May 13, 2016 | Entertainment, Writing
According to a meme that’s been going around, the Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its annual neologisms contests, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. Seeing how much you all enjoyed my post...
May 11, 2016 | Entertainment, Writing
The Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year 2015 is… That’s right – for the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year is a pictograph: ?, officially called the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji, though you may know it by other names. There were...
Apr 29, 2016 | Interviews Features and Reviews, Writing
I couldn’t have a pay-it-forward series without mentioning the Logsdon family. Lorelei Logsdon is an amazing editor, who has edited all of my books. Her husband, John, is a best-selling author who has helped me immensely with my marketing. And their son, Jake,...
Apr 19, 2016 | Publishing, Writing
In a fascinating study shared by The Reading Room, men were found to be quicker to judge a book they’re reading than women are. The study was performed by Jellybooks, who used a bit of JavaScript in eBooks that measured reading habits of volunteers. By breaking down...
Apr 13, 2016 | My Publications, Writing
Once again, my friends, I need your help. I have been working on a non-fiction book that explains how to use beats to show emotion in your writing. What are beats, you ask? They are short descriptions and actions that pepper a dialogue, indicating what a character...
Mar 28, 2016 | Maps and Infographics, Writing
When working on Pearseus, I decided to include a map. In fact, I ended up drawing at least three versions, then buying Cartographer and doing another three versions there. Then, I realized a lot of people hate maps in books. A recent post by A.J. O’Conell of...
Feb 13, 2016 | Blog hops tours & reblogs, Writing
Lucy, my lovely blonde blogger/writer friend, recently had a guest post by Rachael Ritchey, on the subject of writing the perfect headline for your posts. It mentioned the Headline Analyzer; a free tool by CoSchedule that checks your title using a number of criteria,...
Jan 6, 2016 | Entertainment, Fun Historical Facts, Writing
Continuing the three-part special on birds that started with A 400-Year-Old Book Made Entirely of Feathers, here is a post that deals with a truly thorny issue: You’ve just spotted a bunch of birds. Excited, you rush to tell your friends. Which is great, until you try...
Dec 29, 2015 | Entertainment, Writing
I was reading the other day on Gizmodo a fascinating post about a bunch of computer scientists who have trained artificial intelligence using human knowledge of the, uh, carnal variety. Specifically, they used 14 million passages of romance novels to create little...
