An Interview With a Marketing Manager: Advice to Self-Publishers

Josh Mosey, who runs a blog here on WordPress is a marketing manager who owns his own marketing business, specializing in creating print materials for the publishing industry.  He has also worked at a book store for many years.   I was able to interview him about his industry and how he relates to self-publishers like

Tolkien’s 10 Tips for Creating Epic Heroes

One of my most popular posts is Tolkien’s 10 Tips for Writers, in which I glean from J.R.R. Tolkien’s letters of his wisdom about writing.  Today I will delve into his letters again, but will focus on the epic character Aragorn and ask Professor Tolkien how he created great characters. 1.  Motivational Mirrors – Tolkien

How to Write Descriptively With Metaphors

Metaphors are one of the most used literary devices in the English language second only to similes. The problem with using similes is that they often cause your writing to become a mine field of quantifiers. (i.e. His breath was like the foul smell of a garbage heap and his face was like a pock

Hubris: How to Write Great Villains Into Your Novel

Why do my students love the Joker so much?  The guy has absolutely no redeeming qualities.  He is completely mad, is an agent of chaos, loves to torture the innocent, has brought Gotham City to its knees on countless occasions, yet all the kids seem to love him.  It is because he has what the

How To Find a Unique Narrative Style

One of the most difficult tasks of writing a long novel is the ability to create a narrative style that is unique, flows well, and remains consistent throughout the 50,000 words or so required for a novel. It also must be a style that catches a reader’s eye from the first few pages.  I have

The Great Balancing Act: Writing Novels and Blogging

I have been blogging non-stop since December, and I will have to say that my efforts are paying off.  While writing my novel, I have discovered the ins and outs of using Scrivener as a word processor and have posted a few articles about its use. I have been getting increasing traffic on my blog,

Using Scrivener’s Help Function

                Scrivener is probably one of the best word processors out there for novelists.  I use it every day and find it more easy to use than Word or any of the others.  One of the reasons this is true for me is found in the overly helpful help

Using Twitter Mentions to Increase Blog Traffic

I was averaging 45-50 hits a day until the last two days.  I decided to try a little experiment after hitting upon this sort of by accident. It seems to work pretty well.  If you don’t believe me, then look at these blog stats: What I did was simple.  I started looking around my desktop

How to Use Scrivener to Format an e-Book for Kindle and Nook

You all know how I feel about Scrivener, but it is truly the best program for novelists out there.  For $49 it’s a steal and it is really not that complicated to use.  Today I thought I would show you how to format a Kindle .mobi file and an .epub file that is used on

When Is My Novel Too Long?

You may have heard the story of author J.R.R. Tolkien who wrote The Lord of the Rings as one book before his publisher looked at him from across the desk and said “I’m sorry, John.  This book is just too long.  Break it up, will you?” I am not saying that a massive tome will not