DAN ALATORRE

Last week we did hate; this week we’ll do love. LOVE But that’s as easy as it gets, gang. (Can you believe this? My Google image search for “love” got about 35 pictures before a dirty one!) We all love someone or something, but how do we describe that in a character? How do we […]

We’ve been talking about emotions in our Friday Flash Fiction Challenges. It’s worth noting that, on occasion, someone will be going through something emotional and they’ll blog about it. On days like that, you should read the blog, understand the emotions, and think about capturing the joy, pain, misery, confusion – whatever the blogger is […]

Many of you will be encouraged to make videos as part of your author platform, and there is a lot to know even if you just plan to talk into your Ipad. Today, friend of the blog Lucy Brazier (a.k.a. Porter Girl, from the wildly successful Secret Diaries of PorterGirl) has offered to share a […]

As the author of the IA series, I’ve had some success on social media, and people often ask me for tips. Well here’s the skinny.   I use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter equally, but it’s my firm and religious belief that Goodreads is the past, present, future, and end all be all for authors, especially […]

I have on occasion wondered if you could write a character, change their sex afterward, and the story would still work. I’m on vacation so forgive the clumsiness of that sentence. Jenny wrote a great short story and she never identified the sex of the character. (If she did, I missed it. Sorry, Jenny!) As […]

We all hate something (heck, I hate lots of stuff), but when we are writing, how do we describe that in a character? How do we show that? Well, you’re about to find out. This week, take a random character from the random character generator and put them into a 500 word scene where HATE […]

    Some of you attended Molli’s query seminar a few months ago. Remember? I was in the Keys, following along on my phone while my wife drove… Anyway, the seminar was chock full of great ideas on how to get agents to pay attention to your query letter when submitting. I also had the […]

Well, we never really went way. YOU did, though. Kinda. Blog traffic is a strange animal, but whether it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy or a reality of the biz, December – also known as Christmas month – is different. Traffic wise, it’s usually kinda dead. I missed you! I told you guys that there’d be a […]

Friend of the blog Al Macy steps forward again to enlighten us as to some of his successes using KBoards and other forums to glean information he’s used to tweak his book covers or polish a blurb. Forums have been elusive to me, so I asked Al to shed some light on them for us. […]