Characters Too Weird To Be True by Nancy J. Cohen “Florida is a giant bug light for crazy people.” ~Phyllis Smallman, Sleuthfest 2014 It’s no surprise to any author living in Florida that some of the craziest stories we can write are actually inspired by true events in our sunshine state. Join us in exploring … Read more
Marketing and Selling Your Books with Sophia Knightly At a recent meeting of the Florida Romance Writers, Inc., USA Today and New York Times bestselling author Sophia Knightly shared her promotional strategies. A two-time Maggie award finalist and a P&E Readers’ Poll finalist, she is traditionally published by St. Martin’s Press, Kensington, and Samhain Publishing. … Read more
Also called the Devil’s Sea, the Dragon’s Triangle is an area in the Pacific basin southeast of Japan between Iwo Jima and Marcus Island that is the site of anomalies where ships and planes have disappeared, electronics stop working, time accelerates, and strange mists occur. Most people don’t realize this area has more anomalies than … Read more
How long does it take to prepare for a conference? Soon I’ll be heading to SleuthFest in February, Lake County BookFest in March, Malice Domestic in April, the Florida Library Association Convention in May, and Mystery Writers Key West Fest in June. It can take me several weeks to get ready for each event and … Read more
Are you procrastinating about your writing career because distractions take you away from your work? Do self-doubts inhibit you? Are you unsure how to get started? Do you take too much time rereading your work and never moving ahead? Assuming you’ve created your characters and setting, follow these steps: Write a complete synopsis of your … Read more
Word choices are important when creating mood. Next time you read a scary story, look at the particular descriptive words the author uses. It takes work to get these right. Now let’s see how I put this to work for me. Here is my original paragraph: Outside, I locked up and then turned toward the … Read more
What’s the difference between line editing and copy editing? After your work gets accepted by a publishing house, your story editor will comb through it line by line looking for problems in structure, pacing, continuity, and logic. She’ll ask questions in the margins, make deletions, add lines where appropriate, and suggest improvements to some scenes. … Read more
How do you balance writing with online promotion? Marketing efforts take hours on the Internet. How can you keep up with tweets, Facebook posts, Pinterest, and more? It’s not easy to strike a balance. Often the marketing tasks take over. But here are my Four Rules to guide you. (1) Writing Comes First. Set yourself … Read more
Plotting your story can’t take place until you have an idea of issues you want to explore, setting, and character. Before you take pen to paper, you engage in the stage of Discovery. What does this mean? Normally when planning a mystery, I start with the victim. Once the dead guy makes himself known, I … Read more
Recently I read through a bunch of novels to judge for the RITA contest sponsored by Romance Writers of America. Out of the 7 books sent me, I truly liked only one. That’s not to say I didn’t attempt to be fair and to objectively evaluate the others according to the supplied criteria. But only … Read more