Good Stuff To Know

I haven't done one of these posts in a really long time and I apologize. Life keeps catching up with me and this is one of the things I had to drop. However, I am hoping to do it a little more this year, because I know how helpful it can be.

So - what have I discovered this year that has been really helpful to me?

First off, I want to highlight Indies Unlimited. There are SO many helpful posts on this site and they are popping up faster than I can keep up with them. It is a great place to check in on a daily or weekly basis depending on how much time you have. You can subscribe to a daily updates email, which I find really helpful.

Are You Targeting The Wrong Readers? by Gary Korisko
Here is a really honest on article on how to hit the right kind of readers for your work. What's the point of writing your masterpiece if the right people can't find it? There are 7 helpful tips at the end too!

Book Marketing Predictions for 2014 by Mike Lowndes
I always love book marketing prediction posts. I read a few in January and I liked this one the best...and also this one by Bob Mayer - Ten Publishing Predictions for 2014.

An Explanation of the Criteria by Awesome Indies
This post was pointed out to me by a writer friend of mine, Leigh K. Hunt. It is a really LONG post, so make sure you have some time up your sleeve, or save it to read later. It is WORTH IT. This post is packed full of awesome tips on writing collected from various experts in the field. There's SO much good stuff on editing, story structure, character development. It's simply brilliant. Thank you Awesome Indies for putting it together. There is a wealth of information here that any author can benefit from.

So that's me for this time around. If you have any other helpful posts you've stumbled across this year, please mention them in the comments below.

Have a great February everyone!!

Good Stuff To Know - July Edition

I haven't done one of these posts in a really long time. Sorry about my inconsistency with posting lately. I am planning on getting back into after our vacation. It's hard to keep things up when you're away from home...plus I've had all these releases in quick session. It's been a crazy couple of months... yet so much fun!

Anyway - I thought it was about time I got back into this post as I know many of you find it really helpful.

Here are a few links I've been storing away that may come in handy.

Jonathan Gunson is a total legend when it comes to sharing great marketing tips. I thought this post had some excellent points. 7 Best Seller Strategies for Writers.

I am a "do it yourself" book trailer maker. I came across this blog post the other day with a bunch of links for finding awesome background music for trailers. Not all of these are free, but they are royalty free, which is really helpful. 21 Sites of Free Music for your Book Trailer.

I actually hunted for these two articles. With the new adult genre rising in popularity quickly it's been hard to find the line between YA and NA fiction. I think even readers are confused sometimes. I think authors need a really clear idea in their minds about what New Adult fiction is.
This post was brilliant: New Adult Fiction: The Next Big Thing in Publishing?
And this post was really helpful when dealing with YA writing: 5 Tips for Writing and Marketing YA/Teen Books.

I've actually decided to do a full post on this topic, so keep an eye out for that next week.

Hopefully these articles are helpful to you.
If you have anything else you've come across that you'd like to share, please feel free to add it in the comments section.

Good Stuff To Know

Welcome to the March edition of Good Stuff To Know.

Because I've been holed up in my writing cave over the last few weeks, I haven't found as many articles as I usually do, but I still found some I'd really like to share.

My favourite article this month is by Mark Coker. He shared his opinion on the 5 Steps to Boost E-book Sales. I totally agreed with his opinions and thought it was an excellent post... well worth reading.

In no way am I a Twitter genius, so when I found this article - Top 10 Ways To Create Hashtags on Twitter - I jumped all over it. There are some good points here. I haven't put them into practice yet, but I plan to.

I wrote an article on Indies Unlimited last month sharing about how important I think it is to write the stories inside you and not just follow the trends of publishing. Bookshelf Muse published a similar post some time ago now. Because I think theirs was far better written, I'm going to share their version of the same message :-D Lengthening the Chain

And lastly - I have just started reading an excellent book that my friend recommended to me. Thanks Leigh K. Hunt!! 2k to 10k: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You Love by Rachel Aaron. I'm only half way through it, but the author is making a lot of sense. Her advice is really easy to implement and I tried out one strategy yesterday with much success. For only $0.99, I'd say this book is definitely worth having on your e-reader.

That's me for March. Do you have any helpful tips or articles you've discovered? Feel free to share them in the comments section.

Thanks for stopping by!

Good Stuff To Know

I love putting this post together each month. It's fun sharing some of the great articles I've found. Feel free to join in the fun and add any more in the comments section.

Most of my "shares" this month are from Best Seller Labs. I get these via e-mail from author, Jonathan Gunson. He is a fellow kiwi and chock-a-block full of awesome advice. I always find his e-mails so helpful. Here are a few highlight articles I've read from him lately...

7 Libraries of Sensational Photographs You Can Use For Free. I have book-marked a few of them. They look really good.

How To Sell 8 Million Books. This includes a video from late author, Ray Bradbury. It is really inspiring.

7 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Book Sales. I found this article really helpful. It was great to see what I was doing right... and what I need to work on.

If you haven't yet, I highly recommend you sign up to received Jonathan's newsletter e-mails. They are always worth a read.

Another helpful article I found this month was written by Laurie Boris. How to Use Track Changes on Word. I don't know about you, but me and Track Changes are not on friendly terms. This tutorial is helping us work together :-D

That's all from me this month.
I hope you find these articles as helpful as I have.

Good Stuff To Know - January 2013

Hey everyone. Yay, my first "Good Stuff To Know" post of the year. How completely cool.
I have a nice little list for you today. I hope you can find something useful within it.

Jodie Renner Editing put together a great post listing a bunch of excellent resources for writers. There is a long list of helpful books here plus a couple of "must read" articles for aspiring authors.

Once again, The Bookshelf Muse (I love these guys!) has put out another great post. This one is called, What Makes A Strong Author's Visit - A Teacher's Perspective. Being a teacher myself, I found it really interesting and I thought there were some great points here. If you do have the opportunity to ever do author visits or public speaking, this article is worth a read.

The lovely, Suzy Turner, led me to this post - The Ultimate Complete Final Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet. It gives you dimensions for all the different social media sites. An excellent resource for you to refer to.

I stumbled across this blog post through Indies Unlimited and I wanted to share it, because I thought it was really interesting. Aaron Patterson shared his publishing predictions for 2013. His message at the end - "Just keep writing" is why I wanted to share this post. He's got a really good point.

I've decided to sign up to be part of The Indelibles: Indie Life monthly blog hop. I missed the January one, but come February I will share my first post (the 2nd Wednesday of every month). At this stage there are 30 blogs involved and I think it's a great way to share information and learn from each other.

Indie Book Bargains is a UK site that I subscribe to. I get daily emails with current bargains and I find it really interesting to skim through and see what's out there. They have just completed their 2012 Book Awards. I thought there might be a title or two in there that interests you. Oh yeah - and Betwixt won Best YA!!! Sorry - just had to share. Super excited!

That's me for this month. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for more helpful links and resources to share in February. If you have any you'd like to add in the comments section, please feel free.

Good Stuff To Know

For those of you who missed it, I have started up a monthly post including all the awesome links and articles I've read throughout the month. October's was full of some goodies if you'd like to check it out here.

I have SO many this month, that I may save up some for December... although I'm sure I'll have a ton more by then too. People are full of such fantastic information and I love being able to share it around.

So, in no particular order, I came across:

- The 30 Day Platform Challenge by Robert Lee Brewer. This is a challenge that will help you build your platform by performing one quick, simple task each day. I am working my through it... not in 30 Days, but I try to do 2 or 3 a week. Some of the things I already have set up, but I'm learning new tricks along the way. I'm finding it really helpful.

- 77 Ways to Find New Readers by Laura Pepper Wu. I bought the e-book and it took me about an hour to get through. It is jam packed full of awesome ideas on expanding your audience. Most of the tasks are very easy to implement and will definitely open doors to new readers along the way. I highly recommend this book.

- Here's another little article I found on Duolit. Again, quick and easy to implement - 31 Book Marketing Ideas You Can Use Today.

- YA Author, Elana Johnson, has started a blog post series on how to write a trilogy. Here is the first part for you - Writing A Trilogy, Part One: Book One.

- I found a great little blog post on The Masquerade Crew - How To Become A Multi-Talented Writer, which I thought had some excellent advice.

I'll stick with those for November. I don't want to overload people with too much information :-)
I am planning another post soon with a list of recommended reading on how to write well. Having run the Author-fest last month on the YAlicious blog, I now have a very long list of great books that people might want to check out.

Keep your eyes peeled for that post later this month :-)

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you find these articles and tips as helpful as I did.

Good Stuff To Know

I've decided to start a monthly post about all the helpful things I've spotted or stumbled across through Facebook, Twitter and blog reading.

Sometimes it's nice to have tips condensed into one place and that's what this post is all about.

So - for the month of September, here are some of the helpful things I discovered...

Magic Monday Tip from Laura Pepper Wu. I subscribe to a weekly e-mail which delivers me a really helpful marketing tip. So far, they have been awesome. Short, sweet and easy to implement. You can sign up here, under FREE CONTENT - http://www.30daybooks.com/

Tuesday Tutorial on Indies Unlimited. Every Tuesday Indies Unlimited posts a tutorial about something useful for indie writers. The next day, they tend to hold some sort of Like-fest. I find both of these things so helpful. I have learned so many great tips that are once again easy to follow and implement. Being involved with the follow-up Like-fests has led me to some fantastic connections. You can subscribe to Indies Unlimited here, under Subscribe at the top of the page - http://www.indiesunlimited.com/

Here is a great article about Time Management when using Twitter. I have just signed up to Commun.it and I think it will be awesome. Here's the article link: Time Managing Twitter with Commun.it by Jim Devitt

I stumbled across a great book the other day and purchased it immediately, it's all about character emotions and how to portray these in a variety of ways that are unique and compelling. It's available in paperback and e-book. Here's the link: The Emotion Thesaurus by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman.

Melissa Maygrove does a grammar tip on her blog every Monday. I'm not the world's best at grammar so I find this kind of thing really helpful. You can check out her blog here: http://melissamaygrove.blogspot.com/

That's all from me for today. I'll be collecting articles and resources throughout the month of October and be back with more goodies in early November.

If you have any helpful tips you'd like to share, please feel free to share them in the comments section :)

Editing

You often hear a collective moan when the E word is mentioned around writers.

Editing.

Groan.

Yes, editing. It can be a very hard task and it can be one of those tasks you never ever finish... especially those of us who strive for perfection with our manuscripts. I don't know many writers who don't.

That's why there are these spectacular people called editors that help us writers out. What would we do without them.

I have now finished my first draft of Betwixt and I'm getting it ready to send to an editor. Before I send it though, I obviously want to do some revisions and this time around, I decided to read a helpful book before getting started.

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King.

It was awesome. It's a really practical book with suggestions and tips that are easy to execute. At the end of each chapter is a checklist to help you focus on particular areas as you go.

I would highly recommend this book to any writer who is in the throes of editing.

My goal is to send my manuscript off to my editor and for her to reply that only minimal changes are needed. Whether or not I can do this, remains to be seen, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

Thank you Rennie Browne and Dave King for writing the kind of book that might just help me get there.

Do You Ever Read Aloud?

I read aloud to my son every night. He LOVES stories and it's always a battle to finish story time. He'd make me read all night if he could.

As I was reading last night, adding accents and varied tones to make it fun, it suddenly struck me how much I was getting out of the experience. I was bringing the story to life. It made me realize just how important reading aloud really is.

I remember reading once, that it is essential to read your finished work out loud. The flow of the work becomes obvious, the punctuation jumps out at you (especially if it's wrong) and the dialogue can be tweaked and perfected until you have a conversation that could be acted out in a movie.

When I read, I often hear each word in my head. I know, that makes me incredibly slow sometimes, but it does make me a good proofreader and mistakes are often glaringly obvious to me.

It's harder to pick up mistakes in my own work, of course, because I know what I want it to say, but reading aloud helps me with this.

Reading aloud also helps me touch on the right emotion. If I verbally act out my dialogue, I know the tone I want to portray. I can easily imagine movements that will add to the mood of the scene and it makes it easier for me to place the characters in an appropriate setting. For some reason, hearing the dialogue works for me.

What works for you?
Do you read your work aloud?

New Software - super fun!!!

I was chatting to my brother a few weeks ago, who also loves to write and is working on a novel. He mentioned doing a search for creative writing software. I had never heard of that kind of thing. He went on to explain that you can get software that helps you organize your work and help you stay on track with your novel.

Sounded good to me!!

As soon as I got home I started a search of my own. Now my brother is a PC man, where as I fell in love with Macs years ago and cannot be swayed. After some hunting I came across a really cool program called Scrivener. It's designed specifically for Macs and has some wicked features. You can split the screen four ways and have pictures and research showing while typing a scene. It stores away all your files and internet links so you don't have to have a gazillion folders, which is the way I have previously been storing all my work. It has a fun cork board feature that helps with scene planning and story structure. Those are just a few of the many features. Do I sound like a commercial yet? Sorry - I'm just excited. It's like getting a new toy!!

There is a free 30 day trial which I am currently using, but I think I'll get the software at the end of it. I know it's not going to make me a better writer, but it will definitely make me a more organized one. It's just something little to help me in my quest.
If you are a Mac person, I encourage you to check it out. My brother says there is some awesome software for PCs too and he actually managed to download his for free - so there you go. His was called ywriter5.

Happy hunting everybody :)