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They say don’t judge a book by it’s cover but…come on…we all do. (Note: The original idiom is traced to the novel The Mill on the Floss, written by George Eliot in 1860. In the novel, the reference is to a physical book when the character, Mr. Tulliver, uses it when Read more…
Finding good comps is harder than I expected. Comps (short for comparable titles) is an important step in the post-writing / marketing / selling phase. The phases I love…not one bit. If you’re going the traditional publish route comps serve as a quick pitch for potential agents / publishers and Read more…
What a fun time we live in. Artificial Intelligence is starting to make its mark on the world, to the point where it feels like we’re entering the early stages of a sci-fi story. I wouldn’t mind having a droid around to fix the car, or make me a sandwich, Read more…
Sometimes it’s the small things that can change a scene for the better. Dialogue tags and action beats are those tools a writer can use to make a scene more dynamic, or change the pace depending on what’s happening. In early drafts of HOST I had overused dialogue tags, thinking Read more…
The first action scene I wrote was not good. Plain and simple. It was supposed to be a calm opening, that built tension up as one character searched for another in a museum, which led to a fisticuffs ending. Yeah, that’s not what actually happened. I remember re-reading it and Read more…
Just a few more tweaks, another pass by the editor to make sure those tweaks didn’t ruin everything (fingers crossed), adjustments to the cover art, and then, finally then, I’ll be ready to publish. Holy smokes. Of course it’s not that easy, and there’s marketing, advertising, promotion, social media, newsletters, Read more…
I recently looked back at early drafts of HOST for fun and to see my progress as a writer. One thing that stood out to me was my settings and descriptions of various elements. They were…terrible? Non-existent? Not important? All of the above. It took a few drafts for me Read more…
Is there a difference? Spoilers: yes, there is. To put it simply, plot is the events that occur, where story is the change that occurs with the characters. Their arc, lesson learned, or heart of the story as a whole. Took me a bit to really figure this one out. Read more…
My first novel, HOST, is done. Of course, I still have pre-publishing steps to do, marketing, and promotion to work through, but the book, the story itself, is done. It starts, middles, and ends. It’s been through multiple beta readers, professional editors, proofreader, it’s done. Right? Yes, it’s done. I’m Read more…
One of the many lessons I learned while writing my first novel, HOST, is put the effort up front into your characters motivations and goals. If you can distill them down to a single sentence, hell a single word, it’ll pay dividends as these characters move through the plot and Read more…