Category: How To and Tips
Tactical Communication: The Difference Between Fiction and Reality
By Micki Browning Law enforcement officers receive a tremendous amount of training throughout their careers–my police academy alone was 852 hours. But if popular culture is to be believed, the only training cops use consists of driving (fast), shooting (weapons that never needed reloading), defensive tactics (often outnumbered and sustaining nary a scrape), and how […]
Excercise And Writing, How Does It Compare?
As part-time Les Mills Body Combat Instructor and the author of Two scoops, not Three, I feel I have worked hard to be able to do the two things that I love. And interestingly, I have used similar methods for both exercise and writing. I started writing my debut novel – Two scoops, not Three […]
How I Got My Writing Mojo Back By Diane Barnes
Like many novelists, I rely on my full-time job to pay the bills. Fortunately, I enjoy my daytime gig. My co-workers are smart, supportive, and funny. We share a lot of laughs throughout the day, and I get to do what I love — write. So except on the occasional bad day, I’ve never seriously […]
Plague Authors are Crushing It
I recently heard someone refer to writers who have released books during the Covid era as “plague authors.” As a member of that illustrious group myself, I found that term spot on. No sugar coating, no euphemism, just telling it like it is. And my friends, let’s be clear: releasing a novel into a world […]
Writing Mature Female Characters – Let Grandma Be Cool!
I write contemporary romance, but this particular pet peeve applies across all genres. Fictional grandmothers (or women old enough to be grandmothers) are stuck in a time trap. Stuck in Mayberry, if you will, where grandmas wore gingham aprons and always had a batch of their famous chocolate chip cookies coming out of the oven. […]
Does Writing Foster Self-Acceptance?
by Dorothy Rice The question gives me pause. It shouldn’t. I recently published Gray Is the New Black: A Memoir of Self-Acceptance (Otis Books, 2019). It’s right there in the subtitle. Yet as I sit on the couch sipping coffee and struggling to find the right words, I have a confession. The journey isn’t over. […]
Pantser, Plotter, Plantser and Everything in Between By Ashley R. King
We’ve all heard the terms pantser and plotter. Pantsers let the story take them where it may whereas plotters have a pretty good idea of where they want their story to go, possibly even outlining it with beat sheets. Then there are people like me, people who are a good mix of both, a plantser, […]
Write What You Know…Absolutely Nothing About
Do you ever get Paganini’s La Campanella stuck in your head? Are you addicted to Puccini operas? Do your hands feel achy after you play Rachmaninoff? My answers are no, hell no, and ha, very funny. To be honest, I know nothing about classical music. I have no ear for it, no cerebral mechanism to […]
Maintaining Steam As A Fulltime Author
“I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes at nine every morning” This quote often attributed to William Faulkner has become a staple in my approach when building my fulltime career as an author. When I took the leap to follow my dream of becoming an author five years ago, I did so in […]
Creating and Maintaining a Small Town Setting and Characters in a Series
Nan Reinhardt, author of the Four Irish Brothers Winery series and the Women of Willow Bay series My first novel, Rule Number One, was set in the big city where I live, but most of the action happened in the microcosm of a near-downtown neighborhood that was being revitalized. So, big city, but with the […]
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