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Please don't go to Amazon search, look for my book, and click it just to see what the ad looks like. (Unless you intend to buy.) Every click costs me…

Kindle Direct Printing (KDP) offers Expanded Distribution for print book sales. Expanded Distribution allows Libraries and Universities to order your book, but the formula for royalties is much less. Below…

Today's discussion may be for beginning writers, but we all need to check our writing from time to time. This article discusses writing in the past tense. If you are…

Literary elements in writing are interesting and sometimes even useful. I am not a literary writer, although I flatter myself, claiming that Members of the Cast has a literary feel.…

This article deals with style, and every writer's style is different. Halfway through this piece, you may say, "I've had about as much of this as I can take!" So…

I like to watch a character having two conversations at the same time, one in her/his head, and the other out loud. In Members of the Cast, Margo's inner voice…

I have no stake in Kindle Vella. This article is to inform other writers, not to advertise an Amazon product. One of the problems with self-publishing is getting noticed. Even…

One of the first things we learn about writing is the old saying, “Less is More.” In keeping with this simple truth, the opposite is true: “More is Less.” More…

If you are hoping to find an agent and have a trade house publish your book, tomes don’t sell. I know that several Harry Potter books are massive, but publishers…

One of my current works in progress (WIP) is The Ship from Wolfskill, a steampunk-ish tale of a levitating riverboat. As I discussed in my earlier blog about backstory, sometimes…

The em dash ( — ) is a handy way to show a character has paused. In the blog “Better Dialog,” I mentioned that “Mother” has a tell in her…

As I help our 13-year-old granddaughter with a book she is writing, I find myself harking back to my teaching days and have been explaining dialog tag “forms.” In my…

Members of the Cast is set in 1959 and follows a 17-year-old girl’s year in a new high school. Margo suffers all the angst of a high school student, and yet…

When writing a book, there are no shortcuts. One time an author, speaking at a writer’s conference, told this story: Minnie McGillacutty, and author of a lengthy series, remarked that…

For almost 30 years, I designed, programmed, marketed, and supported the Pretty Good Grading Program, a computer grade book for elementary teachers. The manual for PGGP says this: There are…