DAN ALATORRE

The real worry of any big three volume (or larger) book series is when it’s in the writer’s head. It’s the massiveness of the thing. The complexity. Most authors are intimidated, really, to attack such a piece and make it, well, actually a written story. So it stays in their head. And in various notepads […]

Explain yourself when editing, and ask questions when being edited. It’s a process. You chose words for a reason, even if it was because they just looked sophisticated and you didn’t really know what they meant. Things happen. The editor – also known as “knife wielding idiot” – requests you change some words. Maybe “is” appears […]

The fine folks over at Writers Interview were kind enough to talk to me about one of my books. http://www.writersinterviews.com/2015/04/savvy-stories-fatherhood.html Click the link for the full article. Here’s a sample. Today we are interviewing Dan Alatorre, author of “Savvy Stories: Funny Things I Learned From My Daughter.“Tell us a bit about yourself. I’m a Best-Selling […]

I totally lifted this from the internet, but it has been recopied and reposted so many times I won’t attribute it except to Pixar. How many of these rules do YOU follow? #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes. Okay, that’s fair. I think I do.   #2: You gotta […]

Who is your one fan? Do you think Stephen King focuses on millions of readers when writing his bestsellers? In his book On Writing, King tells us he writes for one reader only — his wife. When he writes, he doesn’t wonder whether his millions of fans will enjoy his new book. He wonders, “What […]

INDIE AUTHORS Would you be interested in doing a video interview to help promote your book? Or is being seen too scary? I’m not talking infomercial, I’m talking Tonight Show style, where we talk about a few things and have fun and discus your book at the end. I think it would be fun. … […]

Tuscany is one of the few places on earth where the brochures don’t look as nice as the actual scenery. Barbados is another. The Crane mansion overlooking the beach in Barbados is fabled to be a piece of heaven that fell to earth.   Tuscany is the other piece.   The weather turned windy and […]

Every year at Thanksgiving, when we were kids, my whole family would assemble for a long day of playing football in the back yard, followed by a fantastic, huge Thanksgiving feast. All of the neighborhood kids will remember the great football games, because it was an annual occasion where, regardless of age, brothers and sisters […]

I think a lot of writers don’t publish their work because they fear failure, embarrassment, bad reviews… For them, the timid, being afraid is the right choice. The only way you can guarantee not getting a bad review is to never publish. So you have to ask yourself: can I accept the fact that there […]

Supposed you have two characters in a story that are texting back and forth to each other. Like people do in real life, only with the boring parts removed. HOW DO YOU WRITE THAT? I’ve seen it at least three different ways, and each one looks wrong. I tried this (excerpt from my upcoming comedy […]