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…
Category: General Interest
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…
Paying for it
By Mary Gillgannon In the month since my latest book came out, I’ve dutifully attempted to promote it. I updated my website, guest-posted on nearly a dozen blogs, tweeted and Facebooked (in my own pathetic way), had a Goodreads giveaway, and engaged the help of the other authors on my publisher’s promotion loop to get…
MORE POLITICS IN FICTION
By Kevin Paul Tracy After writing last month’s column on infusing your fiction with real-world politics, I thought I’d address this month’s column to how to infuse fictional politics into your fictional world. In fiction it is often necessary to build a world as a stage on which the events of your novel or series…
Guest Post – Betsy Dornbusch: The M Word
By Betsy Dornbusch Marketing is a dirty word in publishing. The publishers don’t do it, the writers don’t want to do it, and it doesn’t work anyway, right? I mean, how many times do readers have to hear about a book before they buy? Three? Eleventy-hundred? Who knows?! Might as well do nothing. If you…