fiction

Of Scott Pratt, The Writer’s Predicament and Hilary Rosen …

Fellow author, Pamela Samuels Young, recently forwarded, as she did to 30-40 others, the link to an genre author, Scott Pratt’s new blog, The Writer’s Predicament.

While I have not read any of Mr. Pratt’s five legal thrillers I will say that if his novel writing style holds any of the similarities he had exhibited in the few blog posts of The Writer’s Predicament, I will start touting his work. 

Needless to say I am a fan of his blog.

After opening the e-mail containing the link to his blog, I immediate clicked over and began reading his posts.

Scott’s warm, style combined with

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Radio Show & Guest Interview | Tyora Moody

Internet Marketer and Promoter of fiction turned published fiction writer, Tyora Moody, discusses her debut release, “When Rain Falls.” Listen to her interview at Book Talk, Creativity and Family Matters. _____________________________________________________________________ Here’s what Tyora shared in her guest blog interview. I write about…

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Of Writing, Time, and The Realities of Publishing…

The reality of publishing is that it is difficult to make a profit in this business.

And why does one want to make a profit?

Because editors need to be paid, it takes money to print copies of a book, and most importantly, authors need food, shelter, and health insurance, none of which are cheap, if we are to write entertaining stories.

When publishing companies agree to print book, the writer must deliver and on time, lest the publisher demands

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Of Memoir, Climax, and “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”…

Writing teacher and mentor, Clive Matson, always said that if a writer found her or himself wanting and/or needing to explain her or his story that the reader might gain the author’s intended message, the author needed to revise their story further.

Completing a manuscript requires more than simply writing the story, editing and revising it for clarity regarding grammar and typos, or even for development of plot.

Within each story or novel lives the narrative of that story, and how it came into being.

The author’s understanding and exploration of this process informs

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Of Colombiana, Contagion, and Miracles…

“If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it.
Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.”
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I saw two movies this weekend. Contagion, for the first time, and Colombiana for the 2nd.

Viewing a movie for the second time, much like reading a book, allows the opportunity to evaluate and inspect what either makes the story work, or remain vibrant in your mind, or the memories of its plot and characters, if you can recall them, slink into the recesses of the forgotten.

I was not excited at the thought of seeing Colombiana a second time.

Yet now as I write, I realize my hesitation came not from the quality of the movie itself, but quite the opposite.

The story of a young woman, who in losing her parents to a villainous killing at the age of 9, then seeking revenge, Colombiana is clearly a character driven story.

Contagion on the other hand, involves many characters whose roles work to tell the story of not a person, but rather display the effect of

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Of Books, Tension, and The Mind on the Page…

Presently I am reading Anuradha Roy’s novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing .

As with any good novel, interactions between the main characters are strained.

Tension abounds, but not in a melodramatic way.

The story moves with a nice speed for an opening.

I look forward each evening–a hallmark that I have found a jewel of a novel–to settling into bed,

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Of Supply, Demand, and The Woeful Truth About Publishing and Authors…

Author and publisher, Zetta Brown’s recent blog, “Authors! Can’t find your book in a bookstore? You may be luckier than you think!”, got me to thinking–no pun intended–about the old law of economics, that of supply and demand.

With bookstores and sellers tightly adhering to what seems to me, an outdated mode of purchasing books from publishers, and authors who choose to self-publish–that of retaining, if not demanding, the opportunity to return unsold books they have received from us–I wonder what would happen if publishers and authors began to print less books.

A blog post, “A Woeful Truth About Publishing,” at Champagne Books explains this paradoxical phenomenon in detail.

In short what I’m really saying is, “How would economic market respond if publishers did not make books so readily accessible?”

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