Skip to content

Tag Archives: Joshua Unruh

What I Learned About Writing This Week…from Conan

Tweet No, not Conan O’Brien. We’re talking somebody a bit less civilized than that (although, I suppose that some of you might find this debatable). Today, my dear inklings, we’re talking Conan the Barbarian, who is brought to you by the letter J. Why the letter J? Because if my friend and fellow writer Josh […]

What I Learned About Writing This Week…from My Writer’s Tribe, Redux

Two days ago, seven Consortium writers gathered in Aaron’s living room to roundtable edit each other’s short story submissions for the upcoming Consortium Worlds, Vol. 1 e-zine. I probably don’t have to tell you how apprehensive I was, going into that meeting…

What I Learned About Writing This Week…from King and Straub

Tweet Mr. Stephen King and Mr. Peter Straub, that is. These two gentlemen co-wrote a couple books, if you didn’t know. And I’m currently enjoying the second of that couple most muchly, yup. The first, The Talisman, I read years and years ago. So, before I started this new read, I hied myself to my […]

On Backstory: Cut the Prologue

Tweet On Tuesday I told a little story about showing up at work late on a Monday, then I flashed back to a fun weekend with friends, then I skipped to the middle and told a sad little story about my girl’s first day at school. I was playing with narrative chronology. My inspiration for […]

On Superhero Fantasy: Creating a Genre

Tweet On Tuesday I talked about my fantasy problem, and the project proposal that solved it. The core of that project proposal involved taking comic book conventions and transplanting them into traditional fantasy novels. I’ve been thinking about that old project a lot lately, and one day it occurred to me that I’ve got a […]

On Superhero Fantasy: My Fantasy Problem

Tweet A long time ago, my friend Dan and I got together to brainstorm a fantasy series. We did it for a handful of reasons (most of which weren’t mentioned in that article). I saw an opportunity to work on an exciting new writing project with an old friend. Dan saw an opportunity to fix […]

On Bookselling: Targeting Your Market

Tweet This week I’m talking about turning Kindle-published books into bestsellers. I’ve done it, and I’m sharing some secrets to how you can, too. Essentially, they boil down to this: Get really lucky, and watch in astonishment as your numbers start to climb. Of course, if I really felt that way, I wouldn’t be writing […]

On Bookselling: Looking for Trends

Tweet So! I told you Tuesday about my meteoric rise to bestseller status at Amazon. I showed you a screenshot of Taming Fire contending with Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson for the rank of 82. I told you about the productivity-killing curse of ever-changing sales numbers, and that I was over and done with it. […]

On Marketing: Product Descriptions

Tweet This week we’ve got guest posts from my good friend and fellow Consortium Writer, Joshua Unruh. He’s back today to talk about writing product descriptions, or back-cover copy for your books. Last time I gave you a bit of my career background to help explain why Aaron crowned me king of back-cover copy. (Kings […]

On Marketing: Joshua Unruh

Tweet This week we’ve got a guest post from my good friend and fellow Consortium Writer, Joshua Unruh. I could tell you more about him, but he does a great job introducing himself below. Read on. Ladies and Gentlemen, please direct your attention to the CENTER RING! What’s up, party people? I’m Joshua Unruh, novelist […]