On Writing and the Business of Writing– some thoughts

Writing I recently read an essay about exposing MFA students too much to the business of publishing and being a writer. The theory put forth was that too much of that could stifle a student’s creativity. It was titled On Writing and the Business of Writing, so...
The Writer’s Little Black Book Published Today

The Writer’s Little Black Book Published Today

In celebration of the publication today of The Writer’s Little Black Book, the first book in the series, Life’s Little Black Book is only .99 on Kindle and in Kindle Unlimited. The Writer’s book contains over 100 mistakes writers tend to make and how to fix them, in...

Creativity: The Positive and Negative of Deadlines

Deadline Every writer dreads a deadline, yet at the same time we crave them to give us direction and purpose. I’ve been writing for a living for 30 years and have always had a contract or pre-order deadline, I often had an internal one that pushed me to do better than...
The Advantage of Indie Publishing: Speed & Coronavirus

The Advantage of Indie Publishing: Speed & Coronavirus

I’ve had a new version of The Green Beret Preparation and Survival Guide out for some months now. But given recent events, I wanted to beef up the section I already had on Pandemics with information on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) So I wrote a section, added it to...

Write It Forward: from writer to successful author

The publishing business makes little logical sense. That’s because it’s part of the “entertainment business.” The first word, entertainment refers to emotion, while business refers to logic. Trying to explain how publishing works to someone...
Conflict is the fuel of Story

Conflict is the fuel of Story

While we usually want to avoid conflict in real life, in fiction, it is what drives the characters and story forward toward the climactic scene. When I do workshops, the first thing we do is get the author to say the core idea of his/her book in one sentence. That can...