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THE LOSSES
A novel
"I've just read Cully Perlman's hefty, ambitious, and radiant debut novel, The Losses, and I was flat knocked out. This is much more than a promising first novel by an inordinately gifted writer; it is a dazzling literary achievement. Perlman is an enchanter, casting his spell with lyrical prose, evocative details, and spellbinding characters. He explores familial chaos, reckless behavior, and tragic love with poise, savvy, and tenderness. What talent, what nerve, what a wondrous and spellbinding novel."
--John Dufresne
Three Years of Writing About Writing
Writing is a Solitary Venture, But it's One That WE Learn by Reading, Writing, and, Ideally, via Generous Mentors I started Novel Master...
Cully Perlman
Sep 9, 20255 min read
Isn't it Ironic? Maybe Not.
My daughter, who’s much more intelligent than I am, noticed the issue about two seconds in. “That’s not ironic,” she said, which 1) made me proud how quickly she picked up on the error, and 2) made me wonder how the lack of irony in those lines was allowed to make it past whoever was in charge of making sure the examples in the song were, indeed, ironic.
Cully Perlman
Sep 3, 20255 min read
Is the Publishing Industry Rigged?
People buy books. Publishers sell books. Literary agents are the middle people between authors and publishers. And while publishers ask themselves many, many questions, the most important ones are these: Will this author’s novel sell? And Will people buy this author’s book? Agents ask themselves the same questions prior to taking on a new client. The publishing industry is just that—an industry. Publishers are businesses. For profit businesses, for the most part.
Cully Perlman
Aug 27, 20256 min read
Artificial Intelligence Wrote This
I was in business for years, digital marketing and advertising, and so I understand his point of view and the technology behind it. I would never use AI for profit, though I do feel a little guilty having “written” the majority of this post using AI. Yes, I did it to see how AI on MS Word has improved since I first tried it out a couple years ago. This year (2025), Microsoft made further improvements, including Voice (you can execute voice commands, practice different languag
Cully Perlman
Aug 19, 20257 min read
The Hunt for Your Literary Agent
Literary agents are the middlemen and middle women between you and the trade publishers, often referred to as the Big 5—Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and their imprints, meaning the smaller publishers beneath them (there are also . Of course, you can go a different route, e.g., self-publishing, using a vanity press, hitting the independent publishers like W.W. Norton, Graywolf, Akashic, Algonquin . . .
Cully Perlman
Aug 15, 20253 min read
Is My Idea a Short Story or a Novel?
What’s the underlying message I’m trying to communicate? Is it faith versus doubt? Government overreach/government against the people? Man/woman versus self? Revenge? For me, it’s likely a good combination of all of those and various/many? more. It’s just how I write, and from what I’ve read, most writers are (intentionally or not) doing the same. i.e., incorporating more than a few themes, either in their shorter works or their novels.
Cully Perlman
Aug 5, 20256 min read
Writing a Sense of Place
A setting can take three basic forms. One is the natural world, or in an outside place. In this setting, the natural landscapes of the world play an important part in a narrative, along with living creatures and different times of weather conditions and seasons. The second form exists as the cultural and historical background in which the narrative resides. Past events that have impacted the cultural background of characters or locations are significant in this way. The third
Cully Perlman
Aug 1, 20254 min read
What's a Memoir?
Authors, or better, memoirists, seek to tell their story. They write, or set out to write, non-fiction about their lives, or certain years and events in their lives, and they do so by trying to write a compelling narrative that makes the events they find important or of public interest in their histories interesting to their potential readers. I’ve known many aspiring memoirists, most of whom are getting ready to retire or have retired and now want to capture some of the magi
Cully Perlman
Jul 22, 20255 min read
Learn How to Write Fiction
Read Widely. There’s no substitute to reading good books on the craft of writing but also books in the genre you want to write in (assuming you’re writing fiction). Read with intention. Read out of your comfort zone. As Francine Prose says, Read like a writer. That means focus on what’s working and what’s not working. How does an author make you feel emotion? What words does the writer use? How do they create the worlds in which their characters live?
Cully Perlman
Jul 15, 20257 min read
Having Trouble Coming Up with Your Own Writing Style?
When I wrote my first novel, I copied the style directly from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. As most writers (I’m guessing) do, I didn’t realize that you couldn’t do that. That the style of the novel was Kerouac’s and that I couldn’t just pilfer it for my own novel.
Cully Perlman
Jul 9, 20256 min read
Don’t Waste Time Writing or Reading Novels You Don’t Love
So, what’s the fastest way to not waste your time when it comes to reading books? Don’t read the ones that don’t pull you in after a page or two. Or twenty. Your time is valuable, and there’s no sense in completing a novel if you aren’t enjoying it. Yeah, I know, I get it. Lolita is great! Never finished it, though I’ve started it probably thirty times. You haven’t read Vanity Fair by Thackeray? Nope. Doctor Zhivago? Sorry. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy? Well, I di
Cully Perlman
Jul 1, 20256 min read
SINCE WE’RE AT WAR, HOW ABOUT A LIST OF GREAT WAR NOVELS!
Today, “in honor” of “the President’s” joining into the Israel/Iran conflict by ordering air strikes/bombing attacks on Iran with Benjamin Netanyahu (who I’m no fan of and who’s served more time than he should be allowed to as Israel’s Prime Minister [my take is you can serve 2 terms, not 3 or more like all authoritarians like Trump would like to serve]) I’ll be providing a list of war novels and fiction I believe are worth reading.
Cully Perlman
Jun 24, 20257 min read
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey
Structure. It’s a simple word, but it’s not that simple a concept when it comes to your novel. Most of us probably don’t even think about the structure of our novel when we begin, especially if we’re new to the game and don’t even know that different structures exist. We start writing, or we start plotting, creating an outline that’ll guide us for the entirety of our book.
Cully Perlman
Jun 17, 20257 min read
How to Market Your Novel
Marketing your novel, both before and after it’s published, is one of the most crucial (and annoyingly difficult) things that you, the author, must undertake if you plan on selling your books. Marketing is about promotion and it is about attracting readers, the goal being to have readers purchase your book. In order to do so, you have to understand what readers are searching for, and how you, the author, can fulfill that need. This post is about steps you can take to get your
Cully Perlman
Jun 10, 202512 min read
Cutting Your Novel Down to Its Essential Components
As writers, we dive deep—into our emotions, into the research we conduct so that we get every detail correct, every accent right, and that we pull from our readers the emotions within them that will keep them interested and thus keep them reading. To do that, we must focus on the book we’re trying to write. We need to understand that we have a central character that wants something and who goes after it, despite opposition. She never stops seeking what she wants, no matter wh
Cully Perlman
Jun 4, 20255 min read
THIS IS AI TELLING YOU HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL
As avid readers and writers, they were not pleased at the misquote by their graduation speaker (I told them to give her a break—it was, after all, after she’d read Hinton’s novel, so that’s what was on her mind). Any kid quoting any book or poem is good in my book, pun intended. But that’s not going to always be the case.
I foresee a future where AI and fiction written by writers is going to be so blurred we’ll no longer know the difference. And it’s depressing.
Cully Perlman
May 27, 20258 min read
Summer Books to Read While You Write
If you’re a writer like me, you have a stack of books on your kitchen table, your kitchen counter, by the fireplace (if you have one), on your nightstand, your dresser, your kids’ bookshelves, in boxes, and everywhere else you can balance a book (sorry, I don’t have books in the bathroom—I don’t trust my guests). I may not get to every book—some I just have around because of the beauty of the language, or as reference books, and so on.
Cully Perlman
May 20, 20257 min read
Finding Your Story
Over decades and centuries, writers have taken inspiration from everywhere you can think of. They take their ideas from the culture around them (or from reading about other cultures), from current events, from history, dreams, their life experiences, from people watching, from prompts, from wherever. For me, it’s usually a combination of a few of the above. The novel I’m currently revising is taken from contemporary political events. The one I wrote last year was about a fami
Cully Perlman
May 13, 20256 min read
How Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Influenced Generations
The month after I read On the Road, which Kerouac famously wrote on eight long sheets of tracing paper which he taped together into a continues 120 foot scroll, I sold my prized Gran Prix (prized because it had dark tinted windows, 6x9 speakers, and shiny rims that were all the rage in Miami, Florida, at the time), all of my possessions (except my books), broke up with a long-term girlfriend, and jumped in a friend’s car heading West to work as a cook in Yellowstone National
Cully Perlman
May 7, 20256 min read
How to Build Compelling Characters
How a character acts—their movements, their actions, their expressions, what they say and how they say it, all these things show what your character is feeling (or what they want other characters to think they’re feeling). When the author, through the narrator, shows what her characters are doing, we learn about the character’s emotions because we see them through their actions. And it’s in scene that we see the characters express their feelings by what they do.
Cully Perlman
Apr 29, 202510 min read
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