I’m not sure how helpful or interesting this will be, especially to non-writers, but if you do find it interesting and would like to hear more posts along these lines, be sure to let me know over on my Facebook page. I thought I’d give a brief overview of how I write a book. I …
A few years back I read the Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. If you haven’t read it, you might think it was a tragic, sad love story. It certainly is that, but it is also a book about architecture. The reference to the Paris cathedral is not just for the setting, you see. In this …
Scrivener A scrivener is a scribe, copyist, or clerk, someone who deals with paperwork or words. I’ve always liked this word because of the sound of it. It sounds like ‘scribble’ which is what I imagine most scriveners doing. Indeed scribe, scribble, and scrivener all trace their origin from the same latin roots, scribere ‘to …
Every good story has a hero. Those heroes are not perfect, but they are quite often more noble than many of us. And that’s a good thing. Because a literary hero quite often becomes a friend, at least for the time that we read the story and perhaps long after. And friends can pull us …
Chapter titles and tables of contents: do we really need them? I recently had an exchange online with another writer who was convinced they were completely unnecessary. She rattled off a list of books which I hadn’t heard of. None of them contained tables of contents. So I poked around on my book shelf …
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. – Gandalf, The Return of the King Books can be emotional affairs and rightly so. I wrote in one of my other updates how my short story The Artificer’s Apprentice really touched me when I read it out loud to my …
I’ve written before about how much I enjoy writing to music and how the songs I listen to often become the unofficial soundtrack to the words I am putting down, but in the case of my short story, Spirit of Caledonia, music played an even more integral role. The story, if you haven’t read it, was released …
As a first-time author, it is not easy to create awareness about your book. Sometimes what you write gets lost in the kudzu. But with the advent of ebooks and online stores, there are some great ways you can support your favorite authors on Amazon.com. I recently came across a great article by fellow author …
