Monday, January 31, 2011

Amanda Hocking - Over Half a Million Books Sold!

No, seriously. She has just posted about it over here on her blog.

I'm sure that there will be people who claim she is lying. I'm sure there will be people who start trying to knock her down, because she's being "too successful" (there are always sad individuals who can't be happy about someone else being successful). But in every interaction I've seen Amanda involved with she has always been a pleasant, classy person. She deserves every success she has had so far, and I wish her all the

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Sunday, January 30, 2011

#ROW80 Week 4 - Six of one, half a dozen of the other

So, this is the end of week 4. It's hard to believe that it's been four weeks since the whole process started.

This week has been mostly positive. So without further ado:

Write 2,500+ words on my WIP – Not done - I stopped writing this week and deliberately spent most of the time working on a precise outline, figuring out every scene I was going to have between where I currently am and the end of the book. I restarted writing today, and already things seem a bit easier. I'm going to

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Saturday, January 29, 2011

Guest Post: Excuses Excuses Excuses

Today's guest post is from Tammie Clarke Gibbs. Tammie is the author of the time travel romance novel Island of Secrets. Her article talks about a problem every beginning author faces - the ease of finding excuses for why we aren't achieving what we want to achieve. I'll let Tammie describe what she means herself.

I believe that sometimes we (authors) are our own worst enemies.

To become a specialist in any occupation a certain amount of time, effort and investment is expected. Yet, as

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Thursday, January 27, 2011

What We Are Creating

Over on the Superstars Writing Seminar web site, there is an extremely moving audio from Tracy Hickman about what we are doing as authors when we write our stories. I urge you to listen to it (it's around 10 minutes

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Monday, January 24, 2011

#ROW80 Week 3 - Altering Course

Another week gone, in what seems like the blink of an eye! This week was an interesting one for me. I had been on holidays the last few weeks, but alas it was back to work this week. It wasn't something that I'd really thought about too much when setting my ROW80 goals (since I had finished NaNoWriMo fine while working), but it's been pretty obvious this week that with everything I want to achieve, I'm going to need to make a change to one of the goals!

Not surprisingly, the goal I'm going

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Monday, January 17, 2011

Book Review: Decisions by R. Doug Wicker

NOTE: I do not accept books for review. Reviews posted here are only for indie books that I have bought, and enjoyed enough to tell others about them.

I'm a big fan of murder mystery stories, but for some reason I've never read a lot of them. I'm not entirely sure why that is - I guess I tend to lean toward sci-fi, fantasy and urban fantasy as my first reading preference, which leaves little time to read other genres. But I saw a brief description about Decisions on the KindleBoards (the

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Sunday, January 16, 2011

#ROW80 Week 2 - Stormy Weather

Unlike week 1, this week hasn't been too good as far as meeting my ROW80 goals is concerned. I think it's too early to panic and change my goals, but I will be keeping a close eye on how I go the next two weeks.

So, how did I do?

Average 1,000 words a day on my WIP – not at all. To be honest, my average for the week was just under 500 words a day. Looking to improve this week!
Write one drabble a day – done.
One ~5k short story a month – I've added a few more words to the

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Saturday, January 15, 2011

Author Interview: Keith C. Blackmore

Todays post is an interview with Keith C. Blackmore. Keith writes in the horror and epic fantasy genres, two genres that I enjoy reading. You can read more about the books Keith has written at www.keithcblackmore.com.

1. What are your influences and sources of inspiration?
I was an avid reader of comic books and later got into trade paperbacks. I read a lot of different stuff, from action adventure to horror, SF to fantasy. The first novel I read was Conan by Robert E Howard, and a

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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Guest Post: Six Fantasy Cliches To Avoid

Todays post is a guest article by William Meikle. William is currently holding a blog tour across many author/writing blogs, and is running a contest to help gain interest. Anyone who comments on this blog post will be entered into a draw to win a Kindle loaded with all of William's books. So get commenting! :)
Six Fantasy Cliches To Avoid
Fantasy fiction is doing good business at the moment, but there are certain situations that have been overplayed. So much so, that they have become genre

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Book Review: Dark and Darker by Ryne Douglas Pearson

NOTE: I do not accept books for review. Reviews posted here are only for indie books that I have bought, and that I enjoyed enough to tell others about them.

I can't remember how I initially stumbled across Ryne Douglas Pearson's books - I think it might have been a link to his web site on the Kindle Boards. Anyway, while looking at the list of books he had written on his site I saw Dark and Darker. I've become interested in short stories lately (since I'm writing a few myself :) ), and

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Sunday, January 09, 2011

#ROW80 Week 1 - Clear Days

Ok, so officially we're supposed to check in for ROW80 on Wednesdays and Sundays. I'm not a "check in twice a week" person, so I'm just going to be doing the Sunday updates :)

So how has week 1 of ROW80 gone? Very well so far! Obviously we're only at the start, but looking at my goals for the challenge...

Average 1,000 words a day on my WIP - done for the first five days this week (I work out the average for the week on Fridays, since I don't write a lot on the weekend). I was worried I

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Sunday, January 02, 2011

Indie Author Sales in December

Over on the Kindle Boards indie authors are once again giving details on their sales for December, and once again I'm compiling them all into a single list.

It's fascinating seeing the difference between November and December. Authors on the Kindle Boards were saying that they were seeing good sales for December as the month progressed, and the final results definitely show that.

In November, after the authors who had less than 30 sales for the month, the largest group was authors who got

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