Our current brave world of publishing demands that an author "build a brand." What does that mean exactly?  Simply put, your brand is the picture that pops into people’s mind when they hear your name. Your author brand is how your fans identify you. How do you figure out what to talk about online? [I can hear […]

We have a surprise for you today - our 1000th post happened this week and we're celebrating big time. That means we're celebrating you, our amazing readers. We're more than a little bit misty over this, as we never expected to get this far when we started our little blog back in 2010. Thank you, Amazing […]

Today I'm thinking about the people who inspired me on this writing journey. There are the usual suspects... My mother, who encouraged my constant scribbling. The 6th grade teacher who put my essay up on the wall with a shiny gold star. Countless friends and teachers, in my home writing chapter and online. The founders and […]

NaNoWriMo, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it, is National Novel Writing Month, where hundreds of thousands of writers gather to bang out many many words in a month. Many writers skip it and many writers treat it as a yearly pilgrimage to Writing Mecca. NaNoWriMo is my birthday present to myself each year. […]

From our earliest moments, most writers are avid readers. We devour books – for story, for Craft, for new worlds and new ideas. We have To Be Read piles (TBR for short) that are taller than small children. Our favorite authors and characters become our friends. I don’t know if we become students of the […]