National Novel Writing Month is November, a time when hundreds of thousands of authors make a public promise to write 50,000 words during 30 days. The contest amounts to writing just about anything in a file that grows to that size and sending it off to the NaNo website for your "certificate." There are quotes […]
If you're headed to the Texas Book Festival this weekend, congratulations. You'll be going to end of the book galaxy that's 180 degrees offset from the world of ebooks, Amazon and its ilk, and that remote on your table that delivers streaming versions of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Mockingjay. The BookFest is thick […]
This is why there are blogs for authors. Sometimes a careless comment from an entitled, successful vendor-author just shades good authors. Somebody's got to call BS. (See how I used the verb "shade" there to go all current on the language? It means to diss, rag on, or denigrate. But I'm all woke about English. […]
Most of us start a story with an idea. You develop it into a concept. Then you build a character to turn that concept into a premise. Secrets of church history hide in plain sight. What if the DaVinci art held the secrets? What if a professor of Renaissance art found secrets of church history […]
Plot is a means to show the journey of characters, their desires, and motivations. Backstory drives your characters. If your plot is failing you, it’s probably time to write out some backstory, even it’s only a few paragraphs on each major character. Focus on seminal experiences for each person. Backstory is the motherload of ore that gives […]
Everybody has a book in them, right? Way down on at the bottom of some of your hopes and dreams, maybe. You're doing something to make yours: writing, rewriting, working with a coach, meeting with other writers in a group. The work is bubbling up, maybe nearing the surface. When it's at the surface of […]
Prizes are important to sales of a book. The kudos make a book stand out and help convince readers to give it a shot. It seems like an easy observation, so why aren't more indie books submitted for meaningful prizes? Cost is always an issue, especially for the indie author. After doing your work getting […]
Fifteeen years ago, the Iowa Writer's Workshop named Lan Samantha Chang as the first female director of the program, perhaps the most prestigious writing school in the world. Much has been said about Chang, who as a 1993 grad of the program was one of the youngest writing teachers to hold the post. Iowa has […]
Readers tend to choose what they already know when reaching for the next book. That's what BookBub, one of the leading advertising hubs for books, said in a report from a recent newsletter. The ad site's studies of book buyers showed that readers most often got their next book because they liked the author. At […]
Independent authors can count on more resources than it seems, sometimes. The latest advice of the day is that your author website needs to be a sales portal. I don't mean a check-out cart. The landing page for your site should have links to your sales outlets, though. You don't have to take orders from […]