authors

Do You Call Yourself a Writer or an Author?

January 24, 2012 Writing Stuff
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Recently, the Awesome-Dipped-in-Glitter (TM) Kristen Lamb pointed out that “aspiring is for pansies.”  We are not aspiring writers. Aspiring: to have a plan, desire, or hope for something. Writer: a person who writes. If we put those together, that means an aspiring writer is a person who plans, desires, or hopes to write, but doesn’t actually [...]

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Are All Cheap Ebooks Crap?

December 20, 2011 Random Musings
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In my last post, I asked how much people would be willing to pay for ebooks.  Most comments agreed with my thoughts: Ebooks should be less expensive than paper books because of DRM, ownership, quality, and physicality issues.  What surprised me, however, was the number of people turned off by $0.99 ebooks. The comment section [...]

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The Insanity Behind the Pressure to Have “Numbers”

October 20, 2011 Writing Stuff
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Confession:  I broke one of the unwritten rules of the Writer Code. I ranted.  In public.  On an agent’s blog. And yet I’m still here to tell to the tale.  In fact, the agent responded to my comment and then—in a show of fantastic grace—emailed me to make sure I didn’t take offense.  We ended [...]

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Religion in Novels: Terrific or Taboo? — Guest: Jody Hedlund

September 22, 2011 Writing Stuff
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I’m excited to share today’s guest post with you because in addition to being a lovely person, Jody Hedlund runs a fantastic blog for writers.  As if that wasn’t enough, she’s also graciously arranged for a book giveaway of her latest release, The Doctor’s Lady (see bottom of post for details). Jody writes historical romance stories that touch on [...]

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Do You Write for Yourself or Your Readers?

August 25, 2011 Writing Stuff
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Many writers, especially new ones, talk about how they write for themselves.  When we first start out, we might not know if we’ll even be able to finish the project, so it makes sense that we’re writing for ourselves. We want to get this story out of our head.  We want to see if we can write [...]

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What Does Your Author Bio Say about You?

August 16, 2011 Writing Stuff
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I’ll be going on the road for some upcoming blog posts while I endure enjoy time with extended family.  Wish me luck. One of my guest blog hosts also asked me to provide my “author bio.”  Uh-oh.  I thought I wouldn’t need that until I was published. But if we think about it, we have [...]

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How Do You React When Strangers Read Your Work?

August 4, 2011 Writing Stuff
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I have a strange confession for you all: It freaks me out when strangers read my work. I’m not talking about how I’m surprised that any of you read my blog.  I mean, I am still surprised by that, but we talk on Twitter, we comment on each other’s blogs, we Google Friend Connect each other, [...]

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How to Find Writer Resources – Guest: Elizabeth Spann Craig

June 23, 2011 Writing Stuff
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If you’re a writer and on Twitter, you should know about the incomparable Elizabeth S. Craig.  She shares fantastic resources for writers that she finds all over the web, like a one-woman news source. More importantly, if you’re a writer—whether you’re on Twitter or not—you should know about her Writer’s Knowledge Base, which pulls all [...]

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What Makes You Decide to Buy a Book?

June 16, 2011 Random Musings
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My to-be-read pile is scary.  Seriously scary.  Like I-might-need-to-check-into-a-program-soon scary. In the past year, I’ve accumulated over 100 print books.  And just since Christmas, when I received my Kindle, I’ve downloaded about 20…er, maybe 30…hmm, possibly more…Kindle books. Honestly, most of those books I got for free, either from giveaways or contests.  I’m a book [...]

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Branding 101: Online Brand vs. Author Brand

May 31, 2011 Writing Stuff
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Brand.  Platform.  Social media presence.  How many of us cringe at those words?  Whatever happened to the days when writers could simply write? But the truth is that as soon as we’re sociable as a writer, whether online with Twitter or in real life at a conference, we’re forming our brand.  Branding is something that [...]

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