“My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.”—Patricia Highsmith

During this crisis, as you adjust to the confines of your physical space, tiny or expansive, as you juggle competing demands of work and family or struggle to keep yourself fed and protected, you have most surely also imagined things.

2017 was a successful year for many of the writers with whom I worked on book proposals, manuscripts and publishing strategies. Here is a partial list of their awards and forthcoming or recently published books.

Knuckle-biting suspense, breath-quickening action, an audaciously bold protagonist. Perhaps these aren’t things that come to mind when you think of a business book. We expect business books to dispense advice; thrillers to entertain. But just as a good thriller can have the ancillary purpose of instructing you on such things as how to escape a moving car or defend yourself with a pencil, why can’t a thriller keep you at the edge of your seat as it doles out its lessons?

.It’s a huge accomplishment to come to that last sentence of a novel, a memoir or another book of nonfiction and any writer who does so owes themselves a hearty pat on the back, a smile, a vacation. But after the beach towel is rolled up and the bows are taken, it’s time to get back to work.

Several years ago, a writer came up to me after a talk I presented about strategies to get your work published. She told me that when I was a literary agent, several years prior, I had written her a pretty strong note telling her that her novel wasn’t ready for publication. I braced for her recrimination, as she quoted my words, which were instructions to more or less, “put this manuscript in your bottom drawer”. I began to apologize to her for my “candor”, but she cut me off. “Actually, I wanted to thank you. You spared me from publishing something that was far from my best work.”