After months of midnight brainstorms and brutally honest chats with authors, agents and publishers, we’ve given The Write Kit a top‑to‑bottom glow‑up. Early users cheered us on; we decided to go all‑in and make it even more irresistible.
What’s new?
Sprints—beefed up and heartier:
We tore them down and rebuilt them from scratch. The new Sprints offer a richer, more emotionally engaging experience. We’re launching with 50+ fresh Sprints and dozens more on the way. (Stay tuned.)
Lead magnets & giveaways:
Turn your book excerpts into reader magnets. Our built‑in email‑for‑download system helps you grow your list by trading juicy tidbits for email addresses.
Goal Tracker (finally!):
“Tons of tools…but where do I start?” we heard you say. Our new Goal Tracker acts like a personal coach—walk through a setup wizard, tell it about your project, and get a curated roadmap of Sprints and milestones just for you.
Discover & Explore:
No more wandering around like a tourist in a museum. Discover is a friendly front door that guides you effortlessly to the tools you need.
Press Kit Manager:
Need a polished press kit? You can create one in minutes—ready for publicists, podcasters and anyone else who wants your story in a nutshell.
Author Website refresh:
Our website builder got a facelift—cleaner templates, sharper design and a more professional look—no coding required.
And there’s more…
Behind the scenes, we’ve tuned, tightened and tidied up everything. Think of it as a deep‑tissue massage for your author toolkit.
Enjoy the new Write Kit—built by authors, for authors, with a wink and a nudge.
We are going to ask a few select people to join our very cool Beta Program. Let me know if you would like to be part of it.
A Fiction Break
Secret Villains
by Liz Dubelman
Ben returned from yoga—the stretchy, zen kind—and looked for an earthly way to decompress. In his cramped apartment, only one item stood taller than his bong: a vintage Asteroids arcade machine. The mattress sagged on the floor, clean clothes posed as décor, and guitars lay flat as offerings to the earthquake gods. The neon cabinet anchored the chaos like a monolith, the lone piece of furniture that hadn’t surrendered to gravity.
Ben once dabbled in the vending-machine “business,” but paychecks were optional. Sometimes he got cash; often he got perks—credit at Peter Luger’s, a bootleg Asteroids cabinet. He powered it up, inhaled, and tried to become one with the glowing, vector-based cosmos. The machine sang its ominous “doot-doot-doot” like a retro Jaws while a high-pitched “nee-nee-nee” signaled enemy ships. Ben sprang into action, thumbing the fire button with all the meditative serenity of a man swatting flies.
For all his philosophy books, therapy sessions and half-baked metaphysical theories, Asteroids offered the purest metaphor he’d ever found: life hurls debris your way, you either dodge or shoot, and you’ve got milliseconds to decide which. Ben didn’t play against other people; he played against himself. His college high scores hovered around 50,000. After two years of obsessive gameplay he clawed into the 80s. Then, one fateful night—pixels aligned, vodka flowing, bong smoking—he shot up to 159,990. Euphoria quickly soured: the machine rolled past 100,000 and reset, crediting him with a measly 59,990—too low for the leaderboard. Had he scored ten more points, he’d have earned an extra life. Worse still, he’d created an almost unbeatable personal best, robbing future games of the joy of incremental triumphs. But he couldn’t quit. Life, like Asteroids, punishes you when you stop pressing “start.”
Ben believed that if he could assemble the right combination of thoughts, beliefs and substances, his life might coalesce into something understandable. He practiced embracing pain—until recently, when he pivoted to avoiding it by pretending his father hadn’t died. Tonight he broke 18,000 on his first ship and let his mind wander. He remembered writing his first song at seventeen. It was called “Bumptious.” He thought it would be a hit. His mother suggested, “Write a few more.” His father went all-in, booking studio time with half of Blue Öyster Cult. Sandy Pearlman produced. Between pizza and beer, Sandy told Ben, “Man, you write like you’re older.” Ben took it as prophecy.
As Ben’s score crossed 30,000 with two ships left, he remembered how college had not turned him into a star. At best, he played parties. One night Blue Öyster Cult played nearby. Ben dragged his girlfriend Trisha, thinking his insider ties would guarantee post-concert sex. After the show, guitarist Allen Lanier appeared, cigarette in hand. “Hey, man,” he said, then added, “your dad stiffed us, you know.” They liked Ben’s songwriting, but the unpaid bills were a deal-breaker. As Ben’s last ship exploded, he saw his father in that tiny pixel triangle—here one second, shattered the next.
Even good news was peppered with sourness. When Ben got accepted into Duke’s philosophy Ph.D. program, he and his then-girlfriend Penny celebrated by driving to his parents’ house blasting The Clash. His mother greeted them in a Cornell sweatshirt, hat and gardening gloves, plucking beetles off her roses. She was thrilled about Duke, thrilled about Penny. Ben’s father breezed in, dismissed Duke as “a goyim school” and asked if the “co-ed” was into kinky sex. Ben’s stomach lurched. He froze. Penny went in to talk to his father and came out flustered; then she gave Ben a Movado watch—exactly like his father’s. Under questioning, Penny confessed she’d stolen it. During the ensuing argument she snapped, “Your pervert father put his hand on my ass. I deserved the watch.”
Ben wondered if all fathers were secret villains. He remembered Biblical dads—God allowing His Son to die, Abraham nearly killing Isaac. Ben resolved not to have children. Over the years his father died, he lost touch with Penny and his head filled with lofty ideas and useless trivia. His sadness wasn’t over lost people so much as lost potential. He never wore that stolen watch. One day he found it, wound it and admired how beautiful it was. It ticked softly—an elegant reminder that you could always press “start” again.
Ben would pick up the joystick, press the button, and begin anew. Friends asked why he never watched The Godfather. He’d shrug: “Why watch guys mumbling about cannoli when I have a spaceship to fly?” Every night he sat at that glowing cabinet, bongs and guitars at his feet, pondering philosophy while vaporizing space rocks. In real life, fathers disappoint, girlfriends steal, and Ph.D.s don’t fix existential angst. In Asteroids, the rules are simple: dodge, shoot, repeat. As long as the machine kept singing “doot-doot-doot,” there was hope—and always, mercifully, another life.
Kudos Liz!! I know Write Kit will be a game changer for so many aspiring authors!
This is wonderful!