By C. Kevin Thompson As many authors know, good, critical, honest reviews are important. Future readers often base their purchases on them. Therefore, reviews are gold when talking bottom lines. Because Amazon uses the review system as one of its major marketing arms, keeping reviews as pure as possible is paramount to good customer service. To prevent others from manipulating …
October!
By Martha Rogers October! How I love this month. To me, October ushers in the holiday season with the most gorgeous display of colors nature could provide. Orange, gold, red, yellow and burnt orange burst forth in an array only God could design. Several of my novels take place from summer into fall or fall into winter simply because it’s …
No Profanity
By Lynn Hobbs About a month ago, I tried to read a book where every other word from the main character was a curse word. Annoying? Yes. It distracted me from the story…and I really liked the story. More important, I admired the author. Excerpts from the book had been placed on social media for weeks. Momentum mounted. I looked …
Plastic Flowers
By Shirley E. Gould I hated the plastic flowers that were popular when I was young. They looked cheap, artificial and were hard to the touch. I informed my family that when I die, I don’t want any plastic flowers. My brother-in-law, bless his soul, made it his mission to find plastic flowers to give me every Christmas. It made …
Taming the Revisions Beast
By Andrea Boeshaar Recently I received revisions for a novel slated to release next year. I gasped, as I usually do, when I opened the document and saw more red on the page than black (the red being my editor’s remarks and corrections and the black, my writing.) It’s amazing how good I feel about a manuscript when I turn …
LEAN TO THE LEFT, LEAN TO THE RIGHT STAND UP, SIT DOWN, FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
By Cathleen Armstrong Is anyone but me counting the days until this election is over? (Nineteen till election day. Twenty until the blessed day after.) Passions are high, lines are drawn, and thanks to social media, everyone has a soapbox to stand on to offer their thoughts, opinions, and dire warnings. I open Facebook and find myself longing for a …
Ten Tweet-worthy Ideas for Authors
by Christa Kinde When I meet writers who struggle with social media, it’s usually for lack of courage, consistency, or creativity. Fear not! You can do this. After all, writers are creative people. Twitter is my happy place–because I like to keep things short and sweet–so I thought I’d offer practical suggestions on what authors can tweet about. I’ve included …
Four Tips for Throwing a Fab Author Facebook Party
By Melissa Tagg I recently participated in one of the most fun author Facebook parties ever! Like, I was sick, people–we’re talking Kleenex, cough medicine and pajamas for days–and I still had a blast participating in the party. The event was made up of seven contemporary romance authors. We had an amazing turnout and a fabulous time. (And I can’t …
Draw Me Nearer
By Cynthia Ruchti One of the topics I most enjoy teaching at writers’ conferences is “Deepening the Emotional Connection.” The more connected readers feel to our stories, the more likely they’ll read past the first page, the first chapter, all the way to the end. And then keeping thinking about those characters and their plight days or weeks later. Consider …
Writing in the Valley of Discouragement
By Connilyn Cossette Writing a second book, under contract, and after you’ve actually written most of the third is a daunting prospect. But that is what I was faced with when delving into Shadow of the Storm, the second book of the Out from Egypt series. I spent weeks writing things and deleting them. I spent weeks asking myself if …