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Not long ago, when I got a PlayStation 3, the recommendations started rolling in: play this, play that, play my favorite game.

But a bunch of people said, with a sort of excited urgency — particularly people who know me — "Play Journey."

Journey is a PS3 exclusive from a game company called, yes, Thatgamecompany. It's won a bunch of awards from a bunch of different places — its music was even nominated for a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, where it competed with the scores of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Adventures Of Tintin, The Artist, The Dark Knight Rises, and Hugo.

Here's how the company describes it: "Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person's life passage and their intersections with others." As beautiful as the game is, that is not a description that excels in the area of specificity.

The basics are these: You appear on the screen in the form of a hooded and caped figure (I'd be lying if I denied that there was something nice about appearing in the form of what looked to me like a woman), alone in the desert. There's a mountain in the distance. That's where you're going. If you follow your nose, you wind up with a scarf that flaps behind you that can be charged up to give you flight.

And you just start traveling. Those dunes, those dunes ... you can walk on the sand, but when you're going downhill, you slide like a skier, leaving a little trail, making a ffffffft noise with your feet, flapping your cape. You skim the ground, you float, you leap. You trudge up a dune and peek over, then push past and slide again, steering between rock formations, ffffffffft, ffffffft, for long stretches. It is as close to understanding what being physically graceful would feel like as a not-so-graceful person is likely to get. (I ... well, I hypothesize.)

You look tiny sometimes. You feel tiny.

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Disclaimer: A couple of years ago, I made a bucket list. As I've had a pretty rollicking life, my bucket contained a single experience: Sell a novel to a major house.

And now, Saint Martin's Press is to bring out my novel, Small Blessings, in July of next year.

Until writing and other things intruded, I was a fairly regular freelancer for NPR, reporting mostly on books and publishing. It was a lovely gig and taught me a lot about how the publishing industry functions, but almost nothing about what it's like to sell a novel and move it through the pre-publication process.

That, too, is a lovely gig. A really lovely gig, although it often feels a bit swampy, as in ... could someone please tell me if I'm doing this right?

This is the first in a series of posts about what goes on between finishing a manuscript in the privacy of your own writing space and seeing your book out there in a bookstore. We'll focus on stories behind the publication of some splashy first novels suggested to me by Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, Co founder, Editor in Chief of Goodreads.com.

We begin with agents.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that all literary agents in possession of good reputations must be in want of manuscripts they can fall in love with.

Most book sales to major houses still are made through agents. So why, in this uncertain age dominated by the hunt for the next blockbuster, do agents even mess with first-time novelists?

Because they fall in love.

Sam Stoloff is with Frances Goldin Literary Agency, a Greenwich Village shop that still has – as he puts it – "strong roots in progressive politics and a focus on books that matter." Sam reads a lot of manuscripts. "Like most agents," he says, "I'm always looking for great writing. It's rare, and precious. We're all readers, after all, and we're doing this because we love books. There's no high like starting to read a manuscript and going, 'Wow, this is really good.' I finish almost no full manuscripts, and fall in love with fewer. I can count the true loves on my fingers."

One such love for Sam was Helene Weckers' fantastical first novel The Golem and the Jinni, a tale of friendship between two supernatural creatures who appear mysteriously in New York at the very end of the 19th century.

Stoloff met Wecker through the MFA program at Columbia. "Helene was a student there," he says, "and I was on an agent panel, convened to talk about the mysterious wilds of publishing. Afterwards, there was a 'mixer' where students pitched their work. Helene described The Golem and the Jinni, and I was immediately intrigued. The book was mostly an idea then, but she sent me some pages, and I was hooked."

The process didn't end there. He says it took Wecker "years to cultivate her seed of an idea." Over that time, she'd share drafts in progress, and eventually formalized the relationship they'd already created through this trading of work and feedback.

And once he was working as her agent, Stoloff did what authors hope their agents will do: he sold the book. "I submitted the book widely, and conducted an auction with six or seven bidders, and the book went to HarperCollins, the highest bidder. I expected a very good deal [i.e. substantial six figures], and got it."

Sometimes the sale takes some extra incentive, both for publishers and for readers. Robin Sloan's first novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore, has a cover that glows in the dark. As Sloan told David Greene on Morning Edition, "When you're making a print book in 2012, I actually think the onus is on you, and on your publisher, to make something that's worth buying in its physical edition." Sloan's focus on how print should be done in the digital age isn't surprising; pre-novel, he spent time working in both worlds as a short-story writing employee of Twitter, he co-created and co-hosts a blog called Snarkmarket, and he describes himself as a "media inventor" as well as a writer.

Sloan's immersion in the digital world extends into his work. He describes novel thusly on his web site: "This is a novel about books and technology, cryptography and conspiracy, friendship and love. It begins in a mysterious San Francisco bookstore, but quickly reaches out into the wider world and the shadowed past."

He's represented by former editor Sarah Burnes, now an agent with The Gernert Company, which she describes as "a boutique literary agency representing a full range of writers, from John Grisham to Alice McDermott." She represents only about 10 percent of the authors who submit.

So how did she come to represent Robin Sloan? The story involves marriage, numismatics, and self-publishing, so let's let Burnes tell it:

Robin sent several stories to a colleague, Chris Parris-Lamb, who thought I would love them, which I did. Robin had published the original story on the Kindle publishing platform (this was at the very beginning of that kind of "self-publishing") and had done very well with it. But he wanted to see whether there were opportunities to experiment with traditional publishing as well.

I did not know Robin but, as it happened, he followed my husband, Sebastian Heath, who at the time was at The American Numismatic Society. Among other projects, he was digitizing coins and putting them up in a visually-oriented database. (I'm probably butchering that, too.) Robin thought what he was doing was very cool and when we first met, he brought the database up as an example of the kind of thing he was interested in. I said, Um, that's my husband, and you are one of seventeen people who understand what he is doing! But I got some street cred from that. (Thanks, honey.)

The question for Robin was, why would he need a traditional agent and a traditional publisher? I made the argument that the distribution channels available to publishers — specifically, the independent stores and Barnes and Noble — are difficult for a single author to access, unlike the Amazon self-publishing platforms. Beyond that, critics and other media people are more willing to listen to a publicist or editor from a publishing house than they are to a single author who has not been vetted by an intense winnowing process (getting an agent, getting a publisher, getting the house to then pay attention).

Sean McDonald at FSG [Farrar, Straus and Giroux], Robin's eventual editor, had been following Robin on Snarkmarket for awhile, and he was always the frontrunner, but we did submit widely and there was an auction that followed. There were a number of editors interested but there was an equal number who said that they "didn't know how to position" the book. FSG positioned it as itself and that worked beautifully.

It is good to be the king.

That old adage holds, even though nowadays we call our chief executive "Mr. President."

After another long day of showdown over the shutdown, President Obama was able to dominate the headlines, break the tension and change the atmosphere in Washington. He could demonstrate everything that is different about being in the White House – as opposed to that other House where Speaker John Boehner lives.

The President could do all this just by putting out the word that he was about to appoint the most powerful central banker in the world. Extra added kicker: the appointee would be the first woman in history to hold the job.

Nice way to flex 'em if you've got 'em.

The announcement that Janet Yellen would move up from vice chair to chairman of the Federal Reserve was long awaited and, in recent weeks, all but certain. Still Yellen's final ascent also symbolized several things about this point in the Obama presidency that are important for the current standoff with House Republicans and Boehner, their titular leader.

First, it reminded the world that someone is in charge of something in Washington and serving the continuity of the Federal Reserve and the American economy. This stands in contrast to the president's chief congressional antagonists, who are on TV saying it's not a problem if the United States runs out of borrowing authority and that default on U.S. debt is a scare tactic. (Boehner may not share either of those views, but given his situation he cannot denounce them, either.)

Second, the Yellen move demonstrated that Democrats are finally aware of the importance of unity and actually paying their dues to the club. Everyone knows Obama was intrigued with the idea of a different Fed nominee, his former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers. But the brilliant and abrasive Summers had long since alienated much of Obama's power base in Congress and in the country. Democratic women in the Senate in particular were opposed. This time, the president got the message. And let's be frank, right now he needs a united Democratic Party more than ever before.

(For the moment, at least, that unity is holding. Even Democratic senators facing re-election in red states next year are sticking with Majority Leader Harry Reid on difficult votes. The contrast could not be more potent, as Hill Republicans in both chambers are as riven with dissent and disarray on strategy and tactics as at any time in modern memory.)

Third, the Yellen move showed that the president can still use his powers of office and matchless media access to change the game. In recent days, many Republicans have begun to convince themselves that the drubbing they took in the government shutdown war of 1995-1996 was strictly a matter of then-President Bill Clinton's charm and media savvy.

Without taking anything away from "Slick Willie," that outcome 18 years ago had at least as much to do with the inherent powers of the presidency and the tunnel vision of House Republicans.

The Yellen news came at the end of a day of sharp distinctions between the champions of the two parties. The president had staged the longest news conference of his five years in office, well over an hour, fielding questions from as far away as Australia. Not long after, Speaker Boehner came to a microphone in the Capitol looking and sounding tired. He read a statement imploring the president to negotiate, briefly responded to three questions and abruptly walked away.

Boehner has never been one for news conference jousting. He raises his voice in such settings as if addressing a crowd gathered at a picnic. And in the present moment he has less reason than ever to take questions.

Boehner after all does not want to repeat his claim that the House lacks the votes to pass a funding resolution, as he did over the weekend. That assertion brought howls of disbelief from all those willing to count votes in both parties. And when he says his Republican caucus is standing on principle, it's not clear whether that principle has to do with debts and deficits or last-ditch resistance to the Affordable Care Act.

Few would doubt that for Boehner himself the Big Deal is fiscal. But he cannot cut loose the GOP contingent that would shut down government functions – including the honoring of U.S. debt obligations – rather than be seen as accepting "Obamacare."

If he were to isolate that contingent, as many Republicans urge, Boehner would make himself vulnerable to their ire. It could happen in a closed-door GOP meeting or out on the House floor, where breakaway Republicans might join their votes with those of the Democrats in order to remove the Speaker in mid-session. That weapon hasn't been used in a century, but it's still there on the wall.

All this means that each day John Boehner wakes up as Speaker could be his last. And that too poses a stark contrast with the man in the White House.

The standoff is not going to end soon. But it will end. And certain facts remain. If you hold the high cards, the game eventually comes to you.

There's been a deadly fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh — the latest in a series of such tragedies and just six months after the worst disaster in the history of the global garment industry.

At least 10 people were killed at the Aswad garment factory outside the capital Dhaka early Wednesday. The immediate cause was not known. This factory, like others where tragedy has struck, produced clothes for a number of Western companies.

Here's more from The Wall Street Journal:

"Aswad Composite Mills has recently produced clothes for Western retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Loblaw Cos., the Canadian owner of the Joe Fresh label, and Hudson's Bay Co., according to several online shipping databases. Hudson's Bay said it last received a delivery from the factory in April and subsequently decided it would no longer place orders with the factory. A spokeswoman didn't elaborate on whether the decision was based on safety reasons. A spokeswoman for Loblaw said it was looking into the issue. A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said it is 'working to understand the facts and will take appropriate action based on our findings.' She declined to elaborate."