I recently came across an article that I had saved a good while back, “Repetition is the First Principle of All Learning” by Robert F. Bruner (University of Virginia, Darden School of Business Administration). I was originally interested in the article for its perspective and thoughts on classroom education. However, … Read more…
A reader recently commented that he was not interested in any backstories because he was only interested in what was actually “officially” published as part of the complete story (he later recanted after he read one of the backstories). That prompted this post as a follow-up to … Read more…
Musings at the end of a grueling year. On December 1st 2016, To Touch a Dream will be published. It is the fifth and final volume of The Year of the Red Door. I have many feelings and emotions swirling around my heart and head. It has been a … Read more…
About The Reader’s Companion to the Year of the Red Door Background: In a previous post, I talked about the copious notes that I compiled during the development, research, and writing of The Year of the Red Door. Part of what I said was… Some of the material was … Read more…
With the release of A Distant Light, I have passed the halfway point of publishing The Year of the Red Door. When I started out on this project, I wasn’t sure if I could get this far along. I’ve certainly learned some lessons about my approach to publishing this story. … Read more…
Scribus — Desktop Publishing (http://www.scribus.net/) I mainly use Scribus for the internal layouts of my books. It handles fonts, kerning, and linespacing quite well. I also find its built-in PDF conversion options a real bonus since it has lots of output options. This is especially important for POD distributors … Read more…
We’ve all had the “Aha!” experience when reading something about a character’s past that explains some quirk or motive. That’s backstory. Not all backstories make it into the narrative. Sometimes they are written down by the author but never used in the main story. But as a writer, I … Read more…
Recently, the topic of reviews came up. I see it and hear it in online forums, blogs, webinars, advice books, and practically everywhere else. In a nutshell: “At every opportunity, authors should ask, beg, borrow, or steal in order to get plenty of reviews for their books.” Um, no. I … Read more…
An Update As some of you have heard, The Bellringer in epub-format is already on its way to some stores outside of the United States. This was not my intention, and, to say the least, I was surprised to learn about it. And I was quite baffled, too, since I … Read more…
Sometimes, delays can be a plane in the ash. Things are slowly getting back on track with TYOTRD after a long hiatus. Here’s where things stand, where they are going, and a few of the challenges immediately ahead. ♦ Line-editing is ongoing. I’ve received the edits for The Bellringer and … Read more…
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