For the past three years, I’ve had the honor of being a first-round judge for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers annual Colorado Gold novel contest. This means I get to read and critique other writers’ first chapters and synopses. Every year, I’m amazed at how much I learn from analyzing these works, from plot structure…
Category: Blog
Will you be presenting at the next Colorado Gold?
The first time I considered presenting at a writers conference, I immediately thought, “But I don’t know enough to teach anything.” Turns out, just about everyone who has been writing for a while knows something. Perhaps, like me, you’ve done a lot of research and figured out how to ferret out information in places besides “Google”…
Journal your way to rich settings
The wedding excitement of September 7th has subsided. We enjoyed a loving and entertaining weekend, and my daughter Jalena was the most beautiful bride in the world. Euphoric, I rode a hot air balloon of happiness over a sunny, Rockwellian world where all the men were handsomely dressed. The women were beautiful, their hair perfect,…
Genre by any other name…
Hi, my name is Cindy Skaggs, and I write genre fiction. As ridiculous as it appears to readers, this kind of genre-as-vice mentality is an ongoing battle. Having worked in a large public library system while I finished my education, I know for a fact that librarians don’t care where something is shelved except as…
How and Why I Mastered Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a foreign language to most authors. The goal of SEO is for your audience to easily find you by searching your name or your book title. Most people never search past the first page of results given by the search engine. So, you must optimize your search-ability within these…