Why Teaching Research Writing Is More Important Than Ever

As Harlan Ellison said: “You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. Everything else is just hot air and farts in the wind.”

7 Out-of-the-box Tips to Increase Book Sales

You probably landed on this page because you are an independent novelist and are tired of seeing the low monthly sales from Amazon.  You wrote a book (or four) and have hit a promotional slump.  You may also be hard up for cash as your writing life is mostly a hobby that you would like

5 Best Bits of Advice About Marketing Your Book

While the draft of my newest book The Terminarch Plot is in the hands of beta readers, I thought I would focus today’s blog post on some advice I would give an indie novelist who is considering marketing their book. I’m sure you’ve gone to Twitter and seen those shameless folks tweeting away about their books,

4 Reasons Why Facebook Is Not Useful for Authors

Let’s face it. Authors, especially independent authors, need to promote themselves. However, there are ways to promote and ways not to promote.  Social media is a way to promote yourself as a writer, but it can also be a double-edged sword.  Of course, Delilah S. Dawson wrote a fantastic article about the misuse of social

10 Ways Indie Authors Can Increase Reader Engagement

I’ve been writing this blog since December of 2011.  I started the blog as a way to reach readers with the books I was peddling, but more than that it has become a sounding board for all things writing.  I love providing writing tips in a concise manner, helping indie writers like myself succeed in

Writing Requires Discipline

I have taught writing for years and years and I’ve been a writer for twice that long.  I’m writing this blog post today for the writers out there who are thinking of “hanging it up”. If you have tried your hand at this writing gig and you don’t like it, then just do something else.

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.  I didn’t do half bad! Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 100,000 times in 2014. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 4 days for

New Podcast Up: The Props Under the Platform

In this episode, Ryan and I discuss ways that a writer can increase their platform in order to become more recognized as a writer and to hopefully garner the attention of agents and publishers. We discuss many ideas that we have tried and successes we have had in building the ever important writer’s platform. We

Christmas: Blessings Counted

Today is Christmas, and it is probably one of my favorite holidays, however I am increasingly fed up with the fact that it is the only holiday save Easter that is being eradicated by the corporate machine, remolded into some meaningless day where you get gifts for people who are probably going to take them

Blog Spam Is Sometimes Hilarious

I am not really sure where it comes from, but I will often get comments to my blog posts that are…well…nonsensical spam.  Today I decided to post some examples of this for your enjoyment, and since this is a blog about writing, the sad thing would be that these writers are wasting their time writing this