Hey Everyone! I've been gone for quite a while. For the last few years I have been swamped with manuscripts to edit for my small publisher, but I hope to come back to some form of regularity. For those of you who followed along when I was blogging, we spent the better part of a … Continue reading I’m back! Beta Request and “The Publishing Process”
I will have an instructional post for you next week, please send me your questions. I see many of the same topics that I end up answering together. I need some new lines of direction. What haven't I covered, or what would you like me to go into more detail about? For this week, it's … Continue reading The Blood Match: Birth of a Novel (Series #2)
Hello writers! I haven't done a personal post in a while and it's time as you'll see. Previously I blogged an entire series called "Journey to a Bestseller" about a young adult steampunk novel that I wanted to be a bestseller (I suppose it's not quite finished). Some of you may ask, what did happen … Continue reading The Blood Match: A New Journey (Series #1)
When I grew up I wanted to be Barbra Streisand--specifically as Fanny Brice--but that was never going to happen. Because I wasn't born Barbra Streisand. And you weren't born Stephen King. Which is a good thing, because he's not the best writer. He's ONE of the best writers, along with other household names--Dean Koontz, Nora … Continue reading Literary Q&A: I Just Published a Book, Now What? #Authorgoals (Series #8)
I did the Amazon ads the way you said with lots of ads and low bids. Now what? I did the keyword ads, but I don't know ACOS from pizza. How do I make it work better? Hi everyone! What the author of the question is asking is how to optimize your ads--to make them … Continue reading Literary Q&A: How Do I Know if my Keywords are Converting? [Or Optimizing Amazon Keyword Ads] (Series #7)
This week should be shorter, I have our weekly question, plus an announcement. I am almost done with my book, where should I publish it? This question has a roundabout answer. First of all, if you haven't finished your book, you are looking too far ahead, in my opinion. Not only do you have time … Continue reading Literary Q&A: Where Should I Publish My Unfinished Manuscript? (Series #6)
Good Sunday everyone. My calendar says, "When you can't find the sunshine, BE the sunshine." Love it. Great advice for everyone--especially writers. What do people mean when they say, "It's never too soon to start marketing?" I just released my first book and I haven't even started. So am I already losing because I don't … Continue reading Literary Q&A: What Do People Mean When They Say, “It’s Never Too Soon to Start Marketing”? (Series #5)
Question: I'm editing my book, but what do I do with tags? This week an author friend of mine expressed some confusion on the topic of tags in his novel. I asked, Is your issue with tag punctuation, the difference between action tags and dialogue tags, acceptable dialogue tags, or something else? I could go … Continue reading Literary Q&A: What Good Writers Know About Tags (Series #4)
Hello everyone. We're talking about quotes this week. First of all, I'm sorry about my absence the last two weeks; I have been up to my eyeballs in manuscripts. But a funny thing happened. Often when I'm editing a manuscript I come across an issue I've never dealt with before, but then it seems like … Continue reading Literary Q&A: Can I Quote Another Book, Poem or Song Lyrics in my Novel? (Series #3)
Today's Question: How do I write different characters in different ages and races that people identify with? I was thinking about this question as I was staring at a wrinkle in my mirror this morning. I immediately thought about an infomercial I'd seen lately that said most of the cause of aging comes from more … Continue reading Literary Q&A: Relatability in Your Writing (Series #2)
I'm so excited to dive into these questions! I've received some great ones. Keep them coming! I'd like to focus on two per post, so I don't spread out info all over and repeat myself more than necessary. Without dragging on, let's see what you asked this week: Question 1: I was wondering about this. … Continue reading Literary Q&A: All About Twitter Pitch Events and Common Agent Responses to Unsuccessful Queries Decoded (Series #1)
Hello all! First, I have two promos to share with you. They are both on Bookfunnel. Click on the photos to jump to the sale. Today's post is a casting net. I need your input again authors. I'd like to do another question/answer series for the blog through October. First, I want to know all … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: Tell Me Everything YOU Need to be a Successful Writer (Series #46)
Hi everyone. Have you written your first draft, finally gotten it complete, only to realize you have 200,000 words? You are not alone. There are many reasons to "cut" or "trim" your writing. It makes things clearer, stronger, more concise, and streamlines the information that the reader needs to know. And of course, word counts--everyone … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: Cutting your Novel Down to Size (Series #45)
I've talked about "voice" before--even as recently as series #35. But what I want to talk about today isn't regarding the way you tell a story so much as it's a sentence-structure thing. In an active sentence, the subject is acting on the verb. It pulls the reader in close to the story. A passive … Continue reading Active vs. Passive Voice (Writing #4)
I got all my work done this week, excited to plot my story, and I got lost on a few research bunny trails. But I finally got everything that I wanted to happen in my story put down on notecards by scene. I wrote the first five pages of the manuscript and when I hit … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: Plot Points and Writer Goals (Series #42)
Hello friends and writers! You know, most of the time I sit down to write this blog about my writing journey, and have no idea what I want to say. I begin telling you about what's going on and fall into a helpful topic. This coming week I'm going to be plotting out my new … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: Researching For Your Fiction Novel (Series #41)
I have good news this week everyone! First, I hope you all got something out of last week's marketing post, 10-Step Marketing-How to Get Started. If you didn't see it, check it out! It's all about the first and most important steps involved in making sales. In other news, I have just released new covers … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: New Series Covers and Catch-up (Series #40)
I'm not sure if my clients realize it, but as an editor for a publishing house, I get paid when my authors get paid. Like an agent, I don't get paid until my authors do--then I receive a small percentage of the book's sales. So, as nice as I am, it behooves me to help … Continue reading Ten-Step Marketing for Clients–How to Get Started
Hello everyone! Good weekend! Today I'm going to talk about composing your outline--which can easily be turned into a synopsis. This is difficult for most writers as they've spent hours and hours creatively writing their magnum opus and now they are being asked to condense the entire twisty-turny plot into a short description and don't … Continue reading Commaful Series: Writing a Killer Synopsis and Forming Your Outline (Writing #2)
Hi everyone! I'm going to be doing a series of teaching videos on a free writers' website called Commaful. Give it a visit! It's a colorful site full of great writing samples. The videos I'm making should be about ten minutes long, so I thought I'd write out my article for you here, as well. … Continue reading Commaful Series: Dynamic Fictional World-Building (Writing #1)
Last week I told you about some FREE book giveaways I'm currently in. This week, I have two more! If you love dystopian novels, have I got a deal for you! These books are on BookFunnel.com, so some of them require your email before you download the book or sample. If you aren't familiar with BookFunnel … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: FREE Dystopian Reads, The Secret to AMS Ads, and Editing-for-Sale (Series #36)
FREE BOOKS!! Yes, I mean it. You are about to be offered free books. I'm in several Book Funnel promotions this month and I want to share them with you. I missed linking you to the promotion last week, but I've got three more! Don't know what Book Funnel is? It's a site where readers … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: Free Books, Writing for Your Market, Editing, and Ad Progress (Series #35)
How to write a query letter,
Hey everyone! I took a week off for the holidays. Actually, I was writing my newsletter and I forgot. Shhh. So, in the life of our WIP which I am going to start calling by its title: The Clockwork Pen, I now have my first draft. I wrote the whole thing and went back to … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: After Typing “The End”~What’s Next? (Series #26)
It's been a long week, folks. I was in a book fair at Woodneath Library in Liberty, Missouri, this weekend. Joined by my daughter and my writing partner. The tables were tiny, but it was a nice set up and all my swag fit on my table, and I got some good ideas from other … Continue reading Journey to a Bestseller: Evaluation of Anonymous Query and Sample Pages (Series #24)
Good day everyone. Well, it's night, but you get the idea. I've been writing this week about the second pinch point, or second battle. In the story, I have the MC happen to meet the crazy king who tells him that the people he thought he was responsible for killing, are actually prisoners in the … Continue reading The Journey to a Bestseller: Essential Scenes in Every Story- Part Four- Dark Night of the Soul and Chapter Hooks (Series #16)
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com Hey everybody! Sorry I'm late this week. I've been a busy bee. I recently made new covers for my books because they weren't selling well. And those buyers were not rejecting my book based on context, they don't even know what my book says. They were scrolling through the books, … Continue reading The Journey to a Bestseller: Essential Scenes in Every Story- Part Two- First Battle/Midpoint and New Covers (Series #14)
Happy weekend everybody! I just did the stupidest thing. I had some very important emails from a publisher, and they were getting lost in my overflowing email box. So I made a new folder. Then I put all my important emails from the publisher in them. THEN my email told me that the file couldn't … Continue reading The Journey to a Bestseller: Essential Scenes in Every Story- Part One- Start With Lack/Inciting Incident/Point of No Return (Series #13)
Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com Hi guys! It's been a busy week. I finished the second draft of my client's manuscript during the day; and worked on my book at night. Just in case you are new to this blog, I am writing a bestseller...or what I am going to do try my best … Continue reading The Journey to a Bestseller: Word Count, Character Sheets, and Kindle Reads, oh my. (Series #9)
Today I want to share with you the one fact in writing: something else will come up when you are trying to write a book. For you it might be something like an emergency home project that simply needs to be done, or you could have a school paper that you must do. For me, … Continue reading The Journey to a Bestseller: “Something came up” and Writing Descriptions (Series #7)
Photo by Rakicevic Nenad on Pexels.com Sorry about the weekend everyone! I was out of town for the week in small town Oklahoma and I had no reception at all. It was awesome. Fishing, and four wheelers, and fireworks, and paddle boats, and zip lines, and swimming, and hard lemonade... aah. Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric … Continue reading The Journey to Making a Bestseller: One-third Done and the Process of PreSales (Series #4)
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I started writing my manuscript five days ago. I plotted the heck out of it, wrote out a directory of scenes, though not as detailed as I usually do. I've got two tabs (on my laptop) open constantly: Synonyms and Steampunk images. One of the things you want when writing … Continue reading The Journey to Making a Bestseller: The First 20K- Character Arcs/Magic Rules/Descriptive Language (Series #3)
Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com Hi everyone! This week I sat on a publishing panel for writers at Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, which was the most impressive library I've ever seen. It's not only full of books and beautiful architecture, it has great conference rooms, a gift shop and a cafe... and … Continue reading Get Published: Questions from a publishing panel
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com How do I find the right agent? I was asked this question by several people and I wanted to spend some time on it. I was also asked the process of a manuscript from being written to getting published, so I plan to explain how to find the right agent … Continue reading Agent Questions Volume Twenty-three: Finding the Right Agent/The Process of Publishing From A to Z (Twitter Series #3)
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com The first question for this post is: Why query at all? I must say, this one stumped me. I even googled it and found no articles explaining why we query. The simple fact is publishers use agents to filter readers like coffee grounds. I’m not saying it is a bad … Continue reading Agent Questions Volume Twenty-two: Why Query at All/ Commercial vs. Literary (Twitter Series #2)
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I recently had a friend ask her Twitter followers what one question you would ask an agent if you could. I was surprised at the answers. I thought they might be akin to the blog posts I had been writing, but they centered around, "Why don't you love me?" and … Continue reading Agent Questions Volume Twenty: How Do I Get Representation? And Five More Questions (Twitter Series #1)
Photo by Nick Demou on Pexels.com I overheard an author friend of mine the other day learn to take the word “that” out of his writing and I was surprised he hadn’t heard this before, as we’ve been in writing groups together for several years. So I thought I’d make this week’s blog about words … Continue reading Agent Questions Volume Nineteen: 28 Words to Cut From Your Manuscript
I want to answer this question thoroughly, but I hope not to step on too many toes. If I offend you, please feel free to comment. Photo by Lukas on Pexels.com First, there is no course, no test, no certification to be an agent. This is not known to all aspiring authors. There are bad … Continue reading Agent Questions Volume Eighteen: How Do I Choose My Agent?
The story arc, also called the narrative arc, is the journey of a story and its characters from one way of life to something completely different. It is defined as the change that takes place between one cover and the other. Arcs are stories with characters that make life changes that take them from weakness … Continue reading Agent Questions Volume Seventeen: What is a story arc and do I need one?
Jennifer Haskin 