featuring the Night to Dawn books and Barbara's fiction, and other goodies

Archive for the ‘Writing’ Category

Aspen Mountain Press – The Seamier Side of Publishing

The acceptance letter you get for your book is a dream come true for most authors, especially if the watchdog websites like P&E green-light the company. If you’re fortunate, you never have to find out any different. In the case of AMP, the other authors and I were not so fortunate.  I signed a three-year [...]

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Artists, authors, Healthcare, people, Publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

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Autocrit Revisited: When Your Book Needs More…

Some time ago I raved about the merits of Autocrit. I ran Steel Rose and other work through it and became ecstatic when the software ferreted out repetitions, clichés, and problems with sentence structure. I showed up at the PWC with Autocrit-edited work, and learned that Autocrit made a great proofing tool indeed. The extraneous [...]

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A Word with Word, authors, people, Publishing, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Revisions…and then More Revisions

Over the months, I’ve alluded to a sequel to Dark Side of the Moon: Steel Rose. Steel Rose wound up with its own cast of characters, so I can’t call it a sequel any more. Maybe this is good. At workshops, speakers have advised everyone to put their manuscripts aside for a few weeks, and [...]

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A Word with Word, authors, people, Publishing, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Editing Software, Anyone?

I’ve read good and bad about writing software over the years, and once considered such gadgets a handy way to flush your money down the sewer pipe. About a year ago writer Gregory Frost talked up Scrivener software, which enables you to edit writing and research at the same time. Scrivener works well, once you [...]

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authors, Healthcare, Publishing, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Createspace versus Lulu Revisited

Some time ago, I laid out the advantages of using Lulu versus Createspace. And my biggest beef with Createspace was not being able to use my credit card. Well, at last I found my way through the labyrinth of ordering functions, enough to order a “proof.” Createspace has made peace with my credit card, and [...]

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authors, Publishing, Writing

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CreateSpace versus Lulu

My mother once told me that when you leave your old street for a new street, you know what you’re leaving, but you don’t know what you’re going to find. I kind of felt that way when some of my fellow small press publishers encouraged me to do my NTD printing through CreateSpace. The royalties [...]

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A Word with Word, authors, people, Publishing, serious, religion, science, surgery, deformity,, Writing

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To Lie or not to Lie – that is the question.

I’m referring to one of the verbs that give me and other writers a lot of grief – the difference between lie, lay, and laid. That and certain words that mean one thing when used as a compound, and something else when used separately, can mess up an otherwise well-written tale. And so therein “lies” [...]

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A Word with Word, Artists, authors, balloons, people, poetry, Writing

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Branding and Facebook

When a workshop leader coaxed everyone to promote their books through branding, I left the workshop confused. To my literal mind, “branding” refers to a cowboy who brands his cattle, marking it as his own, or the trademark a company uses to identify its products.  Then Facebook gave me an appreciation for branding. I’ve enjoyed [...]

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A Word with Word, Artists, authors, balloons, people, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Forthcoming Interview and other Night to Dawn News

On September 9, 2010, Art Sippio and Ric Croxton of http://thebookcave.libsyn.com/ will interview author Tom Johnson and me about The Spider’s Web and Tom’s other NTD books. Tom will discuss his favorite character, Black Ghost. I will be discussing Dark Side of the Moon and a potential sequel; also Twilight Healer and Blood Moons and [...]

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Artists, authors, people, science fiction / fantasy, Uncategorized, vampires, Writing

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When Your Tales Contain Too Much Clutter…

Yesterday, I learned about the evils of clutter when I purchased an outdoor trashcan and attempted to load it into my Honda Fit. It looked so easy. Folding down the back seats would give plenty of room for my purchase…except so much stuff had congregated in the back seats and floor. Bending the trashcan wasn’t [...]

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A Word with Word, Artists, authors, people, poetry, romance, science fiction / fantasy, Uncategorized, vampires, Writing

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