Years and years and years ago I started building an online book cover creator tool, which has never quite been finished and broke when they cancelled Flash… but I’m about to launch a revised version and am tweaking the final details. I love to solve simple problems, so I spent a day making some transparent
To start off, let me acknowledge I’m writing this about the first episode of season two – so some of these tips may be better for a sequel, rather than a first book in a series. It means, for one, that they can spend less time getting to know the characters and making them sympathetic.
This is the preface to my revised book marketing guide, download the free PDF. Book formatting is the bane of my existence. It’s tedious, and time-consuming, and there are always typos and mistakes, but it’s also a crucial part of the publishing process. That said, it’s possible to do a decent job yourself, if you learn how, and...
I don’t think it’s unusual for anybody to feel like the last two years haven’t been great. I generally agree with the sentiment, if all you’re doing is surviving, that’s enough. I also don’t think we always need to productivize our creativity. There’s a perversion in the modern compulsion to Always Be...
I see this question a lot so here’s a quick answer: Novels are typically 250 to 350 pages; with about 250 to 300 words per page. This will depend on genre and word count. Average novels are 75K to 95K, though some genres can go longer – still, it’s very rare for a novel to
Testing out my new theme with this poem I wrote for the preface of Book Craft. Help me test the comments by writing your own poem below! My best words come at night. When soft music is humming and birds or bats are chirping and dusk or dawn is peeking above the horizon. When the
It’s nearly the end of a long year. If you weren’t as productive as you wanted to be, don’t worry about it! But now might be a good time to start using the clean slate of a new year to set goals and level up your author career. The good news is, publishing success is
Nanowrimo is just around the corner: here’s a brief getting started video with links to my best writing and publishing resources. Start with this: It’s a “Defense of #amwriting” and explanation of my #amwriting tattoo. Basically, Nanowrimo is worth doing for experience; writing quickly and writing a lot is the best way...
I’ve put a lot of effort into plot outlines and templates for writing fiction, but the deeper stuff is sometimes trickier to convey. After all, you can have a brilliant outline that still fails to generate any interest. Intrigue is about delayed gratification which means, information management: not giving away important reveals too...
As seen on Reddit, someone brought up this quote from an old Guardian article. I agree in spirit, but not practice, which is interesting enough to reflect on briefly. Here’s the quote: Those who insist that the job of the writer is simply, only, to write are deluding themselves. Editors whose advice is to get
This article was originally, mostly, about copyright infringement… but since then, the topic blew up on Twitter as a group of forward thinking YA authors attempted to pull off an NFT-based community writing project and got shredded by activists – cancelling the project in just 5 hours. You can read all about that here (and
I saw a post online recently from a 23-year old author who was already worried that they were somehow “too late” to publish or get a publishing deal. I also received a lovely email from a 73-year old who is finally seeing some progress and success. I wanted to share it with you, hence this
