10 Types of Short Stories to Enhance Your Writing Prowess
As you may know, short stories are how I started writing and I still love them dearly. The short story, however, is not a single literary format but multiple ones grouped under a single banner. This gives short story writers a multitude of structures to use to tell...
Tips for Effective Research On Your Novel
I haven't written in a while, mostly due to the surprisingly (for August) high demands of my copywriting job. I'm now back with some thoughts on research. Whether for copywriting or novel writing, research is a big part of our work. And while writers today have more...
Three Years of Her Life by Christine Robinson
Christine Robinson is a long-time friend of this blog (and my work). Her historical fiction book, Three Years of Her Life, has now been released on Amazon. Three Years of Her Life is her debut historical fiction book, inspired by Grandfather Gustav F. Heim's last...
New Book: Writing and Publishing a Book Series
Rayne Hall is the successful author of dozens of books in her celebrated Writer's Craft series. A few months ago, we wrote together a book chock-full of copywriting tips called Copywriting: Get Paid to Write Promotional Texts. Rayne and I have now finished a new book,...
Convert Text from Image
AI software like LaMDA is pretty impressive but we've been using AI for years without even realizing it. One perfect example of this is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools that let us digitize printed documents. While there's something to be said about the...
LaMDA: A Sentient AI?
In case you missed the news, a Google engineer called Blake Lemoine believes that LaMDA, the company's AI, has already achieved sentience. Lemoine has since been fired from Google for going public with his belief, thus violating the company's confidentiality policy....
History of the Ferrari Brand
This blog usually deals with Medieval or ancient history, but I'm also interested in more recent history. While researching an article, I recently came across some facts about Ferrari, the legendary sports car brand created by Enzo Ferrari. I hope you'll enjoy them!...
Helen after Troy
Bradford McCormick, a reader of this blog, mentioned Helen of Troy in a comment and got me thinking. What did happen to that crazy lass after Troy fell? Well, turns out the answer, as told by Steve Theodore on Quora, is both complicated and fascinating. A Happy Ending...
Ancient Surgery
Plenty of ancient resources mention medical procedures such as surgery. The early Chinese surgeon Hua Tuo (c. 140-208) is credited with being the first recorded person to use cannabis as an anesthetic. He reduced the plant to powder and mixed it with wine for...
Polishing vs. Painting vs. Seasoning Your Armor
One thing I inherited from my late father is a small house in Evia, an island off of Athens. When I first visited the place, it had been closed for a couple of years, with no one visiting. What struck me was how rusted everything was, including even nickel faucets and...
Short Time Sales
Many of you write romance that includes scenes that range from explicit to implicit. For you, I have this little nugget I came across the other day on Quora, which you may particularly enjoy if your romance takes place in the 19th century. During the 19th century,...
Why Picture Books Are So Important For Children
I have been quietly working on a pet project, a picture book for toddlers, in collaboration with the very talented Thanasis Psarros. Here is a sneak preview: My experience with the wee one has shown me just how essential picture books are for young readers. They are...