Setting up an Author Platform
Writing a book is hard enough, but marketing it can rapidly become a daunting task. After months of searching, trying, failing and learning new tips, I discovered that any author, self published or traditionally published, should create an author platform where...
My Rave Reviews Book Club Experience
You may remember how a few weeks ago I wrote a post about my stint as Spotlight Author of the week by the Rave Reviews Book Club. With the month of May now over, how did that work out for me? Well, pretty well, actually, thanks for asking! 🙂 Let's talk numbers,...
Writing for Readers
There seems to be a shift of perspective when we become authors. We move from being just readers into being both authors and readers. And so, our relationship with books becomes complicated: I find it hard, nowadays, to just read a book. I will notice verbs,...
New Non-Fiction Cover Reveal: Beyond the Count, by Margo Bond Collins
This new book is perfect for lovers of all things vampire! Its (awesome!) cover is revealed here today, courtesy of Fabulosity Reads. Book Synopsis Long before Dracula, vampires stalked the literary scene. These early literary vampires are sometimes terrifying,...
How to Get More Blog Followers
My dear friend MMJaye published this awesome blog post today, titled 13 Strategy-Altering Blogging Stats, that was based on a post by Mitt Ray of Social Marketing Writing. Mitt has taken all blog-related statistics he could lay his hands on and created a superb...
Naming your Characters the Easy Way
I was having this conversation with MMJaye, and she was observing how hard it can be to find the right name for your characters. First, I was reminded by this hilarious comic by Tom Gauld: Then, I remembered all the research I went through when I was looking for...
Book Marketing: Twitter vs. Facebook
As you know, there is research being done about pretty much everything nowadays. I recently came across an interesting research by Michelle Bertino on Klout, that studies the reactions on Twitter and Facebook according to different subjects. Nice guy that I am, and...
What Mad Men Can Teach us About Writing
I have a confession: I'm not a big Mad Men fan. I know, almost everyone else seems to be, but after watching a couple of episodes, I just didn’t like it. I couldn't identify with any of the characters, didn’t like the way people behaved to each other, and definitely...
When Science Meets Book Marketing
I love it when science meets book marketing! If you wonder what I'm talking about, just read on. I am an avid Economist reader. Every issue has a small section about Science and Technology which, I have to confess, I prefer to Finances or Economics, as it invariably...
Writing Lessons You Need to Unlearn. Or do you?
Happy Memorial Day, to my American readers! You see, I may live in Greece, but I know it's Memorial Day today. Likewise, English is not my first language. I was taught English at the tender age of two and a half, alongside Greek. I had English-speaking au pairs to...
Easy Synonyms
A handy guide for when you're writing that first draft and the thought of describing a face as pretty fills you with more dread than submitting your book to an agent.
Crapulence and Forgotten English: the Words we Ought to Bring Back!
Yesterday, I posted about all these wonderful words that various languages use around the world. But what about all those words that English used to have, but somehow were forgotten, disappearing from memory? Isn't it awful that we no longer have a word for...