Book Review – The Silver Crystal

Title: The Silver Crystal Author: Ryan Lanz Blurb: One day is all it takes… As a bounty hunter, Rhael chases down the Corrupted, people with unnatural abilities too powerful for the rest of society—something he learned firsthand when they killed his father years ago. But when Rhael and his crew are ambushed by the very …

Book Review – Riven Calyx

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted (or done book reviews), but I’m going to try to get back to them here. (Full disclosure—I did work on this project as a book coach, but I’m going to apply the same rubric I always use for reviews to see how it stacks up against others …

Why You Need Realistic Writing Expectations

As you gear up for a new year of writing, it's important to set expectations and goals. Just "hoping to write a novel this year" probably won't result in a lot of work, so how will you approach it? A certain number of pages a day? A goal of a chapter a week? A month? …

What Do You Hope to Do This Year?

I'm not sure new year resolutions are the best option, but starting another "journey 'round the sun" is a great time to think about what you did last year and what you'd like to accomplish this year. For me, it's been far too long since I've posted, so that's one of my goals this year—blogging …

5 Things Your Readers Need From You

When you're first starting a story, there's a lot to think about—your characters, plot, and world-building, to say nothing of critical questions like what to name your character's pet dog. But there are five things you need to include in the opening scenes of your book to help your readers. Characters. This may sound obvious, but …

An Update on All Things Writing

It's hard to believe, but I haven't written a blog post all year. So I thought I'd write about what I've been up to. Book Coaching and Editing In the last ten months, I've worked on five novels—offering coaching feedback and editing. It's been a rich, busy time, full of amazing characters and worlds. Writing …

Commercial Fiction vs. Literary Fiction—Which Do You Write and How to Tell the Difference?

As soon as you sit down to market your work, you need to know what it is that you've written. You may have some idea from comparing your work to other people, but it helps to know what you've written from your writing itself, as just "having romance" in your story doesn't make it a …

Why Your Book Needs Beta Readers

Nowadays, you can go from "I've got a great idea" to "PUBLISHED" without involving anyone besides yourself. You can do your own editing and proofreading, formatting, cover design, and blurb writing (I'm not saying you should, but it can be done). Now, we've talked about the need for good cover design, and we discussed what …

When Just Showing Isn’t Enough

As writers, we're told that we should "Show, Not Tell" all the time, and it's advice that is usually quite helpful. When possible, we need to let a scene unfold before the readers, to where they get to see what happens and to experience the details just as the characters do. But there are times …

Unpacking Characters That Aren’t Like You

Sometimes when we write, our main characters aren't all that unfamiliar. They may not be "us" exactly, but they might be fictional versions of ourselves—the people we'd like to be, sharing part of our own psychological makeup. This one might have our sense of adventure, that one our fondness for cooking, while another has our …