Author: Melissa Bowersock

Melissa Bowersock is an eclectic, award-winning author who writes in a variety of fiction and non-fiction genres. She has been both traditionally and independently published and lives in a small community in northern Arizona. Learn more about Melissa from her Amazon author page and her blog.

Writing Research in the Digital Age

author research 38-starflagHow many of you remember working on a book, getting to a place where you needed some information about a time, a place, or a situation in order for your story to feel authentic, yet you didn’t have that information? How many of you remember having to drive to the library to find out the facts? How many remember scooting down to your local bookstore and browsing the shelves looking for some book, any book, that could shed light on the rules of baseball in 1890 or the hunting habits of a jaguar in Brazil?

Yes, I’m dating myself, but I’m guessing there’s more than one or two of you out there who can relate. Continue reading “Writing Research in the Digital Age”

Handwriting Your Book – Choosing a Pen

authors fountain pen pen-631321__180Back in December, I wrote about handwriting your book before typing it on the computer. We had quite a lively discussion about it, and I was pleased to see that many authors share my love of pens and the way they feel and write. In that vein, I decided to do a little round-up of pens.

Let me note here that I did not go out and buy every pen that people mentioned in the comments of that post. Writing the article, however, and the comments that followed did provide enough momentum for me to finally restock my dwindling supply of pens. In addition to that, my husband bought several different kinds and stuffed my Christmas stocking with them, so I am now well supplied. Here are the top candidates in my limited and very biased study. Continue reading “Handwriting Your Book – Choosing a Pen”

Writing the Book You Plan – Or Not

goat-620474_960_720Okay, I’ll preface this whole thing by admitting that I am a pantser. (Dang MS Word keeps wanting to change that to punster. Hmmm…) I do not outline, I do not do chapter synopses, I do not like green eggs and ham. (Sorry; keep getting sidetracked.) I may not know where the end or even the middle of my book is going to go. I get attacked by an idea, let it stew for a bit (anywhere from hours to days) and if it doesn’t evaporate with the morning coffee, I sit down and start writing.

So it may not be surprising that my books often end up being very different from what I thought they were going to be. Continue reading “Writing the Book You Plan – Or Not”

Checklist for Self-Publishing Print Books

print book self-publishing checklist-372766_960_720Occasionally I’ll get an email or message from a newbie writer who’s read a bit about my journey and is looking for direction. The gist of the message is almost always: “I’ve written a book and I’d like to publish it, but I don’t know what to do next.” This, coupled with the fact that I recently facilitated a sold-out workshop on how to self-publish, made me realize that there are a lot of people in this same situation. It’s not surprising. There’s a ton of information out there on the web — some good, some bad — and it takes time to sift through it all and figure out the best way to proceed. Looking back, I know my own journey evolved over years, but now, with almost twenty self-published books under my belt, the process is a snap. If I could do a Vulcan mind-meld and parcel my experience out to others, I would, but failing that, maybe at least I can help some to the onramp without their having to reinvent the wheel.

I self-publish with CreateSpace, Amazon’s subsidiary, and this tutorial is geared to that. Note, too, that this is a very brief overview of the process, but it will give you, in a nutshell, what you need to do and have in order to self-publish your print book. Continue reading “Checklist for Self-Publishing Print Books”