This is Part 4 of an informal series about Pen Names. See Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3 or Part 4. A PIFW reader reached out to me a couple of days ago, asking questions about pen names, branding and genres, and in particular, how they impact the Amazon algorithms. My response to him […]
Pen Names – 2022 Update. Read More »
Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch call life derailing events “life rolls”. It’s a useful name for a whole host of troubles: Sickness, death of loved ones, disasters, accidents, divorces, getting fired… We’re writers of fiction; we can easily imagine what life rolls might look like. When you’re hit by a serious life roll,
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If you only read this blog of mine, and not any of my author blogs or social media, then it might have seemed like everything was ticking along nicely here. In actual fact, for several weeks now I have been working through a personal health crisis, utterly unable to spare any attention to The Productive
Slowing…but not stopping. Read More »
Indie Authors Take Note: NOW is the time to prioritize your health! Don’t leave it until tomorrow, the way I did. I’ve been having a few health challenges lately. I’ve murmured in public once or twice over the last year about pinched nerves and back issues, in particular, my neck, which was giving me a
Indie Authors Take Note: NOW is the time to prioritize your health! Read More »
Okay, Already, I’ll Try Obsidian! Because I CAN Listen. A while ago, I wrote about my disappointing live trial of Notion, and how I happily returned to OneNote. Buried in the text as a throwaway line was the fact that I did try to use Obsidian, but found it counter-intuitive and too difficult to quickly
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Actually, I lied. This hack is simple in concept. But it’s not simple to execute. But, man, is it worth the effort! This hack will energize your writing and let you float through the day, no slogging, no groaning, no fighting to keep yourself at the desk. My story Three years ago, my DH was
Ramp Up Your Creativity and Write Lots More With One Simple Hack Read More »
Following these suggestions will give you a “clean” MS Word file that compiles to ePub and Mobi without mysterious blank pages and extra lines in it, and with chapter headings properly formatted. If you use compilers such as Jutoh, Atticus or Vellum, the clean file will also reduce bad results when you import to those
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This might be another of those moments 2007 was the year Amazon released their first Kindle eReader, and indie publishing took a light-year’s leap forward. I’ve often wondered if I would be any more successful if I’d jumped into indie publishing in 2007, rather than waiting another four years to commit. If you’ve ever said anything
10 Unexpected Ways Writing Fiction Helps Readers It’s MUCH More Than Simply Entertainment If you’ve written and published a lot of fiction, there’s a good chance that somewhere along the way you’ve had a dark night of soul–where you’ve questioned why on earth you’re putting yourself through this torture day after day, only to hear
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5 Powerful Reasons Why Indie Fiction Writers Should Keep Work Logs They’re not sexy, but essential if you want to get more written Is there anything more geeky than a fiction writer keeping a word count log? I mean, we know when the novel is finished when we reach the end of the story. At
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