Category: Guest Posts

A Dinosaur in a Young Adult’s World

Guest post
by Parker Moose

On June 8th, I released my debut novel. The world replied with crickets. The next day I sent a message to all of my contacts on Twitter and Facebook asking them to buy my book. That got me about a 10 percent response rate and a brief bump in Amazon’s rankings. But then I ran out of people who thought they might have known me in high school, and it was back to anonymity.

Lured by the siren song and royalties of KDP Select, I chose to be exclusive with Amazon and tried my first free promotion. The results of that were inconclusive, except for another brief bump in the standings and the unexpected finding that Germans really love free books. But then, sales tapered off again. It was time to get serious. Continue reading “A Dinosaur in a Young Adult’s World”

Rethink Advice to Writers

Guest post
by Steve Smy

We constantly encounter the issue of planning. We also know that some authors do and others don’t. It seems that we’re encouraged to use planning to design our work, from beginning to end. The trouble is, those who drive home the idea, often forcefully, aren’t recognising the fact that we’re all individuals. Take a look at a bunch of desks in an open plan office. You’ll see the ones which are so neat that you have to wonder whether they belong to somebody with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. There’ll also be those that resemble the local garbage tip, which you might suspect reveal the presence of highly inefficient workers. The majority of the desks will fall somewhere between these extremes. If we now picture every workstation having a ‘to do list’ fixed on a screen beside it, we’ll see that some are crammed with tasks to be done or completed. There’ll also be some that are completely empty of any entries. Now, however, we’ll probably find more that lean towards the latter than the former – because ‘to do lists’ are an unnecessary extra burden of work. They may be begun, and then forgotten, sometimes over and over again. Continue reading “Rethink Advice to Writers”

Co-Creativism (That’s a word now)

Guest post
by: Daniel Stiles

Authors, in my experience, and as a general rule, are solitary folk. Granted, I base this information entirely on the only author I know personally and spend considerable time with, myself. Often, I certainly do not enjoy my company, and I like to believe it’s the same for other authors. It makes me feel closer to them even as I despise them for it.

I find such a mindset understandable considering an author’s work can serve as an author’s creative child. A child must be guarded and protected until ready to be presented to the world as a full fledged adult. Only at that time can a parent step away to allow society to appreciate the brilliance that has been spawned. Nobody wants others to know about the problem child locked in the attic rattling chains and breaking windows. That’s why authors can’t have guests over. However, sometimes it makes two to create a child. All right, maybe it always takes two to create a child, but we’re talking about stories here. Continue reading “Co-Creativism (That’s a word now)”

Switching Gears

Guest post
by Deb Borys

You’re driving a manual shift vehicle up a steep incline. The engine is laboring in high gear, choking and sputtering. If you don’t do something soon, you’re going to stall out. So you press down the clutch, flip the shifter knob into first gear, and slowly ease the pedal up to engage the engine once again. If you do it right, you’re home free, but if you miss the gear, if your foot slips or moves too quickly or slowly, you’re dead in the—well, on the hill.

Wait, you thought this post was going to be about writing? You have an automatic transmission, right, or take the bus? You don’t need driving lessons, but inspiration or insights into the mysteries of a writer’s world. Continue reading “Switching Gears”