How to Write a Novel in 20 Pies: Sweet and Savory Tips for the Writing Life

Providing comfort food and inspiration for the aspiring novelist, How To Write a Novel in 20 Pies offers novelist and writing coach Amy Wallen's insider secrets on living the writing life. Filled with chapters about writing, revising, submitting to an agent, and book promotion, this book combines Wallen's experienced writing advice with the brilliant illustrations of Emil Wilson, including recipes for literary success and the full recipes for 20 sweet and savory pies.

As a novelist, memoirist, and associate director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Amy Wallen has a few things to say about the writing world, many of them irreverent and snarky. From her perspective as a teacher, mentor, and published author, her belief is that the way to survive the hard knocks of writing a book and trying to get published is to bust a gut working, laughing, and eating pie.

With chapters including "Oh Agent, Where Art Thou?", "Revising, Rewriting, and Reimagining," and "The Joy of Rejection," Wallen balances out the challenging stages of the writing process with both sweet and savory goodness, featuring recipes for chocolate pecan pie, salmon and portobello pie, and the recipe for the best cherry pie ever.

Throughout the book, Wallen demystifies the vagaries of the publishing business, providing delicious recipes that will keep your belly full even when you're staring at an empty page. Her writing advice is neatly paired with the brilliant illustrations of Emil Wilson, who shares her sharp wit, sardonic look at the demands of the writing life, and her mad love of pie. Combined, the stories, lessons, images, and recipes will provide encouragement and camaraderie for the novel-writing journey, from putting pen to page, to finding an agent, to celebrating publication--all with a piece of pie.

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 10/18/2022
Pages: 240
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.00h x 7.08w x 0.67d
ISBN: 9781524875657

About the Author
Amy Wallen is the author of the Los Angeles Times bestselling novel

Moon Pies and Movie Stars and the memoir When We Were Ghouls: A Memoir

of Ghost Stories. Amy is the associate director at the New York State Summer

Writers Institute during the summer months, and the rest of the year she

facilitates and co-teaches (with past Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin) a

manuscript workshop in San Diego (at which she serves pie) and teaches

novel writing classes at UCSD Extension. She is also the creator of Savory Salons,

literary salons with pie--a day of discourse with successful authors on

the writing life. She's also the founder of DimeStories--Three-minute

stories told by the author, and featured on NPR. Currently, she is working on two novels,

and she started NaNoPieMo after NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing

Month), which encourages writers to get started on their novels.

Emil Wilson is an art director, illustrator, and comic artist

based in San Francisco. His work has appeared in numerous

magazines and newspapers, as well as on billboards, gas

station walls, NPR, the Oscars, and the Super Bowl. He recently graduated from The Center for Cartoon

Studies, where he has completed a graphic novel in verse form. This year, he was nominated

for a Broken Pencil (Canada) award and earned an Ignatz

nomination for "Promising New Talent."