My wife belongs to several writing and reading groups on Facebook (as do I, of course) and she engages with many of them. She is constantly sharing with me the idiotic stuff some writers do and say. Recently, there was a conversation on one group where an author was selling a 90 page book for $18, and my wife, Melissa, pointed out that this was a ridiculous price. The author balked, and said that Melissa cared more about the price per page than the quality of the writing. My wife responded: Melissa Walker : here’s what it’s about to me…Let’s …Continue reading →
The argument begins like this… “When you write intricate plots, you always have to change things and rewrite and it’s hard to just write that story straight through.” “Not for me,” says the irritating pantser who goes from start to finish. You’ve probably guessed I’m not a pantser, but a planner. While I do allow creative things to take over, and do embrace that happy accident that solves a plotting problem, I am, at the heart of it all, a technical writer. I’m also whole-brain, and often my right brain and left brain are embroiled in hand-to-hand combat. While those …Continue reading →
One quarter to one third of the way through a novel, I sometimes hit this dead spot. I’m not sure where the story is going. For instance, this happened with Building Character (Book 2 of the Northwoods Trilogy). Instead of a linear progression from one scene to the next I had a beginning and an end, but there was this entire middle part missing. I wondered how I was going to fill it in. There didn’t seem to be much room for story there. One character was in transit to the location of the other characters and I wondered how I …Continue reading →
I posted a promo that I’m working on book 4 in the Rain Falls series, and got this response from one of my readers: Cindy Compton YES!!! then maybe a cross-pollination book 2? Pretty peaz… 😜 Kelli Jae Baeli yes there will be another Cross-Pollination book. After i decide which characters. any suggestions? Cindy Compton Sorry I missed this…I thought about that with C-P1, how on earth do you decide which characters to involve in weaving several stories into one captivating tale and still do them all justice without the storyline suffering. But you’re a pro at this, so you always manage to pull …Continue reading →
Recently, I posted a inquiry to my readers, about a publishing aspect of my work. All the responses were encouraging and thought-provoking, but one in particular touched upon some deeper themes. Here it is. TO MY READERS–A QUESTION: As authors, we want to please everyone, but that’s just not possible. For instance, on my newest novella, Saturation Point, I have 4 and 5 star reviews and personal messages and emails that tell me how much they enjoyed the introspective nature of this book, and the characters, but on one review, the reviewer was bored because there wasn’t dialogue on every …Continue reading →
“Great Literature” is a generally agreed-upon concept–but according to *whom*, really? By its very nature, it is also a subjective concept. A great deal of literature most commonly defined as shining touchstones, to me are little more that dull or even irritating. Take the notorious opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was …Continue reading →
Thank you for your interest in my work. Please enjoy this free download. (click the cover image) Giving it Away: Spoilers as Both Noun & Accusation (Why Book Reviews Matter & How to Write a Proper One) Ironically, in response to one review on this essay, I feel I must point out that this is a FREE essay, not a novel; it does not pretend to elucidate completely the subject at hand; it’s about 10 pages on the topic. I am too busy writing full-length novels to give it more time than that, and yes, I do advertise my other …Continue reading →
What’s wrong with this sentence? “My only child was struck and killed by a car riding a bicycle home from the beach one afternoon in September.” (From Enon, by Paul Harding) So, there was this car riding a bicycle to the beach, see, and…. {Sigh}. And this book was published traditionally and by Random House, where I assume they have professional editors being paid the big bucks to catch things like that. I’m sure there are a million reasons why an editor could have missed that. Perhaps he had been up too late the night before, perhaps he sneezed and …Continue reading →
In a certain writing magazine a certain author was featured, and in that story, we are told The notebooks filled. But he reached a point where he had to stop. “I just begin, and then find I write myself into a corner of human experience about which I’m totally ignorant,” he says. Writing paused for about six months while he plowed into research. He read 33 books, including the Koran twice. He came to the point where he felt he could teach a class on Islamic extremism. Informed and enlightened, he finished the novel. Which took five-and-a-half years to write. …Continue reading →
reblog Kelli Jae Baeli My favorite of her book covers. Grumpy Cat cracks me the hell up. Kelli Jae Baeli is different from most of the writers I interview here at The House of Fists in that it was her non-fiction that first drew me to her work, as opposed to the horror or dark fiction practiced by the other interviewees. I’m trying to learn more about writing, though, and not just about writing horror, so I immediately asked her to do me the honor of being interviewed here. She writes very clearly and persuasively, her tone neatly balanced …Continue reading →
Welcome to the Irony-Fest, please sign in and wear your name tags. This topic has become a comedy of ironies. Herein lies the oft-repeated back-handed compliments and erroneous and mixed opinions we authors often deal with, in relation to our work. It seems that some readers just don’t understand nor appreciate what authors are offering, and why. And they don’t seem to understand the function of short works in this regard. Would that we could be treated with the same respect that other professions enjoy, without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In one blog, Distracting Fiction: Brand …Continue reading →
In response to the unusual interest paid to one of my recent blogs, Giving it Away: Spoilers as Both Noun & Accusation, I decided I would publish that entry in digital form, so I could spread the word. I will be offering it for free download –that’s right: Giving it Away, will be GIVEN AWAY> on Smashwords, and on Amazon, too, hoping they match the FREE price. Otherwise, Amazon might list it for .99 at first. But I felt this information was too important, and it needed to be available to those who would write book reviews. from the article: …Continue reading →
Directly out of the chute, let me say this is coming from myself as both a writer and a reader. One compelling reason (among others) that I became an author, was due to my disappointment in the offerings of a certain genre. I wanted to write books *I* would want to read. I launched myself into this vocation with little knowledge of what that decision would bring. I had no way of knowing the degree of vulnerability that publishing my writing would entail. Publishing a book is very much like being naked in public. So it’s difficult not to take …Continue reading →
This is a wide subject area, but I want to focus on just a few things. As a segue, I have to share this post I came across. I was on a forum where people were posting for help about making money blogging. One poster was frustrated and confused and posted this: “Been using these for over a year and made 2 penies. How do I earn money on goggle. It is simply frostrating. I posted so many adds on my blog but I have earned no money. what is happening? I have been trying to write all the …Continue reading →
Recently, a reader mentioned my use of specific products in my books, and called it “distracting.” First of all, this reader I mentioned is from New Zealand, and I write toward an American audience. These product names and brands I might use are all familiar to American readers, and so it does create a clearer picture for them than it would a reader who might not even recognize what that some brands are. So the tendency to want generic, might be predicated on a need for familiarity. This is precisely the reason I don’t read books with foreign settings, or …Continue reading →
