Regency romance, romantic mysteries, & writing tips too.
Is social media dying as a book marketing option for authors? During one of our final writers’ group meetings for 2022, we discussed book marketing with a focus on social media. Specifically, how the various networks had declined in usefulness. Authors said they weren’t making the sales they made a year ago. One self-publishing author, … Read more
You’d love to write, but you can’t imagine spending months on a novel. Why not write short fiction? Not only will short stories improve your writing skills, they’ll also build your readership. You can write and self-publish a short story as soon as you’ve edited it. Alternatively, you can wait. When you a have a … Read more
Do you enjoy finding names for your characters when you’re writing fiction? Many authors don’t. Moreover, naming your characters has pitfalls. In one writers’ group meeting, an author told us about her cousin, who also writes fiction. They were chatting about character names. The cousin admitted that she’d never bothered checking her names with Google … Read more
Worried about editing fiction? In one recent meeting of our writers’ group, several members were struggling with editing their novels. A big challenge when editing is story flow. That is, avoiding lumps and bumps which stop the reader. It’s vital to avoid bumps on a micro level, when the reader has a “huh?” moment because … Read more
Do you hate spending money on book marketing? In a recent writers’ group meeting, we discussed our favorite ways to market our books cheaply. We agreed that it’s not so much that we resent investing our book income into marketing, it’s: The occasional unforeseen expenses which derailed our book marketing budget; Outright mistakes (perhaps we … Read more
In a recent writers’ group meeting, we talked about short stories and novellas. Several authors in the group regularly write and publish short fiction. Most published just one story a month, but several published more. The most prolific author published eight short stories each month (!), while publishing a new novel every six months. But… … Read more