First, let me be clear about what I didn’t get: a contract with Kindle Press. Nope, I didn’t get enough votes to have my novel, The Depth of Beauty, promoted by that entity. Was I disappointed about that? Sure. For a while at least. I put a lot of effort (or so I thought) into the thirty-day campaign, and there’s no getting around it: when you set a goal and don’t reach it, that’s a bummer. But here’s what I did get out of the experience: A marketing email that will be sent directly to ... VIEW POST
DISCOVERING THAT ONE GREAT IDEA
Seven Concepts Writers Can Learn From Gold Prospectors In August I spent a weekend with cousins from Ohio who were visiting the wilds of Idaho near where I live. We took an afternoon to pan for gold above the resort town of Donnelly, which is part of the Boise National Forest. No, we didn’t stop at a tourist trap, where they salt the trough with pyrite and you get to take home a little pouch of “Fool’s Gold.” I’m talking the real deal. One of my cousins, an astute fifteen year-old, knows ... VIEW POST
Why Kindle Scout Makes Sense to Me …
...But Might Not Make Sense to You. Have you heard of the (relatively) new quasi-crowdshare program called Kindle Scout? I say “quasi” because it doesn’t involve donating money, but it is all about reader input. Kindle Scout launched last fall, but is apparently still so new that many of the Kindle customer service operators I spoke to recently hadn’t even heard of it! I did get my questions answered eventually, however, so I decided to put my latest novel, The Depth of Beauty, into the ... VIEW POST
Five Ways Novelists Are Just Like Poets
A very good friend from my years in northern California is the poet Lauren Scott. (lscotthoughts.com). We are both writers, but while she writes pieces with minimal words, I write full-length novels. Not much overlap, right? Wrong. The truth is, long-form writers and poets have quite a bit in common: We both love words. I mean love them. I know that even though she may write a first draft intuitively, Lauren considers every single word that goes into every single poem she writes. ... VIEW POST
What does an Authentic Italian Wedding Look Like? (Part Two)
The wedding I include in The Lair is small, family-centered and casual. But, like everywhere else in the world, Italian weddings vary by size and opulence, depending on the budget and mindset of the bride and groom (and often, their families, whether the couple likes it or not!). Here are a few more elements to a real Italian wedding: Arriving at the church. In traditional Catholic weddings, the bride (who hasn’t been seen by the groom, remember) is usually walked down the aisle by her ... VIEW POST
How Flawed Can Today’s Romantic Hero Be?
Everyone who understands fiction knows that the romance genre offers stories in which two people (not necessarily a man and a woman anymore!) work through their struggles to achieve a lasting love relationship. Usually, one of those characters is a heroine, and one a hero. It’s the hero who interests me in this post. I’ve been thinking a lot about him lately: in today’s world, who is he, really? What kind of person can he be in order to both embody the essence of the genre and still be ... VIEW POST
