COPY EDITING NOVELS LAUNCH ANALYSIS RESEARCH TRANSLATION NONFICTION BOOKS SCREENWRITERS GHOSTWRITERS STORY MERCHANT NEWS OUR TRACK RECORD PERSONAL CAREER COACHING FOR WRITERS AT ALL LEVELS "Story Merchant" Dr. Ken Atchity has spent his lifetime helping writers get started with and improve their careers. For nearly twenty years as a professor of literature and teacher of creative writing at Occidental College and UCLA - then since 1995, through through Writer's Lifeline and as a literary manager with AEI Online Dr. Atchity has helped literally hundreds of writers find a market for their work by bringing their craft and technique to the level of their ambition and vision. More Download a FREE chapter of Ken's How to Escape Lifetime Security (MS Word) RESEARCH Share Few books or scripts are written without any research at all. Even when you "write what you know," you soon discover that you don't know all of it. As a writer, you know that sometimes your characters have a way of living their own lives, going their own way without stopping to consider your personal level of expertise in the waters they have waded into almost before you even noticed they were on the beach barefooted. Too late to call them back, there they are, swimming out to sea, and carrying your story with them! There's nothing left for you to do but acquire some knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia, or medieval glassblowing, or city parks in Minneapolis. It is impressive to read that such and such an author "spent 7 years living in the Amazon jungle researching this novel," but for the majority of writers, especially new ones, this is not practical. Most writers will have to rely on the kind of research that used to involve multiple trips to the public library and surrounding oneself with piles of microfiche and thick, frayed copies of the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, but today it's done from the comfort of a chair in front of a computer monitor. Whether the medium is bits of paper or bytes of data, research is a valuable skill that all writers should cultivate. In actual practice, the exigencies of making a living and writing a book at the same time can present a challenge. Some writers find that their literary gift did not automatically come with research skills of any kind, and even more vexing, the 24-hour day is holding steady at 24 hours and their clone inventory is holding steady at zero. Writer's Lifeline offers a full range of research services tailored to your individual requirements. We love research and are good at it! If your budget is small and you're a fast reader and feel at home on the web, our customized pointer lists might be all you need. If your time constraints are greater, you can upgrade to a summarized list. Summaries will be brief or extensive, according to your needs and preferences. If you're really pressed for time, or you don't know how to navigate the web, inquire about our full-service report package. We do all the work, so you can concentrate on developing your story. NOTE: Availability and quantity of information is not the same for all topics. Discuss your project and research needs with us.We'll help you develop a customized, time-saving research plan tailored to your specific needs. Our trained editorial researchers will provide historical, biographical, technical, political, scientific, medical research to fit the needs of your writing project. State of the art on-line as well as traditional library and telephone research will ensure that your nonfiction and fiction is based on accurate facts, events, and situations. We are able to help you with all countries, time periods, and subject matters and provide full written and annotated reports for easy citation and rights clearance. SPECIAL! Quick Writing Analysis NOVEL, SCREENPLAY OR TREATMENT $75 TELL ME MORE QUOTE OF THE DAY IN YOUR INBOX! AGENTS AND MANAGERS If you're a literary agent or manager and could use our help perfecting your clients' projects for publication and/or production, we'd love to work with you because we're good at fixing stories that aren't working yet. Writer's Lifeline, Inc., based on experience, can add potentially multi-million dollar value to projects that you haven't been able to sell, or wouldn't consider representing, because of the "shape" they're in. In one case, we turned a great idea for a novel into a $1.1 million preemptive film deal, then re-edited the MS and auctioned it for $2.2 million. In another, we took a novel MS that had been shopped to publishers and production companies, worked on it for nine months, then changed the name and sold it for $750,000! When we receive the referral from you, we will work out our relationship (including referral fees, where appropriate)--which can also involve having our parent company AEI, Inc. co-rep the work with you. DID YOU KNOW? Projects developed by Writer's Lifeline have accounted for approximately seventy percent of sales (over $21 million and rising) made by its affiliated literary management and film production company, AEI, Inc. since the company's 1997 founding. Find out more!