How I first got published, part 3 – The Query

How I first got published, part 3 – The Query

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Yesterday I talked about the process by which Jim and I began writing A Year of Hitchcock: 52 Weeks with the Master of Suspense. Week in and week out we were either in front of the TV watching Hitchcock's work or, more often than not, in front of our keyboards writing, revising, and writing some more. It was midway…
How I first got published, part 2 – Ideas and Execution

How I first got published, part 2 – Ideas and Execution

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! So as I mentioned in the first part of this series, ideas are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively worthless. In some ways they are the least significant piece of the puzzle. After all, creative people – and I assume that if you’re reading this you’re probably a creative person – usually have far more ideas than they…
How I first got published, part 1 – Introduction

How I first got published, part 1 – Introduction

Posted inWriting
The following is an encore from 2009, presented here in the hopes that the info will be helpful for aspiring authors. I've authored or coauthored five books since, and self-published another four, and most of this still applies. So enjoy. Hope it helps! Chances are, if you like to write you’d also like to be read. While you can throw things onto the Internet and be read instantly, it’s not quite the same thing as a publisher saying, “I like your work. I’d like to invest our time and money into it. I’d like to publish your book.” Because let’s be honest…
Forget Paperbacks: Why Writing Is Going Digital

Forget Paperbacks: Why Writing Is Going Digital

Posted inBooks & Authors, Writing
Contributed Post We keep hearing the phrase “digital economy” but what does it mean for writers? Quite a lot, actually. It turns out that we writers are in for a bit of a boom. Far from being replaced, writing has gone from strength to strength as computers have taken over the world, and for reasons that nobody in the writing field ever really expected. Pexels The cool thing for writers is that a lot of opportunities in the digital world actually provide better pay and prospects than writing careers that existed before the internet changed everything. Here are some writing…
Write Your Own Cheques

Write Your Own Cheques

Posted inContributed Posts, Writing
Contributed Post Image source A lot of people simply stumble into jobs. They go to school, get a degree and they take the first job offer to come their way without giving this career choice a second thought. That doesn’t happen with writers. You don’t fall into writing; writing pulls you in. Sometimes that can be in your 40s or later, however, sometimes people are lucky enough to know they are writers from a young age and go to school to study some form of it. But leaving school with a writing degree doesn’t mean you will become the next…