Outlines, character info, plot structure, interior layouts, cover design… A behind the books look at what it takes to go from idea to publication.
Have you ever heard people talk about the “bones of a story?” Maybe as in, “The story had great bones, but I didn’t like…” (Why does discussion always focus on critique? Let’s save that for a later post.) Maybe you can tell what that means from the context. The bones are essentially the frame of […]
Here’s a fun fact: my new book, Freely Written Vol. 1 went from concept to print in about two weeks. Yep, two weeks! While quick turn around is one of the benefits of self-publishing, that was a little crazy even for me. Why the quick release? And why did the print edition come out nearly
By late summer 2020, I needed a fun and silly creative project. There were two ideas I’d been kicking around for quite a while: writing a gamebook and writing a book about two friends named after my grandmothers, Audrey and Esther. Putting those ideas together seemed like a perfect solution. I had no idea how
When you read a book, do you picture the locations? Not just the imagery but the actual layout of the rooms? When I’m writing my novels, I often like to sketch the layout of a setting so I can picture it more clearly… and describe it without contradictions (though I probably still make mistakes). For
While I prefer fictional story settings, To the Left of Death made that tricky, given that the main character spends some time in New York City. It is a fictionalized New York City, in the sense that the places the characters visit are (mostly) not real. However, I like my fictionalized cities to be grounded
