things that can be either good or bad; it all depends on the context and care in which it’s put to use. George’s judgment was never his strong suit, but he did have protocols he employed when using fire. Now you might think this would involve things like safety equipment, universal precautions, and the like. However, none of these cumbersome things were taken into account. There really was only one rule. When you used fire to solve a problem, you had to drink beer. A lot of it.             The first

  Congratulations to MSI Press authors whose books placed in the Hollywood Book Festival. Irit Schaffer ( Good Blood ) earned the silver medal in the spiritual category and an honorable mention in the historical category. Andrew Harvey ( Tucker and Me ) earned an honorable mention in the autobiography/biography/memoir category.  MSI Press Blog Joanna Charnas ( A Movie Lover’s Search for Romance )    earned an honorable mention in the autobiography/biography/memoir category.  Betty Sha w and Dave Brown ( One Simple Text… ) earned an honorable mention in the general nonfiction category.