Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

Found Words, Waiting

I was thinking about how writing dovetails with our wider lives, the lives we may lead outside the tiny cramped space in which we sit for hours hunched over a screen that slowly eats the cones and rods from within our dark-shadowed eyes, perhaps even the sanity from behind our knitted brows, lost amid a precarious landscape built from stacked pizza boxes and empty wine bottles and other far less wholesome things. You know… that place outside we call “the world”? I ventured into my corner of it recently (Vancouver, British Columbia) and even there I began to notice the marks and stamps left by other writers. Either that or I’m now so delusionally obsessed with writing I’ve reached the point of developing a serious pathology.

Vancouver’s most acclaimed literary figure was probably Malcolm Lowry, who wrote Under the Volcano here. William Gibson and Douglas Coupland also spring to mind. But I don’t really mean that. I’m not so much interested in the indisputably famous and lauded, but more the quieter language moments we sometimes stumble on by accident. Continue reading “Found Words, Waiting”

Ed’s Casual Friday: So *that* is why they advertise…

I hate promo.

I really do. And I don’t mean other people’s promo (OPP?), though I’m not a fan of it, either. I mean I hate doing it myself – flogging my book hither, thither, and yon. And yet, it seems to be at least half of the Indie gig, as all the time and energy spent getting the good cover and crafting the effective blurb and gathering reviews, let alone writing and editing a whole book in the first place, won’t matter at all if nobody ever sees it. Not if no one ever visits that listing on Amazon or B&N or the iStore. Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: So *that* is why they advertise…”

The Dark Side

The majority of my writing is pretty dark. My short stories are psychologically dark, not so much violent. Joe Café, my first novel, is probably the darkest thing I’ve written and it is violent. I’ve been thinking about this lately because I get, ‘dear GOD!, how do you think those horrible things?’ responses from people on occasion. I’ve probably talked about this before. I don’t care. I’ve been writing freelance marketing stuff all morning and I have ceased to care about anything except training my stupid, hateful, ignorant, ugly freaking fingers to insert only one space after a period. This goes against 18 years of writing habit. But that’s the way it’s gotta be. Even here, Hise won’t let me out of the box if I don’t do it. But I suppress, I want to talk about the sick, vicious, blood-drenched, soul-crushing things that exist in my mind.

Continue reading “The Dark Side”

What the heck is Pinterest?

Officially, Pinterest is a ‘virtual pinboard’ that lets you pin pictures of all the beautiful, interesting and just plain cool stuff you find on the internet, and waste several glorious hours doing it. I know, I’ve done it. And not regretted a single minute.

On a purely personal level you can use it for your bucket list of places you want to see or things you want to do, you can use it to help design your garden, learn or share recipes or set your style of clothing.

On a professional level you can post inspirational pictures, the images of places you’d like to – or already have – used in your books, while also providing a glimpse of your personality. There’s a section for Your Style that I believe is supposed to be for posting pictures of clothes and shoes, but I use it for the things that say something about me as a person. It’s an interesting way to allow readers to see another side of you, to get a glimpse of the things you like, the things that interest you.

You can also post direct links to your books on it.

All that being said, it’s very easy to use. Continue reading “What the heck is Pinterest?”