Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Solid State Substack

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In 1982, I wrote my first book, and I went on to write two dozen more. All of these were put out by large publishing houses, but all of them were non-fiction works about computers and trading. Now, I have finished my first novel, Solid State, but instead of going about the normal route, I am going to publish it myself on Substack, releasing one (short!) chapter every weekday starting on September 16th and running until the end of 2024. I hope you will subscribe and enjoy it, as there will be no charge for doing so. I look forward to hearing what you think!

Literary Agent Saga

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Before I even start into this best-of-Slope post, I’ll come right out and say it: if you are (or know of) someone in the world of literary agents or publishing, I’d love to hear from you. By the end of this post, I think you’ll see why! So here we go.

I’ve been a professional writer since I was a teenager. I wrote for national magazines at 15, had my first published book at 16, and by the time I was 25, I had written that many books (that is to say: 25). They were all books about computers, and I was financially independent by the time I was in my late teens. Getting published was very easy, because almost every book proposal I came up with was accepted. I had no agent. Just myself.

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