A Heaven for Toasters Wins Award

Nov 15, 2020 | My Publications

Last week, I got some exciting news: my romantic sci-fi novel, A Heaven for Toasters, had won second place in the 2020 International Digital Awards! Organized by the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America, this is an annual competition for the top romance book in various...

Bizarre Weapons: the Lantern Shield

Nov 13, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora

Robert Arthurs reports on Quora first seeing this wonder of medieval over-specialization on display in Vienna, Austria: Doesn’t it look awesome? Well, looks can be deceiving. You see that small hole in the top region of the shield? That is where a soldier would...

Top 10 SEO Tools That Are Helpful for Authors

Nov 3, 2020 | Marketing, Writing

As authors, we all have our websites. More often than not, however, they fail to generate much interest. Most of our posts languish unnoticed and unread. Some writers resort to ads to garner traffic. Others prefer organic—i.e. unpaid—traffic, as our marketing budgets...

Tips for Avoiding Grammar Mistakes

Nov 1, 2020 | Writing

Checking out grammar mistakes is quite easy—but only when you are not editing and proofreading your work by yourself. Otherwise, it’s almost impossible to catch things that would jump out of the page right away, were they written by someone else. Sadly enough, typos...

Five Paintings That Disappeared Without a Trace

Oct 25, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts

Art and art heists seem to go hand-in-hand. No wonder then that some of the rarest masterpieces of art have disappeared at different points in history under mysterious circumstances, leaving the cognoscenti speechless to date. Only reproductions exist today, thanks to...

5 Steps for a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

Oct 23, 2020 | Marketing

First of all, thank you all for your wonderful support. I’m lucky to have such a group of awesome people in my life. I’m returning today with a post on a topic dear to my heart: writing content. 2020 has been hard on everyone. Lockdowns, restrictions, and...

A Few Days Off

Oct 12, 2020 | Random Musings

Apologies for the brief hiatus. My dad passed last week from a sudden heart attack. He was on his feet until the very last moment, and we’re grateful for that. Still, the shock was great. He left no will, so my mom and I now have to go through a small forest of...

Basing Your High-Fantasy Towns and Cities in the Real World

Oct 7, 2020 | Writing

I wisely started the map and made the story fit. The above words, spoken by none other than J.R.R Tolkien, have been taken as sage advice by many an accomplished – or budding – fantasy writer who felt inspired to create their own world. While Tolkien, like many...