When Will My Book Be Published?

Before I wrote my first book, I had no idea how the publishing process worked. You type “the end” on your manuscript and publication is just around the corner… right? Wrong. “The end” of the first draft is the beginning of the truly hard work. Editing. My first draft [...]

10 Questions to Ask Your Beta Readers

Beta readers are people who read your book and give you feedback prior to publication. In my case, they are a mix of people I know, complete strangers, and a professional beta reading company.  I’m writing this blog to share a behind-the-scenes look at the process and to offer [...]

Struggling With Your Query Letter? Here’s Help.

If you are pursuing traditional publishing, odds are you already know what a query letter is. Your novel has tens or even hundreds of thousands of words, but yet when you sit down to write your query, you come up blank. What gives? Before you get frustrated and curl [...]

ISBNs Made Easy

If you are getting ready to self-publish your novel, you might be wondering if you need an ISBN and how many to purchase. Here’s an easy, no-frills breakdown of what you need to know. What is an ISBN? An ISBN is a unique number used to identify a book [...]

What to Ask a Literary Agent Who Wants to Represent You

Questions to ask a literary agent who offers representation. These questions will help determine if the agent is a good fit for an author. [...]

How Adverbs are Ruining Your Writing

Sometimes adverbs are awesome, necessary, and important. But other adverbs are thorny weeds choking the beautiful sentences of your manuscript. And those need to be yanked out. Step #1: Identify redundant adverbs The easiest way to spot toxic adverbs is to look at your adverb’s relationship to your verb. [...]

Top 5 Biggest Self-Publishing Mistakes in 2021

If you are writing and publishing a book in 2021, you'll want to avoid these mistakes. [...]

Can You Use KDP and IngramSpark at the Same Time?

With all the options available for self-publishing these days, and how easy it is to do, you might be wondering if you can manage some of your distributors yourself to cut out the middle man and earn more money. After researching royalty rates through IngramSpark, Amazon KDP, and Barnes [...]

Why You Shouldn’t Start a Story with Your Character Waking Up

Why is it a rule that you should not start your story with a character waking up? Is it possible to start a book with a character waking up? I'll help you answer those questions. [...]

How to Claim a Google Knowledge Panel

What is a Knowledge Panel? Knowledge panels appear during Google searches on both desktop and mobile. They are information boxes that appear when you search for people, places, organizations, or things. Knowledge Panels provide a general overview of information about whatever keywords triggered the result. On mobile, they are [...]

Authors: Why You Can (and Should!) Google Yourself

I came across a great question Stephan J. Hahn asked on Twitter that really got me thinking about how Authors approach marketing in 2019. (Shoutout to Stephan! Here’s a link to his Twitter.) He asked, Alright #Writing Community. How often do you #Google yourself?     There was a [...]

The Tool That Transformed My Writing

Synopsis (TLDR): Scrivener helped me transform my disorganized YA Fantasy WIP from a pile of leaves into a castle. This powerful software enabled me to quickly leap over a huge hurdle: how to tackle an ever-growing behemoth document with a zillion moving pieces. In short, if you are an [...]