As you may remember if you’ve been following my antics through this web site, one of my strongest passions these days is writing visionary fiction and non-fiction including short fiction. Growing up reading science fiction and fantasy, I feel it’s my turn to give back by sharing my own speculative fiction stories. So, this week, I’m offering one of my short stories, Hunt Along the Iron River, for free for Kindle users for three days but [...]
What a marvelous world we live in and what an incredible time to be a writer. There are just so many opportunities and ways we can get our words and our work out into the world these days. So many that it might at times be confusing as to which ones to use and which ones to pass on by. Just the other day, someone posted a great question on Word Journeys: Resources for Writers, one [...]
Read, Review, Pass Along Form Writers know the importance of garnering reviews of their books to draw the kind of attention that will result in more book sales. But how do you do it when a book first comes out, and hardly anyone has bought it to review it? You give a few books away, right? Maybe more than a few, like dozens, but that can be costly especially if you only get one [...]
I've started a new series that is cataloged under "The Writer's Life" that explores some of the qualities and attributes I believe are important to becoming a visionary writer (and overall effective human being). And, of course, being one of the founders of Life On Purpose Institute, Inc. I feel called to explore this one early on: Purpose Now, I've gone into quite a bit of detail about the role of purpose in a writer's life [...]
The section of this blog is called The Learning Curve for the simple reason that I want to share with other writers what I'm learning as I continue my journey to become a successful indie publisher. Today I want to explore what I'm learning about the balancing act of being an indie publisher. First and foremost, I am no longer just a writer or author. As one of my online mentors, Dean Wesley Smith, points out [...]
I confess, I've never bought a lottery ticket; least not that I can remember. The odds just seem too high for it to make sense to my frugal mind. However, I'm playing a new writing game that feels a bit like buying a lottery ticket, and thinking of it that way is actually quite empowering. Here's the game, compliments of a blog post of Dean Wesley Smith. (You can read his post here.) While I've been [...]
As part of my series on the qualities and attributes I feel are important to develop in ourselves that will help us in becoming visionary writers (and effective human beings), today I'd like to examine the quality of discipline. As I often do when I start making a new distinction, I like to look up the current definition of the term. Here's how the Miriam-Webster dictionary defines discipline: punishment obsolete : instruction a field [...]
We've all heard how important it is to have a really great book cover. Despite the old adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover," we know we all do -- right? Right. And you've probably all read how damn hard it is to create really great covers. True? Okay, now here's where the contrarian in me comes out. I say hogwash to that. Here, let me Covers Designed by Ann Swift & W. [...]
One of the things I'm finding as I focus more of my life energy on being a visionary writer that's both interesting and fun is how many different aspects of being a life coach I can apply to my writing aspirations. For example, using Equal Energy Exchanges - a self made distinction I've used with many of my coaching clients in the past. So, what is an Equal Energy Exchange (EEE) and how can [...]
"Write four pages per day to finish four novels per year and get to twenty books in five years. As I said before, indie publishers must write more." Dean Wesley Smith Even though I've been a professional writer for over twenty-five years (professional meaning earning money selling my words), I view myself on a pretty steep learning curve as an indie author especially when it come to my fiction creative writing. So, besides writing a lot, I [...]
