Characters are fundamental to nearly all stories. Whatever happens, happens to somebody or is made to happen by somebody, or both. Even when the characters in a story are not human, as in Watership Down, they tend to be anthropomophized. Most readers remember appealing and interesting characters
Read more →If you or anyone you know is at all serious about a sport, running, or exercise, you’re probably familiar with the concept of cross-training. The idea is that you improve faster and are more likely to avoid injury if you do more than one type of exercise
Read more →The simplest and easiest way to publicize your novel, whether self-published or traditional, is on the Internet. Everybody knows that, and everybody is doing it. When I said I was posting a series on publicity, I got specific recommendations from every single person I mentioned it to,
Read more →The second part of publicity, after generating reviews, is trying to get visibility, attention, and awareness for your book in other ways. The most accessible way for people to do this, these days, is on the Internet, and there are bunches of web sites full of suggestions
Read more →Having talked a bit about generalities regarding publicity and promotion, I’m going to spend this post getting a little more specific. I’d originally thought that I’d do this series of articles according to the type of book and/or publisher – ebooks vs hardcopy, traditional publishing vs. self-publishing
Read more →Publicity is a perennial problem for writers – what to do, how to do it, what works, what doesn’t. I’ve had several queries on the subject in the past few weeks, so despite the fact that publicity is NOT one of my strong suits, I’m going to
Read more →How many stories have you written? 22 novels, one nonfiction book on writing, and a bunch of short stories (I lose track of the short fiction very easily). What was your first story written? Published? The first story I tried to write was a novel I started
Read more →Every character in every book has their own story, and each character is the hero of his or her own story. This piece of writing wisdom has been around for at least as long as the novel has, but too often, writers don’t think about the implications
Read more →I’m spending the weekend at the Sirens conference in Washington state. The best part about such conferences tends to be meeting other book people – writers, editors, agents, fans, booksellers. The second best part is talking books with book people, because there are always people with a
Read more →I’m on vacation this week with no Internet. Regular service should resume Sunday.
Read more →
