» A Guest Author

Navigating Your Protagonist’s Emotional Journey

By Ley Taylor Johnson Character arcs are tough. There’s no way around it—despite being one of the primary drivers of the story, dealing with your protagonist’s emotions and weaving them into the plot is hard to do. You don’t want their feelings overwhelming the plot and making it seem melodramatic, but you also don’t want…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Five Special Feature

How My Novel Was Resurrected From the Dead

By Thomas Smith My novel, Something Stirs, was one of the first haunted house novels written for the Christian market. Maybe even the first. And as such, the publisher that acquired it had big plans for the launch and subsequent marketing of the novel. In fact, previously a non-fiction publisher, mine was to be the…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Four Special Feature

Writing About Food: Great Recipes Make Great Stories

By Emily-Jane Hills Orford Food is a big part of our lives, so it stands to reason that food should, and does, appear in written works. It doesn’t have to be just a mere mention of some special ribs shared in a dinner scene in your murder mystery. Food can be incorporated into the act…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Three Special Feature

How a “Haiku Diary” Can Help Your Writing

By Ellen Levitt Wordsmiths may chafe at writing routines, but many of us embrace (or at least face) routines and rigor, in our quest to improve our work and meet deadlines. The advice to “write everyday” or “make regular writing a habit” is pervasive and for good reasons. There’s even an app for writing every…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty Two

9 Things I’ve Learned from 121 Rejections

Isha Jain When I started submitting to publications, my work was published thrice. I was only submitting to a few publications while studying, and I didn’t bother researching the market for more opportunities. Last year, I took it seriously and started tracking all my submissions in an Excel file. I have to say, it is…

Issue Five Hundred Sixty One

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

Articles by A Guest Author