Fires, politics, spikes in the COVID-19 outbreaks, gloomy news. What’s an author to do to escape the emotional storm clouds and enter the comforting cocoon of creativity? Nature’s good for the soul and the psyche, but with the onset of winter weather, opportunities to hike, leaf-peep, walk, or bicycle will soon vanish. Travel? Not for…
The two most powerful words in the writer’s toolbox have got to be “What If…?” What if the world we live in is simply a computer simulation- (The Matrix) What if people can travel through time but can’t control it- (The Time Traveler’s Wife) What if robots developed into sentient beings- (Ex-Machina) What if Romeo…
As fiction writers know, readers prefer reading material that evokes a feeling. But it may escape our attention that this also applies to the nonfiction promotional materials we write like book covers, introductions, flyers, author websites and bios. This promo material doesn’t need to be dry or boring. Like we do with fiction, we can…
Welcome back, everybody. Today we’ll talk about the care and feeding of your email list. But before we do that, let’s get something controversial out of the way. Blogging. Blogging became a really popular activity about fifteen years ago. In 2005 there were 50 million blogs on the internet. That number tripled by 2010. Clearly…
Last month I mentioned (I mean, announced) that I’ll be the guest writer/teacher next summer for Ireland Writer Tours. I got the invitation from Ireland Writer Tours organizer Fiona Claire a few months ago. As far as I was concerned, it came clear out of the blue. It was incredibly flattering. (A quick update: the…