Feb 5, 2020 | Marketing, My friends' Guest Posts
As they grow older, millennials are turning into quite a big market. Who better than Frank Hamilton, a millennial blogger and translator from Manchester, to answer some questions about them? Frank is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital...
Feb 3, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts
Readers of my blog and interviews will know that my sci-fi/fantasy series, Pearseus, is basically Herodotus’ history of Cyrus, King of Persia… in space. It’s easy enough to understand how I came up with the idea, growing up some 20′ from the...
Jan 31, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts, Writing
This is a trick question, obviously, as everyone knows there are actually 13 loaves of bread in a baker’s dozen. So, how did this strange idiom come about? And no, the answer is not that bakers are just terrible at maths. This one, as the Australian...
Jan 29, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts
In my last post, I mentioned the possibility of AI replacing humans in writing. I am pleasantly surprised at the post’s reactions, as they generated some great comments. So, I thought I’d clarify today what my own feelings on the matter are, something I...
Jan 27, 2020 | Writing
You may recall my sci-fi romance, A Heaven For Toasters, taking place some 100 years in the future. Leo, the android protagonist, exhibits some distinctly human characteristics—including the ability to feel human emotions. But could Leo become a writer or poet? The...
Jan 25, 2020 | Publishing, Quora
Of all the learned professions, literature is the most poorly paid. —Dr. Edward Eggleston, 1890 Lately, I have taken to answer publishing-related questions on Quora. Yesterday, I came across someone who asked, What percentage of novelists earn a living wage (i.e....
Jan 23, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts
Dusty Old Thing recently published an article by Rose Heichelbech about The Fierce Female Librarians Who Delivered Books On Horseback During The Great Depression. While everyone’s heard of the Pony Express, this is a rarely-told story. If like me, you’d...
Jan 21, 2020 | Marketing
People often ask me, which social medium should I use for my promos? While everyone suggests you use social media to promote your book, there are also some cons attached to their use. InSync Media, the awesome people I write for, recently published a post listing the...
Jan 19, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts, Writing
I recently came across a great thread in Quora about the usage of the word “yes” in various languages. The thread is concerned with explaining why romance languages use almost the same word for “yes” (si [Spanish, Italian] and sim [Portuguese])...
Jan 17, 2020 | Publishing
I’ve heard from several authors who have stopped using Goodreads over the years. As Camestros Felapton reports, they may have a point, as Goodreads seems to suffer from a chronic troll problem. Matters reached crisis proportions way back in 2012. But recently,...
Jan 15, 2020 | Marketing
Written Word Media (WMD) recently published a must-read article with the top publishing industry trends for the new year, written by Clayton Noblit. I am sharing here a summary that includes their main points. 1. Audiobooks will continue to gain popularity, and more...
Jan 13, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts
Marillion, a singer in Game of Thrones, had his tongue cut out on the orders of King Joffrey for writing and performing a crude limerick about Joffrey’s parents. Thankfully, the real punishment meted out to musicians in the Middle Ages who had offended their...
Jan 11, 2020 | Marketing, My friends' Guest Posts
I haven’t written about Twitter in a while, so I hope you’ll enjoy this post. If you want to read more on the subject, check out this older post, Show, Don’t Tell, on Twitter. Manoj Rupareliya, an Online Marketing Expert and Blogger, has kindly written for...
Jan 9, 2020 | Free Stuff, My Publications
I took advantage of the holidays to finish a new short story. It is inspired by Andy Weir’s short story, The Egg, and combines elements from my sci-fi fantasy series, Pearseus, such as The Waters of Oblivion (also referenced in Pearseus), with some more recent...
Jan 7, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts
I apologize for disappearing for a few days. I took a few days off and went to stay with friends in a small village at the foot of Mount Parnassus. As part of their wonderful hospitality, they took us to visit a Byzantine church; Panagia Skripou. Readers often comment...
Jan 3, 2020 | Marketing
Ronita Mohan recently wrote about some of the social media marketing trends for 2020. I kick off the new year posts with another take on the same subject: how to use social media to promote your books. Being a successful writer means not only having the inspiration to...
Dec 31, 2019 | Entertainment
It’s tradition to take stock of the past year these days. While we need to avoid our species’ innate gloom, for most people I know it has been a seesaw of a year. Politics has rarely seemed more odious. Climate change is becoming a fact we simply have to...
Dec 29, 2019 | Marketing, My friends' Guest Posts
Here’s another post from Ronita Mohan, one of this blog’s favorite guest bloggers. Book marketing is like building on quicksand: just when you think you know what’s what, everything changes. Thankfully, Ronita shares here some tips about the book...
Dec 24, 2019 | Maps and Infographics, Random Musings
This year, the wee one is old enough to understand Santa Claus. I explained that people believe that Santa flies through the world on Christmas Eve, comes through the chimneys, and delivers toys to all the children. Being her mom’s daughter (Electra’s an...
Dec 21, 2019 | Free Stuff, Writing
I mentioned the other day how the first book in my fantasy science fiction series, Pearseus, is now titled Pearseus: Tyranny. I am sharing today the opening chapter. While some authors advise against using a prologue, my advice is different: if you feel the book needs...
