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Bad Covers: The Dismal Death of A Good Book
Last night I found myself browsing indie books. I love a good indie book. There are a lot of great books out there just waiting to be discovered. The problem is they likely won’t be, and it’s not always because the writing or the story stinks. It’s because their covers do. Before anyone takes offense, I’m not innocent in this.…
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Writing Routines
It appears many of the writers who covered this top this month are just as haphazard as me. Discipline is one of those things I still struggle with and work at. I may spend an entire writing day and only get 1K out, but then on a day I’m working the day job, I’ll end up pushing out over 3K…
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A Malkuth of Me, business of writing, craft, Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour, NaNoWriMo, novels, the writing life
Breaking the Block
One of the most common questions I get is how to break writer’s block. I suppose I get this question a lot because I’m one of those writers who’s rather prolific. My other writer friends watch me produce book after book and wonder how the heck I do it. Truthfully, I wasn’t always this way. I labored over my first novel…
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Constructive vs. Everything Else
From Amazon reviews to author criticisms in forums – negative, destructive criticism happens. It sometimes even happens in critique groups. A few weeks back, I told a woman that her blog post about an author was exceedingly negative. Imagine my surprise when the blog author argued with me and told me her post was constructive criticism. The post berated the author…
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Writing Orgs & Their Purpose
I have belonged to numerous writing organizations over the years. Many of them serve a good purpose. For example, RMFW, the state fiction writer’s association, was a great organization when I was first starting out. It still is, but it was more useful to me when I first started on my journey to become a professional novelist. The organization itself offered a…
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Greatly Exaggerated
The rumors of my wealth are greatly exaggerated. How about yours? After all, we all know that most writers live in mansions sipping martinis. We spend long vacations in villas in Tuscany. Evidently we have expensive cars and servants, too. (Or is that minions?) 😉 I recently overheard an aspiring author telling folks that the only reason certain writers have…
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On Publishing – Printing & Production Choices
I often get people asking me about the printers and distributors who help me put out my independent non-fiction books. I’ve even been “insulted” recently, by other publishers, for making the choices I’ve made. Let me take a moment to share with you why I use the printers and distributors I use. For DB Publishing’s general titles (books we want…
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The State of the Publishing Industry
When I saw this topic at the beginning of the year I was sure I’d know exactly what to write. However, now that it’s time to write it I find myself overwhelmed. The state of the industry is in such flux that it would be impossible to cover everything in one blog entry. We’ve gone from the big six to the…
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When You’ve Gone Pro
Being a professional writer means different things to different people. In the writing world, some writers have come to define professional as qualifying for membership in a professional writing organization. This often means you have to have been published by an approved publisher or magazine paying professional rates. I’m going to be up front for a moment. I do not believe you…
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The Myth of Perfection (The Pedantic Writer)
When I met Kaylyn* I had no idea she was a writer. She was one of those people who had a precise, perhaps overly anal retentive, vocabulary. In that I mean she was one of those folks who used so many three to four syllable words in a sentence that the meaning of what she was trying to say got…