Ask Yourself These Five Questions As a writer, I have had my share of rejections. It goes with the territory. Hopefully, it doesn’t defeat you and you continue to get out there with your work and keep submitting potential freelance clients, publishing houses, agents, and contests. Of course, we all…

I found the perfect antidote to writer burnout We’ve all learned how certain practices support others. Such a taking a walk can help us work out a problem or vacuuming the carpet encourages the resolution for a dilemma. For me it is hard labor of picking fruit and canning that…

Tips On How to Grow Your Business Faster and Maintain Momentum For new companies that want to ramp up quickly, the “go to” approach for fast growth is “growth hacking.” Growth hacking is a method for start-ups to reach larger audiences in a short amount of time. …

Writing is about inhabiting an entire world and everything we experience When we walk through life in the real world, there are things around us we don’t necessarily notice. We just absorb the sight and smells that make up our reality. However, in order to bring your book and the…

How Much Is Too Much? — What is “backstory?” — The backstory helps fill in gaps in your story. It’s like a piece of the novel that tells the reader what came before the current events. To narrow it down, be careful when telling backstory to show it. It should always be relevant to the current…

Third of a three-part series is about the woman who attempted to assassinate the president of the United States. Part 3. — In creating my approach to research Sara Jane, I began with my secondary research. I looked up everything that was written about her and her assassination attempt. There was a lot about her when she shot at Ford, but very little about her life and her growing up in West…

The second of a three-part series is about the woman who attempted to assassinate the president of the United States. Prologue Part 2 — Her letters to me were all very similar: perfectly printed, grammatically flawless, and excruciatingly detailed. They usually began with a “Thank you for . . .” and she always remembered to ask about my son and to highlight the similarities in our lives. No challenges, no questions, just polite and…

The first of a three-part series about the woman who attempted to assassinate the president of the United States-Part one — In September 1975, when I saw the photos of Sara Jane Moore being driven off to jail after her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford, like so many others, I found the idea that this snub-nosed, apple-cheeked, middle-class mom had fired a weapon at the president almost…

Your work is not over — Wow. You now have a published book. Whether self-published or commercially published, you still have a big part of the marketing work. Your work is not over. I always call this process getting visibility. With a gazillion books getting published every week, how do you get noticed? The competition is…