Author: RJ Crayton

RJ Crayton is a former journalist turned novelist. By day, she writes thrillers with a touch of romance. By night, she practices the art of ninja mom. To learn more about her or her books, visit her website or her Author Central page.

How to Resize a Photo – Mac Edition

So you want to resize a photo and you own a Mac. The process is really simple and you only need the software that came on your machine. (For instructions on how to resize a photo on a PC this article is for you.)

To start, simply find the photo you wish to resize using the Mac’s Finder (the little happy face you use to find files), and click to open it. Mac automatically opens photos in its Preview software. Presuming you still want a copy of the image at the original size, the first thing you are going to do is SAVE AS and rename the file.

IMG1_cover_resize Continue reading “How to Resize a Photo – Mac Edition”

Creating a Short Story Collection

Four MothersMany authors write the occasional short story, but because of their length, may not want to sell them as a single item.

A short story collection is a great way to release some shorts with a word count that makes the price reasonable.

Creating a short story collection is a little different from creating a traditional novel, so here are a few things to consider: Continue reading “Creating a Short Story Collection”

Booktastik Hopes to Spread the Word about Good Books

booktastik_black_250x250There’s a new book promotion site out there attempting to reach readers with great books from authors. Booktastik has been around since January of this year, with the goal of being both an author- and reader-friendly site. Unlike many of the other daily subscriber email sites, Booktastik features shorter works (so long as they’re more than 20,000 words). IU chatted with Booktastik’s Dionne Lister about what separates Booktastik from the pack and how the first five months of book sharing has been going. Continue reading “Booktastik Hopes to Spread the Word about Good Books”

Using Google Drive as Writers

rj crayton library
RJ CRayton

Last month, I wrote a post about setting up books to sell in the Google Play store, which is a bit complicated (so much so that K.S. Brooks wrote a follow up tutorial). This month, I thought I’d go in the opposite direction and discuss how to use an easily navigable Google product, Drive (formerly Google Docs), to help your writing process.

The free product allows users to store files online for access by devices (computer, tablet or smart phone) with Internet access and a web browser (or Drive App). File types include documents, photos, spreadsheets and presentations, but today I’ll mainly focus on documents.

Drive’s document capability is useful because it allows writers to create and edit documents online. First up, is it secure? Yes, it’s as secure as your email. In fact, when you sign into your Gmail account, you automatically have access to Drive.

So, why would you want your documents online? There are lots of reasons. Continue reading “Using Google Drive as Writers”