I posted Tuesday about characteristics of bad boys in books and how to write believable ones. In doing research for that post, I gathered so much information, that I thought I’d share the leftovers here. Well, not really leftovers, actually, since this is new content, but the content is complementary to what I posted Tuesday. …
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Tag: Sharon
11 Steps for Your On-Site Book Launch
A launch party signals your book is available for purchase, and you want to introduce it with as big a splash as possible. To be clear, this is a launch primarily, not a book signing per se. More goes on than at a signing. All book launches include book signing, but not all book signings …
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The Mystery of Mysteries: 12 Steps to Writing Traditional Mysteries
Last month, I gave you some homework to be prepared for writing your mystery. If you haven’t yet completed it, there’s still time. To write the mystery that fits your needs, you need to answer these questions. Now on to today’s category: the traditional mystery. Traditional mysteries are reminiscent of mysteries written during the Golden …
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10 Steps to Launch Your Book Virtually
Around the Write on Sisters water cooler we’ve been having conversations about marketing and book promotions. For some of us, it is our current reality for others of us, marketing and promotion are future issues. But for all of us, we are still learning and trying to figure out what to do when and how. …
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All We Need is Love
I was pondering love the other day. I am blessed to be surrounded by love from family and friends. But as I pondered, I realized something that was never in my consciousness before. Love is a piss-poor word. (Excuse the French!) How can we have a language with so many words for “pants” (trousers, slacks, …
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Five Essentials for a Successful Writing Retreat
The word “retreat” comes to us from Latin via Old French and Middle English. The root means “pull back.” Now that makes sense for military actions, but when it comes to writing, a retreat is a major step forward. As a noun “retreat” can be a place or an action. When planning a writing retreat, …
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The Mystery of Mysteries: Part 2
In last month’s post, I described how to pay attention to genre elements when writing a novel. Certainly I don’t mean to imply there are actual rules for how to write mysteries. I think the number of mystery subgenres is evidence enough of that! And just how many mystery subgenres are there? Four. No, no, …
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Writing Groups: On the Other Hand . . .
When Callie Armstrong wrote her post on Friday about writing groups and whether to join one or not, it brought to mind a day-long, pre-convention writing workshop I attended in March before the Left Coast Crime Conference. You might want to re-read her post before going further. Oh, boy! At the workshop, there was quite …
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Twenty Ways (and More) to Name or Not Name Your Characters
I have a dear friend and wonderful writer and critique partner who has changed all characters’ names in her WIP multiple times. All except for the real, historical people–thank goodness. Bless her heart. I am confused sometimes trying to remember if it’s George or Jim or somebody else this week. It has to be hard …
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Series Writing: Not Just One Foot after the Other
I was on a panel at this year’s Public Safety Writers Association Conference talking about issues and challenges in writing a series. As a member of the panel, I didn’t get to fully expound on any one question and, in fact, was not asked to respond to every question. There’s only so much time. As …
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