By Randy Richardson

To the city's small presses and independent publishers, the Chicago Underground Library is a project that is, well, long overdue.

But it's a safe bet that they'll foregive a late fee for Nell Taylor and Emerson Dameron, CUL's founders.

That's because Taylor and Dameron have provided what many of them have been seeking for a long time: a home for their literary works.

By Randy Richardson

Chicago mystery author Libby Fischer Hellman shares with us a few of the secret ingredients that led to her being "an overnight success that was five years in the making."

From Amazon Shorts to blogging (recently Libby began group blogging as part of The Outfit with some of Chicago's best known crime writers including Sara Paretsky and Barbara D'Amato), Libby shares some of the secrets to her success.

Undoubtedly, you'll want to save and share with your friends these book marketing tips from one of Chicago's busiest and most successful authors.

By Randy Richardson

“If I've either helped someone or sparked their interest in something new, then I've accomplished something,” says Alice Maggio.

By that measure, Maggio has accomplished a great deal. A few years back she started writing her tales of a Chicago librarian as That Rabbit Girl . That blog led to writing the Ask the Librarian column for Gapers Block , a Chicago-based webzine. And as a spin-off of that she became the moderator of the Gapers Block Book Club .

She’s a busy, busy girl. Thankfully, she made time to tell us a little about what goes on behind the stacks at a library and to give us some clues on how a library really can be a writer’s best friend.

Explore Alice's many adventures in Chicagoland.

Konrath’s blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, the place where he regularly dishes out his unique brand of marketing wisdom, has become must-reading material in the book world. Where most bloggers typically get a comment or two in response to a piece they’ve written, Konrath’s online forum routinely stirs up 30 or more to put in their two cents. All because, God forbid, he admits that he doesn’t read all the books he blurbs or intrepidly advises his readers to not bother with the SASE when sending out queries.

Is there a method to his madness? Yes, without question. Read the books in his Lt. Jaqueline “Jack” Daniels thriller series – ''Bloody Mary'', ''Whiskey Sour'' and the soon-to-be-released ''Rusty Nail'' – and you begin to understand. Not unlike his protagonist, he takes all his shots seriously but with a hearty slice of humor. He’s also strong enough to publicly acknowledge that, at times, he has gone overboard. Even as he’s teaching he’s learning.

Lake Claremont Press is all about Chicago, and as such, it reflects its hometown: gritty and scrappy, yet also friendly and welcoming.

Just take a peek at the Lake Claremont Press website, and you get the sense of that Chicago second-to-none spirit:

“In an age of giant media mergers at one end of the spectrum, Lake Claremont Press represents the alternative at the other end: a small, independent, niche publisher specializing in a subject that we know better than anyone,” the About Us section of the website reads. “As such, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the publishing houses of that ''other'' big city.”

Luck be a late-night cigar?

That’s how Oak Park author Donald G. Evans tells the story of how a small press came to take a gamble on his debut novel, ''Good Money After Bad.''

Evans’ agent had shopped the tale about a Chicago gambler to all the big publishers, all of whom had nice things to say but ultimately wouldn’t put their money down on it.

Discouraged like many an author before him, Evans took a break from trying to sell his story and started writing another. Still, the reformed gambler and bookie, wasn’t ready to fold ’em. In the back of his mind, he knew that there might be a small press out there willing to take a chance on his book.

And so it was that the ex-gambler came to discover that you can play all the cards just right, but sometimes you just need a little luck on your side.

This is a story about one of those rarest of feats, an aspiring writer who not only beat the odds and hit the jackpot, but did it on his first try.

How he did it makes it all the more surprising.

The beginnings of the story are chronicled in the blog of Chicago author J.A. Konrath. It was a little over a year ago that Konrath introduced the world to "Cinderella Boy" (aka Marcus Sakey), who at the time Konrath first met him was a master's writing student at Chicago's Columbia College. Sakey approached Konrath seeking guidance. He wanted what most aspiring writers want: the key to writing and selling a book.

Konrath, who teaches classes at College of DuPage when he's not writing and selling his own books, gave it to him straight, telling Sakey that if he really wanted to write and sell a book, he should dump the books and write a book.

"For me, the problem with writing fiction isn’t so much that fiction doesn’t appeal to me," says Daniel P. Smith, author of the recently released On the Job: Behind the Stars of the Chicago Police Department (Lake Clarement Press), "it’s more that real life is just so fascinating in itself. There’s so much going on here in the flesh that I hesitate entering a fictional world. There are too many good stories in this city alone that need to be told."

In On the Job, the stories that needed to be told are those of beat cops and detectives of the Chicago Police Department, the ones who are out there on the streets every day putting their lives on the line to protect you and me. The only CPD many know is the one they read about in the newspaper and see on the nightly local news. It's a force whose history has been marred by corruption and brutality, from the 1968 Democratic Convention riots to the recent videotaped bar beating. But Smith sought to shed a different, less harsh light on Chicago's finest that shows the real people behind the badges, who they are and what they've done. The kinds of stories that don't make headlines but deserve to be told.