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Posts tagged as “#writingcommunity”

Prior Perils and The Epiphany of Deadlines for the Independent Author

Ah, the whimsical world of self-imposed deadlines. They’re like those New Year’s resolutions we make every January, filled with good intentions and a sprinkle of delusion. You know the drill: “I’ll write a chapter a day,” or “I’ll have my novel ready by next month.” But as life inevitably belly-flops into our plans, we find ourselves drowning in a sea of missed deadlines and broken promises. Such is the saga of my latest novel, “Hey…

Safeguarding Your Writing: Lessons from a Fellow Author’s Hard Drive Mishap

Ever stumbled upon a story that hits too close to home? Well, I recently heard about a fellow writer who faced a nightmare—losing their entire novel to the cruel hands of a hard drive failure. Imagine their anguish, left with nothing but a mere printout of around 25 pages, painstakingly marked with line edits. Before we dive in, let’s send some serious empathy vibes to that author. Losing a labor of love like that? It’s…

Writers, Authors, Creatives

While reading through Twitter recently, I caught wind of a rivalry within the writing community that I didn’t know existed: the Writer vs. Author conflict. Though well-aware of the positions of those involved in the discussion, I thought it best to do some independent reading to see what, if any, the big deal is. For those unaware, there’s a line that seemingly separates writers–who can be anyone writing about anything–from authors, who are considered to…

Promotional Tools – My Experience

It shouldn’t be necessary to preface just about everything with a disclaimer. However, there are people out there who are determined to take offense to everything or make it about them so we have to encase everything we say in the softest of pillows or the sweetest of coatings to make it palatable. I’ll say this: The following is based SOLELY on my personal experience. I’m sure that others have had their own issues, results,…

Cask of Wonders

While organizing my closets in preparation for a huge new project, I came across the same 18-gallon tote that I’ve been moving from place to place for quite some time. Sure it’s set up a bit different now. It was once a large cardboard box before I decided that all cardboard needed to be replaced with plastic totes. But, the contents have not changed. The tote contains dozens of spiral notebooks and even loose pages…

The Moral of the Story – Expanded Distribution’s Downside

Allow me to preface this by saying that I didn’t realize things would end quite this way. When I began discussing Expanded Distribution several posts ago, I had not yet actually experienced it firsthand. In fact, it was because of my own research into options for Expanded Distribution that the topic became of great interest to me, and I decided to submit both Duality and Vitae into the program AFTER I began discussing it here.…

The Ups and Downs of Book Sales

We’ve gone over a lot in my most recent blog posts. We’ve discussed the many ways that we, as independent authors, have to multitask during the creative process. We also talked about the different tools used for book promotion. Most recently, I went over Expanded Distribution and what goes into making sure that your novel, should you want to, qualifies for that process – as well as how the price of your novel could factor…

Vitae – The Soundtrack

I previously shared the unofficial soundtrack to Duality with you. Now, here’s the one I put together for Vitae… This list doesn’t have as many character-specific songs as Duality, mostly because this novel has a different feel overall. But, have fun guessing nonetheless! Sleep – Poets of the Fall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlshWg3isxQ When Your Heart is Weak – Cock Robin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uchROwTaNWc Sanvean (I Am Your Shadow) – Lisa Gerrard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xpkRj99FH0 Waiting for the Night – Depeche Mode…

Duality – The Soundtrack

As mentioned in a previous post, music plays a big part in my writing. As such, everything I write has an unofficial soundtrack; crafted around characters in the book, their feelings and motivations, as well as happenings within the book itself. This is the one I put together for Duality. I’ve listed the original artist(s), but not the name of the character or the setting to which the song was attributed – so as not…

The Skinny on Expanded Distribution

If you’ve been following along, you already know that I’ve been providing input on various things – including pricing your novel, different tools of the trade, and how to multitask. In my previous post, I mentioned that I’d get a bit more into Expanded Distribution…and here we go. Some of you might wonder what Expanded Distribution is. Putting it plainly, it’s slightly different from just uploading your novel to Amazon, Lulu, etc…, and I provided…