Have you ever dreamed about getting paid to write about video games and the fascinating people who make them? Unless you live on the West Coast and are lucky enough to land a rare staff position at one of the major gaming publications, freelancing is the best way to turn slinging words about your favorite hobby into a viable and lucrative career. The best part? You can do it from anywhere! Up Up Down Down Left WRITE: The Freelance Guide to Video Game Journalism covers everything you need to get started along the path to launching and maintaining a successful freelance career in the gaming industry. Pro freelancer Nathan Meunier has written for more than 30 of the top gaming outlets -- from Nintendo Power, GamePro, and Official Xbox Magazine to IGN, GameSpot, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and more. In this advice-packed tome for aspiring freelance game journos and more established writers alike, Nathan delivers detailed insights and how-to tips based on many years of professional writing experience. You will learn how to: -Generate killer article ideas, pitch editors, and score paying work -Build towards quitting your day job to freelance full-time -Juggle the business-related side of freelancing -Cover gaming conventions and press junkets -Network with editors and writers -Work with PR to gain coverage opportunities and free review games. And much, much more!

In the tradition of John Jeremiah Sullivan and David Foster Wallace, Cheston Knapp’s Up Up, Down Down “is an always smart, often hilarious, and ultimately transcendent essay collection” (Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See) that brilliantly explores authenticity and the nature of identity. Daring and wise, hilarious and tender, Cheston Knapp’s “glittering” (Leslie Jamison) collection of seven linked essays tackles the Big Questions through seemingly unlikely avenues. In his dexterous hands, an examination of a local professional wrestling promotion becomes a meditation on pain and his relationship with his father. A profile of UFO enthusiasts ends up probing his history in the church and, more broadly, the nature and limits of faith itself. Attending an adult skateboarding camp launches him into a virtuosic analysis of nostalgia. And the shocking murder of a neighbor expands into an interrogation of our culture’s prevailing ideas about community. Even more remarkable, perhaps, is the way he manages to find humanity in a damp basement full of frat boys. Taken together, the essays in Up Up, Down Down amount to a chronicle of Knapp’s coming-of-age, a young man’s journey into adulthood, late-onset as it might appear. He presents us with formative experiences from his childhood to marriage that echo throughout the collection, and ultimately tilts at what may be the Biggest Q of them all: what are the hazards of becoming who you are? With “a firmly tongue-in-cheek approach to the existential crises of male maturity for the millennial generation…Knapp’s intelligent take on coming-of-age deserves to be widely read” (Publishers Weekly). “Compelling…Precise and laugh-inducing” (The New York Times Book Review), Up Up, Down Down signals the arrival of a truly one-of-a-kind voice.

Despite the warnings of her mother and father, Anna persists in trying to climb things, until she gets stuck in the top of a tree and needs their help to get down.

One of the bestselling Big Bright and Early Board Book by Dr. Seuss, now in a larger trim size! This super-simple, super-sturdy board book edition of The Foot Book—Dr. Seuss’s classic book about opposites—is now available in a bigger trim size! An abridged version of the original Bright and Early Book by Dr. Seuss, it’s the perfect way for babies and toddlers to step into the world of Dr. Seuss!

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

Master the Art of Interview Fu! Do you struggle with interviewing sources for your articles? You're not alone. From wrangling interviews and asking the right questions to making sure everything goes smoothly and weaving amazing quotes into your articles, "Interview Fu: The Game Journo Guide To Conducting Killer Interviews" will help you sharpen your skills and build the confidence you need to pull off interviews like a pro. As a journalist - freelance or otherwise - interviewing is one of the single most important skillsets you can develop to boost your career. It's a skill worth mastering, regardless of whether you're writing in the game industry or covering more traditional "real-world" writing beats. Interview Fu walks you through each step of the way, offering advice and how-to tips based on many years of professional writing and reporting experience both in and outside of the video game industry. If you're looking to propel your writing career forward in a big way, then you simply cannot do without the information this book. You will learn how to: * Identify and approach potential sources for your articles * Line up and prepare for interviews via phone, email, social media, and more * Craft killer questions to get the best results * Handle interview troubleshooting in unique situations * Engage with interviewees to make the process go smoothly * Overcome your fears and build confidence with your journalism skills And Much More! Interview Fu also packs a one-two punch of meaty bonus chapters featuring insights and tips from other industry pros including journalists, editors, and game developers! Scroll up and grab your copy today! [tags: interview fu, journalism, video games, game journalism, Nathan meunier, freelance, game journalist, how-to, how to interview, advice, writing, journalism skills, interview skills, writing]