Traditional Publishing. Back in the day, the only way you could get a book published—other than paying a vanity press to print it for you—was to find an agent who would submit your book to publishers. This was a long and frustrating process, fraught with rejection letters. Now, of course, you can publish your work…
How to get your WIP (Work In Progress) in shape… or, you aren’t done when your think you’re done! Too many new independent authors finish their first draft and immediately publish it on KDP or Smashwords. That’s not a great idea. Books typically go through multiple levels of review and revision before they’re ready to…
In this part of our series about the jargon of the writing community, we’ll talk about terms that relate to writing or editing your work. You’re likely to hear these phrases from critique group members, beta readers, or your editor. Think of these terms as “good writing advice”. Oxford Comma (aka Serial Comma): A comma…
When I was a computer programmer, a co-worker and I were taking the bus to our respective homes after work. It was rush hour and the bus was full, so we were standing. We started taking about the project we were working on. After a few minutes a man sitting in the seat next to…
Last month I “attended” the virtual StokerCon 2021 conference, run by the Horror Writers Associarion. If you see a conference run by the “[genre] Writers of America” or “[genre] Writers Association”, you can count on there being a lot of panels on writing, editing, publishing, marketing, and other writing-related topics. And that, friends, means it’s…