From Our Blog
Mentors in Fiction
Imparting wisdom and leading the way to adventure
What’s the purpose of mentors in fiction? In real life, mentors can be found in schools, the business world, in athletic programs, or at church. They teach, guide, and motivate those who are less savvy about the world to negotiate life’s trials. So how are mentors employed in fiction? Taking inspiration from Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogle…
Lindsay Randall’s excellent article on this blog about GEO & SEO explains how websites help establish digital authority. But AI-assisted discovery doesn’t rely only on your website. Increasingly, recommendation systems pull signals from retailer metadata, reviews, author profiles, and consistent cross-platform information. The good news? Authors can improve discoverability without gaming th…
How people and artificial intelligence (AI) search the web continues to shift and evolve. Since web searches now weave in AI-driven answers created by large language models (LLMs), the content of your website should be optimized for both traditional search engine optimization (SEO) and the new frontier of building your digital authority—which, for the purpose of this article, I’ll call generati…
Stop Panicking in the Pause: A Writer’s Guide to the In-Between
The momentum trap As a writer and certified life coach, I’ve seen a pattern—both in my coaching work and in myself—that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. That pattern is what happens to us after we finish “the thing.”
My most recent reminder came in late November. I’d been pushing hard, working late nights and early mornings, trying to hit a deadline on a traditionally published book. I p…
Publishing Wide but Shallow: The Mistake That’s Costing You Readers & Revenue
I’ve been talking to authors about publishing wide for well over a decade now. I’ve written books about it, spoken about it at conferences around the world, and spent years inside the Kobo and Draft2Digital operations watching how it all works from the inside.
And I keep seeing authors making the same mistakes.
Authors hear the message about not putting all their eggs in one basket. They agree …
Nonlinear Storytelling: How Not To Make A Mess
The beginning is not always the optimal place to start a story. Many authors have found that nonlinear storytelling, with its shifts across time and perspective, can deepen reader engagement and create a more layered narrative experience.
Nonlinear novels do not follow events chronologically. Instead, authors may move forward and backward in time or develop parallel timelines that unfold in con…