Your cart is currently empty!
Category: writing
-
Touch and Feel
Skin on skin. Touching, hugging, holding hands, stroking, patting, caressing… All those words bring so much emotion with them, and we haven’t even gotten into sex, and I don’t mean to. Touching is becoming taboo in our society for so many reasons, and although I’m an unreformed hugger, and never mean to give it up,…
-
Stilted Writing
I’m reading a couple of novels written by new writers. I’m finding they share something that I have noticed before in debut efforts. I am trying to figure out how to express coherently what the impression they gave me was. My First Reader suggests that perhaps it boils down to ‘spending to much time on…
-
Blurbage
Mirror-posted to Amazing Stories Magazine I don’t know about you, but summing up a book into a blurb is one of the most difficult chores I have as an author. Trying to succinctly convey what it is about, to allure the reader into paying money for the story and amusement value it contains, but not…
-
Becoming Published
mirror-posted at Mad Genius Club Note to Mad Geniuses: yes, this is very simple, basic stuff, but it won’t hurt you to look at it, and there are many new readers who may be very interested. Also, I’m giving a talk today, at Chapters Books in Lebanon, OH, on this topic, and for those of you…
-
Review: Lion Loose
This last week has been chaotic, to say the least. School started, I had a long-overdue meeting with my adviser that may mean shuffling classes after they have already started, and there was a minor kerfluffle on the internet that served for most of my reading the last couple of days (but a cross between…
-
Books Are Forever
Mirror-posted to Amazing Stories Magazine. and Books are this girl’s best friend, unlike diamonds, riffing on that tagline. “The publisher often faces a situation where speed in the production of a book is almost as essential to its success as is “fast freight” to the saving of perishable food stufls. For some books, and frequently…
-
The End is Near
I’m so close to the end of the book, now… I just glanced down and I can see the word count below the edge of the browser. 27,784 words… Wait, you’re saying, I thought you were writing a novel? Surely it’s longer than that. Yeah, it is. What I did with Pixie Noir, and I…
-
Interesting articles
I’m busily writing today. I was joking around that I was going to write until my hands fall off, and although that might be a slight exaggeration, I do plan to have sore fingers and wrists later. I’ve done 1500 words before breakfast, which gives me a great start. So rather than a lengthy blog…
-
Seducing the Reader: Part 3
Or, how to bring your reader to a fantastic finale and satisfying conclusion. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Bringing a book to a close is an important stage in both writing, and reading. Leave your reader unsatisfied, and they may not return to try another work. But if you are writing a…
-
Just How Dead?
So, if I miss a deadline, is my project dead? Or me? Or… (Mirror-posted over at Amazing Stories Magazine) Reading, writing, researching… I am hard at work on the novel in progress, and looking at my deadline for completion coming up far too quickly. Writing is a tertiary career, at the moment, behind my business,…
-
Alterations and Tailoring
I was thinking this morning about fanfiction, plagiarism, and renovating vintage clothing into something beautiful. I read Mad Genius Club almost daily, as I find what the other bloggers there have to say about writing and publishing interesting and often useful. Kate Paulk’s post this morning about filing the serial numbers off, followed by Amanda…