We first came to Bali last year and spent two months. I enjoyed it, my wife didn’t. That was mostly my fault, for booking hotel rooms instead of villas so she could have a kitchen and her own space (living on a bed kind of sucks for weeks on end). I convinced her to come back. So far it’s not …

I’ve never put much thought into personal branding – I had a bunch of stuff I liked, but I couldn’t put them all together in way that made sense. My first header logo was a dumpster fire. I’ve had to learn to withhold enthusiasm, and add more space, because less is more. I’ve always focused on simple, minimal WordPress websites …

This is a post about authenticity and craft vs. fraud and plagiarism, but it’s not a moral tirade. You can look elsewhere for that. The reason I don’t want to point fingers or make ultimatums is because ethical concerns often ignore market conditions. As we dig deeper into this subject, you’ll find I’m skeptical about demonizing certain tactics in indie …

Netflix’s Velvet Buzzsaw is a fun horror flick based on a nearly universally accepted belief about art: that “real art” is done for the passion, not the money. In this particular version, a dead artist’s paintings come to live and brutally murder his critiques. More than that, Jake Gyllenhaal as a snobby art critique, goes through a character arch of realizing …

Recently someone in one of my Facebook groups wrote how frustrated she was that her books weren’t selling, and she had no idea why. This is almost always because the book isn’t designed to sell to the right audience. What genre is it? Scifi? Fantasy? Contemporary? This has to be immediately clear from the cover and blurb, and you should …

A common question I get in my private facebook group goes like this: “my book is published but I have zero sales and no visibility, and I don’t know anything about book marketing. Should I hire a publicist?” The short answer is NO. A book publicist or book launch specialist will often charge 10K or more, guarantee nothing and focus on …

I made this video in the last few days of Thailand, while in the process of reviewing several dozen applications to write with me – to be fair, none of the samples we received “sucked” … some were infuriatingly “good”, but didn’t hold my attention, were too wordy, trying too hard, overwritten and distracting. I boiled it down to six …

With the new year comes a new set of writing workshops to participate in! If you’ve joined a workshop before and wish to join again, or if you’ve never tried joining a workshop and want to see what it can do for you, then this list might come in handy when helping you pick! There are all kinds of workshops …

When I first started writing fiction, I needed someone to believe in me. I was ecstatic to get my first BookBub deal – a deal that helped me get 20,000 downloads for book one in my series and earn $8,297 in the same month. I thought I’d made it. Together, we were unbeatable. But now you’re always busy with other …

  I started this post in summer 2018 with the line: “I don’t feel ready to write this post, but I’m going to anyway.” But I didn’t publish it. Now at the end of 2018 I’m trying again, to see if I’ve figured this stuff out enough to share it with you. There’s something I want to say, or maybe …

Last year we visited the Charles Dickens house in London, which is when we found out there was a 2017 movie about the author’s life called The Man Who Invented Christmas. I only watched it recently – it’s available on Amazon Prime – and then I watched it again and took notes. These are tips based on the movie; few of …

For the last few years I’ve been editing a 19th century treatise called “The Genius of Solitude.” I already posted the introduction and some of my favorite quotes HERE, but I took some of the longer quotes and turned them into infographics. I love these, not only for the aesthetic beauty of the writing (I tried to find images to …

We’re having a discussion in one of my Facebook groups, after someone asked how much they should pay to hire a freelance writer to do some ghostwriting for them. I suggested $500 for 50K. That’s not a lot of money, at all. Some people in the group are frustrated by people (like me) devaluing the work it takes to write …

For years I’ve been wishing for some kind of automated, daily accountability to keep me inspired and motivated – and I’ve heard a lot of other authors asking for the same thing. The problem is, writing can be a very personal goal, and sometimes it’s hard to self-motivate, especially if nobody else really cares about what you’re trying to do. …

A few years ago I made the Plot Dot – my simple 8 step outline for writing novels, with the major dramatic twists most stories need to hit. I always wanted a more in-depth plotting outline and cheatsheet, but there’s so many conflicting story structures out there… this week however, I managed to put together a 24 step chapter outline …