By Pamela Nowak I received a request for advice from a fellow writer. Poised on the edge of publication, she is looking at options. As I thought about how to answer her, it occurred to me how different things are now from how they were fifteen years ago, when I was moving into that stage…
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Your Character’s Loss is Your Gain
Let’s talk about character and plot for a minute, and how one can’t exist without the other. Everything that happens in the plot forces your character to react, and your character’s reaction impacts what goes on in the plot. This creates a connected string of events that lead to the story’s ultimate conclusion. Action/reaction. Time…
Adventures in Genre Writing: Lesson Seven – Conflict
By Jeanne C. Stein What is conflict? Why is it important in your writing? Those are redundant questions, aren’t they? In fact, you’ve heard them so many times, you’re sick of them. They are mentioned in every article, every class, every discussion on writing. Why? Because conflict is crucial to good story telling. A dictionary…
Convention Report – Coastal Magic Con
By Jeffe Kennedy A year ago, a gal I knew through Twitter pinged me and asked if I’d consider attending her conference as a featured author the following spring. She promised me Florida beaches in February, enthusiastic readers and great, organized programming. Wow – did she ever deliver! I just last night returned from the…
Long Live the Oldest Profession: Pimping Your Book
By J.A. (Julie) Kazimer Since none of my previous published novels have hit the bestseller lists, for which I blame you (you know who you are), I decided to try a new marketing approach for The Fairyland Murders – Blog Tours. Not the kind I set up for myself, on blogs I’d visited seven times already,…