It’s 3:52 on a Sunday afternoon. While I wouldn’t say I’m on vacation, per se, I’m out of town, having traveled for an event. After a rather-too-raucous Saturday evening, I’m hanging out in an Airbnb just minutes away from one of the best beaches in the country. And...
After a certain point in a writing career a curious phenomenon happens. One day you open up your email and see this subject line: Pick Your Brain? Uggghhhhh…what’s an introvert to do? The ask: “Can I pick your brain?” “Pick your brain” requests are...
There used to be two kinds of people: either you hated self-publishing, or you loved it. But as technology evolves alongside the publishing industry, a gray area has emerged. Carrie Rollwagen makes no apologies about being in that gray area. This Birmingham,...
Whether you’re writing a novel, novella, short story or a work of flash fiction, sometimes you need an eye-watering source of evil to spice things up. Something that provokes feelings of disgust, fear, unrest or something that people love to loathe. Usually,...
Settle in for a writing hour! You know what this is, right? An hour for writing, and nothing else. Make the clay, you’ll shape it later! But, due to the perverse nature of our writerly souls, you may want to weenie out of straight-up writing during your self-timed...
Before I became serious about freelance writing, I was freshly out of school and still held the mashup of part-time jobs I’d stitched together to make ends meet work while I “figured things out.” Sure, I was looking for a full-time job, probably as a technical writer,...
“They” always say to write about what you know. And what could you know better than your own hometown? Where you live can become the source of endless inspiration for your writing, from the quirky characters you see every day to the restaurants you frequent. You don’t...
This month we’re going to look at how authors can mobilize their email subscribers to sell books. But first things first: I’ve got my sales report for the first quarter of 2017. I sold 60 copies of my books between January and March — 45 of my debut novel and 15...
Press releases are a simple way to get your brand, your product — or in this case, your book — out into the world. A press release is a piece of public relations content that announces something newsworthy about a person, corporation or product. Press...
If you’re anything like me, you’ve dreamed of being an author since you were young. As a kid, I scribbled books on construction paper, and as an adult, I took writing classes, joined writers groups and filled notebook after notebook with story ideas. Then, this year,...
