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Tag Archives: Storytelling

Writing in the Mirror

Tweet I started the week with fond remembrances of cliff-diving without the water. And I started that post with a link back to other stories from my childhood, exploring the far forested acres of my parents’ farm. I blamed the recent nostalgia on my childhood buddy Josh, for mentioning some of those stories on Facebook, […]

On Scheduling: Fall 2011

Tweet As you’re well aware, I’m halfway through my pursuit of a Master of Professional Writing degree at the University of Oklahoma. My classes start tomorrow. But I was on campus yesterday running hither and yon, signing up for tutorial time with the chair of my graduate committee, applying for a two-hundred-dollar parking pass, and […]

On Backstory: Preschool

Tweet Yesterday I didn’t show up to work until after lunch. I was really dragging, too. I wandered down the row between offices and cubicles, waving a half-hearted response to my coworkers’ enthusiastic greetings. I made my way to my desk, fell into my chair, and then started reading office email. It wasn’t terribly interesting. […]

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 Bookselling: Distraction

Tweet This year I’ve missed a lot of blog posts. I missed some because I was so busy with school work. I missed some because I was so miserably sick. And I missed some because I was so frantic finishing up novels or promoting them to an oblivious public. I’ve had lots of good reasons […]

On Self-Publishing: Contagion

Tweet There’s a bug that’s been going around recently. As a matter of fact, there’s two. The first is a summer cold. An upper respiratory virus. Nothing terrifying or crippling, but just enough to take a man down for six to ten days. In this case, the grown man was me. That’s only a small […]

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 […]