A reflection of our hearts;

Words unsaid…

of,

Comfort and confidence

Belief and courage

 Assurance.

A smile;

A tale of a child loved

A tale of a thankful mother

A tale of a life time friendship

A tale of two hearts tangled.

The best way to say,

I am loved

I am at peace

Content

Full

And I am thankful…

A smile.

Susan McMillan

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Wikipedia explains that a narrative consists of three components:

• Narrative point of view: the perspective (or type of personal or non-personal “lens”) through which a story is communicated.

• Narrative voice: the format (or type presentational form) through which a story is communicated.

• Narrative time: the grammatical placement of the story’s time-frame in the past, the present, or the future.

We want to create a sense of intimacy, of being in the character’s head. One way to do that is to use stream of consciousness, a narrative mode that offers a first-person perspective by attempting to replicate the thought processes as well as the actions and spoken words of the narrative character.

This device incorporates interior monologues and inner desires or motivations, as well as pieces of incomplete thoughts that are expressed to the audience but…

Most of this post is focused on how writers should behave but is only my opinion. If you think something different, completely disagree, or think it’s pretentious for me to spout guidelines about how people should act, that is perfectly fine and is one of my rules.

In other news, I noticed I am pretty close to 300 WordPress followers, so once you are done, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the little button at the bottom of this page. Be warned, you will likely get updates on rants, stuff I have seen in the slush pile, and my general thoughts on the publishing industry. I tend to heavily slant toward traditional publishing (since I am an Associate Editor at a PodCastle) but occasionally I’ll have guests representing self-publishing and small press.

10 Do Not’s of Writing Etiquette

1. People can have different opinions. This doesn’t make them stupid…

Today, we continue our discussion of the author’s media kit. If you missed the earlier installments, click the links to catch up.

• Part 1: What Your Author Website is Likely Missing (a brief intro)
• Part 2: Author Media Kit, Part 2—The News Release

This post will cover the One Sheet and the Author Biography.

The One Sheet

The one sheet (also known as a sell sheet or pitch sheet) is a professional document that contains all the pertinent information of your book. As you probably guessed by the name, it should be no longer than one page.

This is the first, and possibly only, document someone will read after reading your news release. It should be punchy, carefully crafted and edited, and easily scanned so people can obtain pertinent information quickly.

Parts of a One Sheet (Not necessarily in this order—let design dictate composition)

• Book cover
• Book title
• Purchase…

We have family coming to visit in the next couple of days from out-of-state and I’ve cleaned up the devastation caused from the tornado (3 teenage boys) that hit over the summer. I’m pleased to report that I’ve actually been rather happy with the progress of restoring the house back to its former glory. In the cleaning detox stage, I’ve used several products and when in a pinch, still resorted to my favorite of all – Baby wipes.

During my cleaning routine mission,

some products I noticed have warning labels on them like:

WARNING!! This product is known to cause cancer in lab rats. Who would attempt to “clean” a lab rat with a stain remover?

DANGER!! Do not inhale fumes or lungs will explode. If contact occurs, leave the area immediately and breath pure oxygen. How am I suppose to know if the oxygen outside my house is “pure”…

Source: Pressbooks.com

You have already published your first book. As part of that process, you set up your author pages on Amazon and other distribution sites such as Smashwords. You also established your own website, Facebook author page, Goodreads Author page, Twitter account and accounts on other social media platforms.

Now the time has come to publish your next book. You upload it and, hey presto, a short time later your precious creation goes live. Here is a list of thirteen housekeeping jobs to attend to before beginning the hard work of post-publication marketing.

1. Assemble your Buyer Links

Assemble a list of the new buyer links for adding to your website, signatures and posts.

2. Your Amazon Author Pages

Update your author pages on Amazon USA, UK, France, Germany and Japan: claim the new book and modify your biography.

3. The Author Page on other distribution sites, such as Smashwords

Modify…

After my own journey with cancer or liver cancer to be exact, I have sought to stay as healthy as I can and the biggest factor to that has been food thus keeping a healthy gut.

Usually when we look at a fruit or vegetable, we tend to quickly think of ways to transform it into different flavors by either cooking it or adding other ingredients. That can be a good thing but can also take away from our beautiful “star”. With that being said, I have come to a personal conclusion to always try and eat my fruits and vegetables without transforming them. Do I fail at that sometimes? Yes; I do but that doesn’t keep me from trying over and over to keep that healthy habit. Does that mean that my family and I depend on a raw diet? Nope, not at all but most of our fruit…