The Craft of Writing: 200 Most Common Words As Parts of Speech
Two hundred words are said to comprise eighty percent of all English sentences. Here is the list broken down into parts of speech. Why? Because you should know what weapons you are hurling at an unsuspecting public. It’s been nigh many years when the nuns at my Catholic grammar...
#FlashFiction Challenge: A Blog Interview With Arekan Mor’a’stan
Author: We are happy to have with us today, Arekan Mor’a’stan, the main character in two science fantasy serials, Arekan’s War and the newest, Pirate’s Luck. He also has a supporting role in The Mor’a’stani Chronicles, the series of full-length books about his daughter, B’yetishen Mor’a’stan. Thank you, Arekan...
Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: The Incubus’ Tale
Chuck Wendig gave us ten titles, one thousand words and one week to post on his latest flash fiction challenge. Here’s mine: The Incubus’ Tale “Still, if some are occasionally begotten from demons, it is not from the seed of such demons, nor from their assumed bodies, but from...
The Craft of #Writing: Lexical Density Compared to Writing Rules
I took some creative license in the title because we all know there aren’t any rules in writing. There is just some incredibly strong advice. The “rules” vary widely from writer to writer and even from genre to genre. But there do seem to be a few general “rules”...
Five Ways to Use #Twitter To Grow Your Author’s Platform (With Examples)
Ah. Twitter. One hundred and forty characters two hundred and eighty characters of writely goodness. When I started blogging, oh back in the dark ages of blogging seven years ago, Twitter was just a toddler. At the time I was signing up for every platform possible to get my...
Chuck Wendig’s Newest Challenge: First 1,000 Words
Chuck Wendig posted his most impossible challenge of all: Grab 1000 words of your NaNoWriMo work-in-progress (or, really, even if you’re not participating, any WIP of yours), and slap those 1000 words online for all to see. Eeek. I mean, I’m just not ready to do that. It’s still...
The Craft of Writing: Lexical Density and You
According to the study, Success with Style: Using Writing Style to Predict the Success of Novels, by Stony Brook University’s Vikas Gajingunte Ashok, Song Feng, and Yejin Choi, whether or not a book will sell can be determined by several quantifiable factors. The researchers downloaded classic literature from the...
Cover Reveal: Forced Labor-Book 1–Arekan’s War
Now on Amazon. Arekan leads a hardscrabble and solitary life as a hired blade for whatever merchant space vessel that will take him. The problem with twenty-two year old Arekan is that he causes trouble wherever he goes, enough so that he uses variety of aliases. Fired by his...
Chuck Wendig’s Synopsis Challenge
We all have to do them sometimes. The synopsis, the story outline, plus some, that an agent or publisher or heaven’s forbid, a work for hire buyer, will demand. Chuck in his doubtful wisdom has demanded, with threat of bug zapping violence, that we produce them for our NaNo...
Scrivener’s Shot Gun Wedding With Pro-Writing Aid
My most useful writing tools are Scrivener and Pro-Writing Aid. Most writers have heard of Scrivener, a powerful word processing program that orders and organizes the screaming voices in your writer’s head, helping you to pump out your stories. There are too many features in this program to write...