Trying to format a draft for publication as an e-book can make you reach for the aspirin. Since the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad, e-book sales have grown rapidly. This year Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo expect e-books to provide up to half their revenue in the United States and Canada. Popular…
Many writing workshops start their sessions on character development with a sheet detailing the hero’s name, age, eye color and hair color. They then move onto his job, his hobbies, and his family background. Next they might add a picture from the Internet or a magazine which looks a little like the hero, and perhaps…
The importance of libraries, even in this digital age, cannot be underestimated. If you need to do research for your current work-in-progress (WIP), the library may be a good place to start. With trained staff and a wealth of resources (reliable ones) at their fingertips, a library and a librarian are a researcher’s best friend.…
Once upon a time, fantasy (FY) was (to most people) fairy tales, and science fiction (SF) was some weird geeky stuff about rocket ships and robots and aliens like giant mobile boogers. Neither, most of your parents and grandparents thought, was for grownups. You could go your whole life (well, decades on end) and never…
Grammar and Punctuation Recently, while sending out my current work-in–progress (WIP) to the round of agents, I came across an agent’s blog that was downright scary. The spelling and punctuation were atrocious. She even violated a basic rule of using a plural verb form with a singular noun. It was quite annoying; after all, are…
At any given time, there are certain trends in publishing. In the ’80′s, there was the explosion of the female sleuth thanks to such trailblazers as Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, among others. In the late ’90′s, Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary spawned a whole new sub-genre in women’s fiction; namely chick-lit. By the looks…
Without Being Annoying When we think of advertising we often think of banners and fliers and postcards but in the age of the internet, personal advertising or self-promotion has grown into many mediums. Here are a five socially acceptable ways that are taken for granted or often over looked when it comes to leaving a…
It is said that to be a writer you have to read. I would take that a step further and add that for most of us who write, we do not just read, we live to read. Like a runner hitting the runner’s high at a certain stride, a book lover experiences the same high…
In regards to my own writing, three out of four of my completed manuscripts have followed whatever was trending at the time. This was not intentional. It is not that I study the market religiously and write what is hot at the time; it is just that I like to read a wide variety of…
I’m currently reading a non-fiction, non-writing book called, The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, MD but I can see influences for creativity and writing the more I learn. The main theme of the book is looking at the brain from a plasticity standpoint instead of a locked one. Last night I was reading…
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