All posts tagged: amwriting

The Multimedia Angle—The Use of Journals, Videos, and Book Quotes In Books

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Welcome to author Laura Diamond, who is guest posting about modern-day epistolary form. But first, a little bit about her dystopian YA novel, Dawn of the Vie! (And be sure to check out the giveaway at the bottom of the post). Share this on Facebook>>> DAWN OF THE VIE IMMORTAL ALIENS BOOK ONE Laura Diamond Genre: Young Adult scifi/dystopian Publisher: Curiosity Quills Press Date of Publication:  October 3, 2016 Number of pages: 320 approx Word Count:  80,000 Cover Artist: Curiosity Quills Book Description: Since their Arrival less than 30 years ago, immortal Vie rule the planet like the super-predators they are. Enslaved humans are their servants…their entertainment…and their food. Anemies—humans with various types of anemia—are simply exterminated. Their nutritionally deficient blood is useless to the Vie. Or so it’s thought… Alex, an Elite Vie, is a bit of a Renaissance Alien. Part scientist, part Raid Specialist, part drug addict, he knows Anemie blood is valuable. Rather than blindly carrying out his boss’s kill order, he convinces some colleagues to spare a few Anemies, not only …

Writing the Modern Gothic

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Guest post by Marie Treanor Gothic romance is an old literary genre, about as old as the novel itself, stretching back to the days when the word “romance” meant fantasy more than just a love story. But Gothic horror like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and John Polidori’s The Vampyr have a timeless charm, as we see in much more recent films and books based on these stories. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, probably still the best known Gothic horror novel ever, has its roots in Polidori’s earlier, shorter work. Share this on Facebook>>> One of the timeless elements of Gothic is the mingling of horror and romance. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was written as a skit on the Gothic novel craze of its day. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre brings us both the mad woman in the attic and the archetypal Gothic hero in the dark, brooding and deeply flawed Mr. Rochester. I grew up with those books, and with Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I devoured Victoria Holt’s novels, and Mary Stewart’s and emerged as a writer with a …

writing humor

Laughing at the Devil

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Hi, I’m Lexi George, and I write Southern-fried paranormal romance about hunky, immortal demon hunters in the Deep South. When I started writing Demon Hunting in Dixie, the first book in the demon hunter series, I didn’t set out to write funny. It just happened. My heroine had this dog, see, and the dog started talking, and that was that. It’s hard to be serious when you’ve got a talking dog. Share this on Facebook>>> I’ve thought a lot about why I write funny, and I still don’t have The Answer. I think it might have something to do with my dad. He was a very funny guy, even when he wasn’t trying to be. We’d be in the car, going somewhere, and some pokey driver would get in front of him, and he’d say, “If I was going to hell in a bucket, there’d be some sumbitch in front of me.” Oh, and here’s another favorite: “If I had a house at the beach and a home in hell, I’d go home.” Then, again, …

Guide to Using a Pen Name

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Guest post by Roxanne Rhoads. Her latest book, Secrets of Successful Virtual Book Tours, is available now on Amazon for only 99 cents. A review of the book follows the guest post. Share this on Facebook>>> Many, many professional writers use pen names. Kim Harrison and Nora Roberts are two NYT Bestselling Authors that instantly come to mind. For years I wrote under both my real name and a pen name. At times it was really confusing, especially in the beginning when I had no idea when I should use both names and when I should just use my pen name. Throughout the years of operating Fang-tastic Books, a book review and promotion site for paranormal authors, I found that many new writers are just as confused as I was in the beginning. One time an author, who is man but writes as a woman, sent me all his promo info for his book under his pen name and his bio under his real name. His email and web sites were also under his real name. …

writer's manifesto

Writer’s Manifesto

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I’m taking the Obsessed branding course by the marvelous Melissa Cassera. Phase one is about developing a manifesto to help develop your brand as a lifestyle. Share this on Facebook>>> While sitting on my butt and reading is a lifestyle I aspire to, that wasn’t going to cut it as a manifesto for the class. Bummer. So what do you stand for as a writer? What lifestyle do you offer your readers as a writer and businessperson? (Because if you’re selling your books, you’re a businessperson. Or at least, you’d better be). I’m sure this will continue to undergo tweaks and revisions, but here’s my maniesto: What’s your manifesto? What experience do you provide and what do you stand for? About the Author Kirsten Weiss is the author of The Hermetic Detective, book seven in the Riga Hayworth series of paranormal mystery novels. She also loves Tarot, and weaves it into her books whenever possible. And it’s nearly always possible.

world building

Can You Have Too Much Worldbuilding?

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Last weekend at Clockwork Alchemy, I participated in a worldbuilding panel with the amazing Dover Whitecliff of The Stolen Songbird and Emily Thompson of the Clockwork Twist series. I confess I fell on the more laissez faire side of worldbuilding – I want my readers to easily be able to see the stage my characters walk upon, but I don’t go in for creating new languages or the convoluted worksheets charting the evolution of my world’s politics. Share this on Facebook>>> Then I came across the below video on worldbuilding. It has has triggered some hot responses online, but I think it poses an interesting question. Can there be too much worldbuilding? For me, “too much” of anything is where I start to skim. But I recognize that one person’s skimable paragraph is another man’s treasure. Nerdwriter seems to argue that particularly in the age of cross-media storytelling (book + TV + internet, etc.), the reader loses something. What do you think? On the other side of the street, a recent article in The Guardian argued that true worldbuilding takes chapters, …

Pirate's Alley

Pirate’s Alley: Guest Post and Review

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Deconstructing Alex, guest post by Suzanne Johnson Ernest Hemingway likened character development to an iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is what the reader sees—the character as he appears in the story. The bulk of information about that character, like the iceberg, is what remains out of view, beneath the surface. Share this on Facebook>>> I thought it might be fun to deconstruct one of the characters in the Sentinels series that seems to frustrate people. Alex Warin—we love him and we want to shake him until his teeth fall out. He’s sexy and has the alpha traits we love—he’s protective and self-assured without being too arrogant. But he’s such a rule-follower and sees the world in such black and white terms that we (and heroine DJ, who refers to him as her “significant-something-or-other”) often want to slap him upside the head and knock some sense into him, as we say here in the South. That’s the Alex above the waterline, the Alex we can see. But what went into making Alex who he is? Why …

Poetry and Mysticism

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Last year, I got the idea that studying poetry – or specifically the process of writing poetry — might make me a better writer. And the more I studied it, the more I started coming across references to writing poetry being a “soul making” activity, an almost mystical practice. Share this on Facebook>>> Delving deeper, it seems there are two sides to this poetry/mysticism nexus. First, because the mystical experience is ineffable, it’s impossible to describe in writing. But if you insist on trying to do it, poetry, with its emphasis on unpacking the moment, symbolism, and the language of the subconscious, can get you closest to the mark. Second is the idea that the act of writing poetry itself can aid in achieving mystical experiences. The hows and whys of this are a bit murkier. A mystic believes that by changing himself, he can change his vision and so find God and/or see the unity between all things. The poetic vision is described in similar terms. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, said:  “Imagination is a very …

writing urban fantasy

Writing Urban Fantasy

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Guest post by Chris Green, author of Every Breath You Take So there’s this ghost who died in the 1980s. Her name is Jensen Murphy, and she has dedicated her afterlife to haunting confessions out of humans who might or might not have committed a crime. Now, it’s true that solving crimes could take up a lot of time, but I started to wonder how I could “flesh” out the rest of Jensen’s life. I mean, these ghosts never go to sleep, after all. So what do they do during the rest of the book? Share this on Facebook>>> When I first started writing the Jensen Murphy, Ghost for Hire series, I realized that there were two areas in particular that might be challenging to explore: a ghost’s love life (I’m talking about how to go about love scenes in particular, since romance is an element in urban fantasy) and trying to put some scares in a book with the ghost as a protagonist. After all, how do you whip up dread and suspense when …