Articles by A Guest Author

Setting the Scene for Your Story

By Emily-Jane Hills Orford Setting the scene is a vital part of bringing a story alive. Why? Quite simply put, it’s a matter of setting the stage and inviting the reader along to feel and experience what the characters are experiencing. Here’s a simple example of a setting: She must have made a wrong turn…
Issue Five Hundred Sixty

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try A Little Less Sex

By Lisa Kusel I wrote the first draft of “Love Lies Here,” my fourth novel, in a six-week burst of inspiration. My then-agent had just submitted my memoir about my family’s disastrous move to Bali to a slew of publishers and I needed something to distract me from that tortuous “now we wait and see…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Nine

So you want to run a Micropress (or just want to know what it’s like?)

By Elizabeth Davis So for whatever reason you have taken leave of common sense and sanity and decided that being an author was not enough. You want to run your own micropress. First, what is a micropress? Well, take a small press and then squish it down, to about two people running a business in…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Eight

Ten Reasons to Write Short Stories

By Simon Kewin For most authors, writing a novel – or many novels – is the ultimate aim of a writing career. It’s fair to say that most people read only novels and it’s certainly true that most publishing houses and agents are interested only in novel manuscripts – although there are exceptions. By and…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Seven

12 Ways Authors Can Use Instagram Reels to Increase Engagement

By Ishitta Nigam Picture this. You enter a café for your morning cup of coffee. There’s a queue, and you are patient enough, but your stomach grumbles in disagreement. You finally reach the counter and begin to recite your order, “Hi, I would like to have a cappuccino and a…” “…a croissant du beurre with…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Six Special Feature

Writing For Solace

By Ruth Wilson Writers write for a variety of reasons – as a creative endeavor, to clarify or share an idea, as a source of income, to respond to a muse, to play with words, etc. I sometimes write for solace. Journals I’ve kept for over 30 years include entries about sadness, anxiety, disappointments, and…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Five

Ramping Up My Short Story Success

By Deb Stark My first publication credit was a poem in my high school yearbook. Only eight lines, it was a bittersweet tale about my teddy bear and the angst of aging. The poem was placed on the inside corner of a left-hand page and may have been selected more because of its size than…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Four

Case Study: How Parental Death – The Ultimate Teen Guide Got Published

By Michelle Shreeve In 1993, I was nine years old and my mother died. There were hardly any books pertaining to the death of a mother to serve as a reference guide for me as a child to try and navigate my difficult loss. I had to try and navigate the death of my mother…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Three Special Feature

5 Ways to Promote Yourself as an Independently Published Author

By Audrey Wilson Writing a novel in itself is a huge accomplishment. That feeling you get when you write those two precious words, “The End” is truly priceless. You think nothing can beat it. Then months, or more likely years, down the road, your book is published. You’re holding that first published copy in your…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Two

How to Tighten Your Midpoint Twist

By Ley Taylor Johnson Now that you’ve reached the middle of your story, it’s time to kick up the tension with a good old-fashioned plot twist. The midpoint is a great place to up the stakes of your story, giving your protagonist new paths to explore and new challenges to overcome, all while building up…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Two

Is an Unpublishable Book Worth Writing?

By Lory Widmer Hess Why write a book that can’t be published? My own first book, a memoir that I wrote in the aftermath of my father’s death, was one of these. I’d never completed a full-length manuscript, only fragments and false starts, until then. But somehow, during this time of loss and grieving, I…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Two

The Other Side of the Desk: Becky Tuch

This new series of articles is different from anything we’ve ever published before. Most of what we have previously published focused on the perspective of submitting writers and published authors with the occasional article from an editor’s perspective sprinkled in. This series of articles, which are formatted interview style, will focus on the perspective of…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty One The Other Side of the Desk

The Innocent Loss of First Rights

By Craig Westmore You only get one chance to make a first impression and that applies to fiction as well. Writers need to choose carefully where their fiction first appears. Whether you are seeking feedback or posting for family and friends, uploading your story to the internet can cause difficulty when trying to get it…
Issue Five Hundred Fifty One

The 5 Dos and Don’ts of Self-Promotion for Authors

By Ellie Matama Writing a book is an accomplishment because it takes a lot out of you. By the time you finish, you will have invested a lot of effort and time. But completing your book is only the beginning of the struggle because books don’t sell themselves. Below are some basics of self-promotion. 1. …
Issue Five Hundred Fifty Special Feature

Scary Things for Writers to Do to Challenge Themselves

By Ratika Deshpande In my psychology classes in school, I learned that you overcome your fears not by avoiding them but by facing them. So, as a young, ambitious writer, I started doing the things I was afraid of doing, such as submitting my work to a magazine I really admired. I don’t know if…
Issue Five Hundred Forty Nine

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