The Secret to Stretching Your Entertainment Dollar
The entertainment world is full of options. With enough money, you can indulge in just about any form of leisure imaginable. But what if you don't have an unlimited budget? Most of us don't. What's the best value for your hard-earned money? I've taken a look at some...
6 Things to Do After Writing a Book: A Thumb-Twiddling Primer
Hooray! Your book is finished. The hours/weeks/months/years of work have resulted in a manuscript that was sent off to your editor just moments ago. What now? Let's face it: your editor needs some time. How much will vary of course, but unless your manuscript fit on...
Sourcethief Cover Reveal
This is it! The cover for Sourcethief, the third and final book in the Twinborn Trilogy. Duncan Long has done another excellent job in illustrating the covers for the series. For those who are curious, the scene is from the Battle of the Dead Earth, a key moment in...
Cats and Internet Marketing
Host: We have with us today one of the great minds of our generation, Dr. David Steinbaur, Head of Complicated Research at the National Smartness Institute. He's here to talk about his Nobel Prize nominated theory on nanoparticles. Dr. Steinbaur: Thank you for having...
Sidekicks: Who’s got your back?
The sidekick is a time-honored tradition in storytelling. They are often found as the lone companion to otherwise solitary heroes, or as tag-alongs looking to follow in the hero's footsteps one day. They add a dash of flavor to a one-note main character, serve to...
Completing a Trilogy
Over the weekend, I finished the manuscript for Sourcethief, the final book of the Twinborn Trilogy. It finished at a svelte 188k words (only by comparison to Firehurler's 235k and Aethersmith's 225k), making for roughly 650k words for the series as a whole. Writing...
Off-Camera Antics
Books and movies share a common element in storytelling: Point of View. The camera or the narrator of a scene (whether it be a character or a third person) has a particular spot from which it views the events taking place. No matter how many points of view (POV) you...
Using Multiple Points of View (POV)
"many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view" - Obi-Wan Kenobi The story you tell will take on the flavor of whoever is doing the telling. A first-person narrative is intimate, but boxed in. Following a single character tells their story,...
A Second Book, A Second Look At Publishing One
For those who may not already have been aware, Aethersmith came out on "June 1". I put that in quotes, because, as an independent author, that whole book release date business is a crapshoot. The ebook version for Kindle came out on May 30th, the paperback June 3. I...
The Twinborn Survival Guide
If you haven't already, this might be a good time to take the Twinborn Quiz. This guide is going to give tips on how to survive after the discovery that you are one of them. That might make the difference between reading this guide for fun, and really needing the...