By DiAnn Mills What’s stopping you from marketing your book? Indecision about the tools? Fear of failure or success? How to approach social media? Heard so many cons that you’re afraid? Now is the time to debunk the following 10 myths so you can be a marketing rock star. Myth #1: All I have to do is one thing: write …
Be a Branch, Not the Vine
By Tracy Popolizio Jesus instructs us in John 15, “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without …
Crafting A Great First Line (Hooking The Reader)
By Rachel Hauck In a world where indie and traditional authors are scraping for every bit of shelf space and reader attention, we have to up our game. One of the best ways is to craft a dynamite first line. But it’s hard to craft a first line. Many of us settle for “good enough.” But here’s the power of …
Celebrate Independence Day!
By Carrie Stuart Parks Happy 4th of July! My new book, Formula of Deception, will have released yesterday. In it are some historical facts that I researched and I’d like to reflect on as we celebrate our independence. A theme of my writing is to show how events of the past impact the present. Although I may start my research …
A Virtuous Undertaking
By Ruth A. Douthitt The woman in Proverbs 31 is such an example of how a wife and mother should be, that many women feel threatened by her as if she accomplished all of these tasks in a single day, week, month, or even a year. Nonsense. The chapter provides an overview of what a virtuous wife did throughout her …
To Your Health
By Linda W. Yezak Yesterday, I couldn’t get my eyes to focus. I was trying to read something on the computer screen and none of the three lenses on my trifocals would make the print clear for me. If I brought the laptop a few inches from my nose or used the commands to make the print larger, I could …
The Writing Life
by Ane Mulligan My latest WIP is either going to kill me or be my opus. My main character did not reveal as much as I prefer before I started writing the story. I knew her home was steeped in secrets; I knew those. Or so I thought. But she withheld a few to spring on me at unsuspected times. …
What Is Your Hero Pursuing?
by Henry McLaughlin We’ve all heard story is about conflict and tension. And that is definitely true. Stories about happy people living in Happy Valley don’t excite readers. Frankly, they can be boring. The story becomes a story when something disrupts the status quo. As John LeCarré once said, “The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The …
Resolving Tension
By Sarah Hamaker As writers, we work with tension all the time—without tension, our stories would sag and our heroes and heroines would have very boring relationships. But this blog is about the tension we experience between what we want to work on and what we have to work on. For many of us, writing is not our fulltime job. …
Writers and People Who Write
By JPC Allen There is a difference between writers and people who write. One of my favorite writers, Patrick F. McManus, brought this home to me in his humorous essay, “People Who Hunt”, from the book Kerplunk! Mr. McManus writes that hunters and people who hunt are two different species. People who hunt love the sport, but they have other …