Category: Writing
Working through Writer’s Block
Writer’s block. We all get it. Writer’s groups on-line are full of posts seeking the magic cure. There is only one cure for writer’s block ― to write. Wow, that seems counterintuitive. How can I write if I’m blocked? How about this… Let’s say you’re writing a novel and you…
The Location Worksheet
In an earlier post I discussed the Character Worksheet I used to keep track of all the characters mentioned in my Any Tomorrow Trilogy. The worksheet simply lists the name and a basic description of each character. This tool is very handy to make sure names aren’t too similar or…
Monday Update
What I am reading ― As a geographer, I find Peter Turchi’s Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer an absolute must read. His use of process of exploration as a metaphor for the discovery process we, as writers, use is apt and dead on. More than that it…
On Staying Organized
I was planning on writing a nice long article about how important organization is when writing an eBook of over 300k words, especially if the action takes place over a long timeline, several continents, and involves hundreds of major and minor characters. Just trying to not repeat names is difficult,…
Character Worksheet
In one of my first posts I mentioned that I developed a rather detailed worksheet to keep track of my characters, locations, and specialized language references. As I continued my editing of Any Tomorrow: The Curse and Any Tomorrow: The Culling, I thought I might update the worksheet. I have…
A Matter of Perspective
If you go to Amazon.com and search for books with keyword of “horror”, you’ll get 56,575 results, but only 9,202 are Kindle Editions. If you search for books with the keyword “speculative fiction”, only 745 results are returned, but only 320 are Kindle Editions. If you search for a book…
I Really Need a Checklist
You know, sometimes the most obvious things are the easiest to miss. Both Kindle and Smashwords provide the option to post a detailed description and keywords (tags) to help potential buyers discover your eBook. In the rush to get the eBook text loaded, it’s easy to miss those couple of…
eBook Description
In the latest news from Smashwords, Any Tomorrow: The Calling has passed the automated vetting process and is now up for review by the “vetting review team”. I suspect that passing the automated vetting had something to do with the updated file I submitted on Monday, although I was never…
Paying For It
Last night I submitted updated files for Any Tomorrow: The Calling to Amazon and Smashwords. It was a surprisingly simple process for both distributors, however after almost 24 hours I am #932 in the queue for processing at Smashwords. It takes time, but I’m okay with that. After all it…
To Wait or Not
Writing is a hard thing. There is nothing easy about it. I now have the first book of my trilogy, Any Tomorrow: The Calling, out on Amazon and Smashwords (inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog is still pending). I have the second book in the series, Any Tomorrow: The Curse,…
