Today's writer needs more than just a solid knowledge of usage and composition to write successfully. Bestselling author Arthur Plotnik reveals the secrets to attention-grabbing, unforgettable writing, in this trade paperback edition.Updated with all-new writing exercises, Spunk & Bite will help writers take books, articles, business reports, memos, and even e-mail messages to the next level.

Open The Urban Tree Book and discover the joys of forest trekking--right in your city or town. This first-of-a-kind field guide introduces readers to the trees on their block, in neighborhood parks, and throughout the urban landscape. Unlike traditional tree guides with dizzying numbers of woodland species, The Urban Tree Book explores nature in the city, describing some 200 tree types likely to be found on North America's streets and surrounding spaces, including suburban...

A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • One of the most beloved books of our time: an illuminating account of the forest, and the science that shows us how trees communicate, feel, and live in social networks. After reading this book, a walk in the woods will never be the same again.“Breaks entirely new ground ... [Peter Wohlleben] has listened to trees and decoded their language. Now he speaks for them.”—

A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future.There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers, and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field.Fr...

Do you feel overwhelmed trying to revise your novel? Faced with a hot mess of rough draft, maybe you feel confused, unsure of what to fix -- or rather, what to fix first! Editing fiction takes a slightly different mindset than writing the first rough pass of a novel. There are a lot of moving parts in a work of fiction. The trick is to not try and tackle everything at once. ROCK YOUR REVISIONS: A Simple System for Revising Your Novel

This Mediterranean travel memoir offers "an engaging mix of history, food travelogue, and botany lesson . . . There is much to enjoy here" ( Library Journal).Inspired by her Syrian forebears' intimate relationship with the olive, Julie Angus embarks on a voyage around the Mediterranean to unlock the secrets of the fruit that meant so much to them. Accompanied by her husband and their ten-month-old son, Angus collects samples from ancient trees to determine...

The definitive guide to polishing your prose from veteran editor Jan Venolia.Everyone knows that writing can be improved by the simple process of reviewing, editing, and rewriting, but many struggle with how to go about critiquing their own work—be it a letter to a friend, an important business document, or an academic essay. Fortunately, help is at hand in Rewrite Right! The skills needed to revise your work are surprisingly easy to learn and a cinch to i...

Only God can make a tree,” wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that celebration in a biography” of this extraordinary - and extraordinarily important - organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’...

An essential guide to every species of tree found in the British Isles – outside of arboretumsThis easy-to-use guide covers the 360 species of tree that are found in Britain & Ireland. Each species is covered in detail with information on how to identify, whether from a leaf, twig, bark or whole tree, plus extra information on where the tree grows (including a map), how high they grow, what uses it is put to and history.Every species is also comprehensively illustrated with...

Many writers have heard of hooks, and have heard we should use them in our manuscripts as a tool to engage readers and keep them engaged, but what we’re not told is how to identify what a hook is or where to use them to maximize them other than in that key opening line.In this book we’ll look at five specific types of hooks. There are more, but these are the most common, and the most universal, which means by understanding how to craft them, most readers will respon...

Professional editor and author Elizabeth Lyon offers aspiring novelists the guidance and instruction they need to write and edit well-crafted and compelling stories that will stand out from the competition and attract the attention of agents and publishers, including:- Stand-out style techniques, from accessing an authentic voice to applying techniques of "wordsmithing" that transform prose- How to rewrite characterization for dimensionality, a universal need, and theme

The misconceptions around what writers mean when we talk about strong female characters make them one of the most difficult character types to write well. Do we have to strip away all femininity to make a female character strong? How do we keep a strong female character likeable? If we're writing historical fiction or science fiction or fantasy based on a historical culture, how far can we stray from the historical records when creating our female characters?In Strong Female Ch...