Writing Tips

The beginning stages of writing and self-publishing your first e-book can be a very exciting experience.  You daydream about being on Amazon’s best seller list or sitting next to Oprah while discussing the intricacies of your book to an audience filled with your admirers.  But amidst your fantasies about the “glamor” of authorship, you must make room for the realities of what you’re up against on the road to self publishing your book.  While there are many “do’s” to follow when self publishing, there are also many pitfalls you’ll want to avoid.  Of course I couldn’t possibly cover them all […]

I could say creative writing is right-brained and publishing is left-brained; writing is artistic, publishing all business. I could say that and I’ve heard it said by some “experts” but, even though I did just say it, my experience of both realms forces me to say it ain’t so.

For twenty-some years I wrote creatively and paid scant attention to publishing. I used Lulu.com to get my books published but never saw many sales. In fact, all my books except the one I’m working on now are free to download. I could apply what I’ve recently been learning about […]

What? We all rewrite what we’re reading? How in the world can I propose such an idea?

Matter of fact, I proposed it in two posts on my other blog: ReadWriteReadWriteReadWrite… & What’s It Like Inside When You Read A Book?.

In the second post just mentioned, I gave a little formula to help explain what I mean:

“Reading is to Writing as Hearing is to Speaking.”

Then, I asked a question:

“Do we always hear exactly what the other person’s saying?”

So, when we read, do we always get the meaning the author intended when they wrote the […]

For many months now, The Crossover Alliance has been an online community in existence to cultivate the relationship between readers and writers of edgy Christian speculative fiction – in general terms, science fiction/fantasy/horror/supernatural fiction with Christian themes and edgy content, such as sexual themes, language, drug use, and violence. The term ‘edgy’ doesn’t only encompass this type of content though – it can also be applied to certain situations/themes/character deficiencies that are not typically found or ‘allowed’ in conservative Christian fiction. Edgy Christian speculative fiction crosses the lines of both secular fiction and Christian fiction, and creates a new breed […]

I’m venturing into dangerous territory with the title of this post…

Let me clarify the exact bit of territory I want to defend.

First, when I ask if the writer’s job is recording or creating, certain easy and obvious answers come up:

* Journalists mostly record, though they can do it creatively.
* Essayists and article writers can slide back and forth between recording and creating.
* Fiction writers create, though there may be a bit of recording in some of their work.

In this post, I’m only going to talk about fiction writers and the specific territory I want […]