A couple of days ago, I explained why “Backlist Maintenance” should be an ongoing task for indie authors. Only, what is it? Put simply; you review aspects of your older books to ensure they’re up-to-date and correct. There are various ways of organizing these reviews to make the process efficient, which I will cover in […]
How To Maintain a Backlist Read More »
I wince every time I see this structure in fiction. Do you use it? The structure goes like this: Walking to the window, he watched the seagulls soar over a silvered sea. An innocuous sentence? Actually, it’s a howling clunker of sentence, and I’ll explain why in a minute. For now, I want to draw
5 Reasons Why Ditching This Sentence Structure Will Massively Improve Your Fiction Read More »
Authors often raise their brows when I mention “Backlist Maintenance”. Maintaining your backlist doesn’t sound sexy. For authors with only a handful of releases, backlist maintenance isn’t a thing. But when you get into the realm of 20 or 50 or (like me) 120+ published titles, backlist maintenance becomes critical. Here’s why. Indies make money
Here’s Why You Should Add Backlist Maintenance To Your Indie Vocabulary Read More »
To “Google something” has crept into the language and is now a formal euphemism for searching online. However, Google can do a lot more than just regurgitate search results. There is a ton of useful tools that Google will invoke to provide answers directly on the results page. Google will also provide links to sites
7 Google Search Hacks That Help Indie Authors Get The Job Done Read More »
I first posted about creatives’ lifestyles back in 2018, and now I’m bringing it forward and updating it, because this topic gets very short shrift when it comes to talking about a creative career. We’ve all survived the first two years of a global pandemic when all of us have been in lockdown for most
The Best Lifestyle To Maximize Your Creativity – 2022 edition. Read More »
This is an update of an original post from 2018. You can spend a lot of time teaching yourself to resist Resistance, to get your ass in the chair, to be productive. It’s a never-ending challenge. There is a flip side, though. I’m looking at it right now. If you’re following my work logs, you
The Flip Side To Beating Resistance – 2022 Edition Read More »
The image, I’m afraid, is not a metaphor. Yesterday, full of energy and determination, I headed out into the garden to cut a new bed for our veggies this year. Forty minutes later, I found myself flat on my back, with my arm screaming at me. I had fallen, and tried to save myself with
Another essential tool in the prolific author’s toolbox.
How to Write When You’re Supposed To Read More »
You don’t have a lot of time to write during the day. Just a hour or a tad more, because you’ve got commitments and a life and bills that keep showing up. (We took down our mailbox…they still showed up via email.) Every minute of your writing time is precious. But everything and everyone is
Is Everything *Really* Going Wrong? Read More »
I’ve had severe health issues that stretch back nearly a year, now. I lost an entire month of work because of it, and more days off here and there because of complications. At one point, while COVID was at its most severe, I risked going to the ER, believing that I had either pancreatic cancer
