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Lessons Learned from a Writing Life Part One
Some readers can be fickle and fame fleeting Your latest novel will be the most popular thing since sliced bread one minute, but the second the next trend hits, most readers will forget you ever existed. Fame is fleeting. Do what you do because you love it. That passion and love will attract loyal readers and super fans who will…
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Be Prepared to Change Lanes
This blog post is not going to be popular writing advice, but the truth never is. The big advice in indie land right now seems to be to find a niche genre and then stay in your lane. This means writing one kind of book, nothing else, and never branching out. I think this is the biggest mistake (that most writers…
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Fan Convention 2023 Update
On the matter of fan conventions – I have decided that in-person events like Fan Expo are going to be a hard pass for me in 2023. While it’s incredibly fun to meet readers and spend time with my writing tribe, the fan conventions often include 10-12 hour days of panels, table work, driving to and from Denver every morning…
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Indie Authors: Don’t Get Scammed
Dear Fellow Indie Authors, I care about you and and we need to have a talk. We need to talk about why the beginners among us are such easy targets for scams and bullshit. As you know, independently publishing your work does come with some legitimate expenses. But it also comes with a bunch of scam artists trying to take…
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Writing Organizations
I haven’t written a post about writing organizations since 2013, and my view of them has changed a bit since then. So, I thought I’d write a new post about how to choose the best writing organizations at each point in your career. Every writing organization has something it does well and focuses on, and it’s important to be in…
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A Writer’s Priority is Writing – Not Managing ALL the Social Media.
Today, I (and many other writers) received a survey from a marketing mentor asking about TikTok. Apparently, this is the direction advertising and selling books is heading. Mind you, for a young, tech-savvy fifty-year-old, I am perfectly comfortable with video, including platforms like TikTok. Chatting with an audience is easy if I know in advance what I want to say.…
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Books Coming in 2022
Two titles for sure that are coming in 2022, and that you won’t want to miss include Aiming for Trouble and Inherited Djinn. In Inherited Djinn (Urban Fantasy, late March), we follow Bill MacPhegor as he navigates his new life as The Protectorate of the Vessels with his cigarette smoking, bourbon swilling djinn, Paimon, and the dark, brooding shop girl,…
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21 Things You Need to Know About Writing as a Career Before You Quit Your Job. #amwriting
I know – I know! Geez, Steph, way to piss all over someone’s dreams. But I don’t think people really understand what it actually takes to sell and THRIVE as a self-employed writer, and a lot of that depends on your personality, your productivity skills, your strengths, your motivation, your weaknesses, and whether or not you have someone to support…
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Live Intentionally
Each year in December, I choose a keyword or phrase that will inspire the coming year. At the end of 2018, I realized that I had lost the joy I usually found in my work. Writing had become a difficult chore that I dreaded. With that revelation, I had to stop and re-evaluate, and discover what, exactly, I had lost.…
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The Myth of Exposure #AmWriting
Having been a professional writer for many years, and having worked at my career for over 25 years, the one word I hate to hear more than anything is “exposure”. When I was young and aspiring, and desperate for publication, I heard that word tossed around a lot. “Come do a reading. It will be great exposure!” “Submit to this…
