28,000 subscribers

Your author photo is like your handshake. What does it say about you? We often feel uncomfortable with our author photos. However, if you don’t have one—or if you use some other alternative—you appear to be hiding. Readers and clients will have a harder time relating to you. I’d go so far as to say […]

Many storytellers have an unquenchable thirst to share their tales with the widest possible audience, often with agnosticism toward medium or format. This is why so many book authors have tried their hand at screenwriting – Agathie Christie, John Steinbeck, Stephen King and J.K. Rowling to name a few. Toiling away to satiate this thirst […]

Right now in these trying times I find it a little difficult to read social media, but on the other hand I can hardly keep away from it, amazed at how the world seems to be on fire. One evening, it literally made me tear up at the animosity and sarcasm. Honestly, some folks just […]

The writer’s workshop model remains one of the best ways writers receive feedback. We share our work with a group, and everyone chimes in with ideas and suggestions. Early in our writing careers, we learn about structure and grammar through the workshop. As our writing improves, we begin to learn about character development, plotting, and […]

I have finally cleaned up my social media such that I only see things nonpolitical and/or non-adversarial. Finally I can get back to business and breathe a better sigh of relief. That’s because I unfriended three dozen people and snoozed that many more. Do they have a right to speak up? Yes. Do I have […]

Some of you have seen my social media of late. It’s not very active except to say I am hiding a bit behind pound cake, coffee, and my stories to avoid the universe. These are hard times. Don’t get sucked in. Write. I’ll be the first to tell you it’s difficult to claw past the […]

Writers with experience in specific subjects are encouraged to use their niche, especially when breaking into the writing world. Holly Lisle used nursing experience for her debut novel Sympathy for the Devil, Justin Gustainis turned bodyguarding experience to supernatural fiction for Black Magic Woman — and if you know more about a topic than other […]

In a recent success story, T. Jensen Lacey had a curious thought, dared ask for an interview, and dared pitch the piece. See what resulted. Her daring-do got her a fantastic assignment. (See Below) I once noticed a turf grass magazine. Keep in mind my degree is in agronomy, so there are still areas in […]

I was recently asked by a local magazine to write about my opinion of AI. It wasn’t a paying gig, but just a way to remind the local community who I was and that I lived among them, writing my books. I turned it down. I have a lot of fans in this area. Some […]

Resistance. Bookmarks. Dragons. Dreams. These are just a handful of examples of recent or pending “themed” submission calls posted on the Publishing . . . and Other Forms of Insanity web site, one of my go-to resources for submission venues. In my own writing, themed calls have played a key role in idea generation and sales. Brainstorming […]

Victoria Strauss of the Writer Beware blog, has been around for ages informing writers how to not get taken by the less than reputable entities out there in the publishing world. In her latest article written for Writer Unboxed, titled Cheated, Swindled, or Scammed: What’s a Writer to Do?, she gives you options on what to do once […]

We writers often stay in our own wheelhouse, our comfort zone. We stick with topics that allow us the ease and knowledge to keep money flowing in. Therefore, the articles and essays we write often come from the wealth of information we’ve gathered over the years. But what happens when creativity for those same topics […]