As you’re getting ready to edit your first story, there are some choices that you need to make.  (You’ll probably only need to make them once.  Except in the case of the template; you’ll be fiddling with what seems like forever.) You’ll need to: Pick a dictionary. Pick a style guide. Set up a clean template,

Patience. Writers in the NY publishing business have to plan for massively, surprisingly good things to happen.  Books really do sell, and the advance is big, and everything’s shiny for a while.  Things go downhill…and they need another big hit to keep going.  Lurching from advance to advance, writers with the NY publishers make a

Now on sale at Smashwords, Amazon.com, and Barnes & Noble. Rescue the Queen, defeat the good guys, and live life to the fullest by using this coupon for a free copy this weekend only, at Smashwords:  PJ87R Tales from the Pirate Moon, Epsiode 1:  The Coffin of Infinite Time by Kitty Lafontaine A tale within

I have stuff to celebrate today!  No new book contracts or anything, but good stuff.  Plus, I have enough on the alien feast done that I don’t want to spend an hour researching stuff this morning…WRITECITEMENT! I bought up the leftover Choose Your Doom:  Zombie Apocalypse books back from the Pikes Peak Writers’ Conference.  So

To start out with, I want to define two terms for the context of what I’m writing: Editing Rewriting Editing is when you fiddle with the small details, using your editor brain. Rewriting is when you fiddle with the larger details (style is a larger detail made up of many small choices, by the way),

I admit that I haven’t studied much of linguistics.  I’m reading The Stuff of Thought:  Language as a Window into Human Nature, by Steven Pinker, and it seems like one of the base assumptions that I have never seen questioned (not just in this book so far, but in all the limited linguistics that I’ve

Today I’m researching Feedbooks  from a publisher’s perspective.  I cruised around Feedbooks a bit this weekend, and I liked it. Note: Currently, independent authors and publishers cannot charge money to publish on Feedbooks. Feedbooks is a French company that uses DRM.  They have a three-strikes takedown policy.  They also support various types of CC licences. When

Now at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. Strike against the evil that lawyers and ex-lovers do by picking up this story for free this weekend at Smashwords using coupon code UH37C! Lanes of the Living Dead by DeAnna Knippling It ain’t easy being divorced. But Bart’s ex-wife’s lawyer, also a voodoo priest, didn’t make it

Here are what, IMO, are the major mobile device markets that I think indie publishers and writers should go after: iBookstore – Currently reaching through Smashwords. Kindle – Currently reaching through Kindle Direct Publishing. Nook – Currently reaching through PubIt! Kobo – Currently reaching through Smashw0rds (only not really); they may open an indy-friendly pub

Day 2 of the Great INDIE Summer Read Giveaway…Haunted Empire is one of the featured books! Continuing on research with mobile device ereaders. Symbian: eReader Pro.  Has its own library. Mobipocket.  Has its own library. Dorian seems to be much less used, doesn’t have a library. Blackberry OS: Kindle for Blackberry Nook for Blackberry eReader