Writing Archives | Page 3 of 10

Life as a published author, although immensely satisfying, can be fraught with day-to-day stressors that writers may not anticipate in their pre-published days. These stressors are the things I think of when new writers ask me what I wish I’d known 20 years ago. Let’s explore a handful of things that can influence success and emotional stability in an extremely competitive business. The lonelin…

  A prologue is an introduction to a literary work that comes before the main narrative of the story. Its purpose is to provide information to the reader that is not readily apparent in the first chapter. Simple, right? Anyone who has been writing novels for a while can tell you that the debate on prologues is fierce. Many of us writers refuse to include them, while the rest of us adore t…

How to find the phrases that sell your books Anyone who’s paid attention to advertising and marketing can tell you that the right phrases and words get a reaction from consumers. And that definitely goes for the marketing of your books. So how can you find the phrases and words that work for you and sell your unique books to your unique audience? What’s the point of your marketing? Marketing is…

Over the last year or so, I have encountered a ton of writing and publishing professionals, including editors, journalists, and authors, who are feeling, well, a bit stuck. And I felt stagnated myself despite having made several big changes in my life. Things change all the time, and the future of publishing and authorship is full of uncertainty. It ebbs and flows with market changes, industry …

You can never read the same story twice. Some of us complain about returning to earlier favorites only to find they’ve been rendered unreadable by visits from an imaginary being called “the Suck Fairy.” The Suck Fairy brings to our attention the unfortunate assumptions our favorite authors made as they created their fictional worlds: the racism implicit in Tarzan’s superiority over Black Africa…

When listing their 10 top horror novels for 2024, The New York Times said we’re in a golden age of horror, which is wonderful news for anyone who writes—or wants to write—in the genre. When I got my adult library card at 13, I went straight for the horror section. That’s what I loved to read and also what I wrote. But when I started thinking about writing for publication, I discovered that the …