How is a writer who’s struggling to complete a manuscript, probably juggling a full-time job with personal commitments, supposed to do all the work involved with social media? Your publishers, agents will tell you to use social media. Folks like me will all tell you to have a social media program. Yet another buzz word! What’s a writer to do? […]
When many writers talk about social media, they mention all the obvious platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. They’ll also talk about all the issues that they have with these. Manual reposts across platforms, not enough time to work on all of them, and having to jump from one to the other to do anything as just a few
My new mystery, Below the Fold, talks about the media’s obsession with covering murder cases filled with lots of sex – like Jodi Arias, Amanda Knox, Scott Peterson, Pamela Smart and right back to O.J. and Nicole. The book is set in a TV newsroom, and I spent many years as a journalist working in newspaper and television newsrooms. So
It’s easier than ever to track down movies. As a kid, I’d lurk in video rental stores checking out the box cover art, trying to decide which one to spend my allowance on. It wasn’t an easy choice. The rental places were predatory. They charged outrageous fees if you returned a movie late, or didn’t rewind. God help you if
This is #2 in a series, beginning with Is The Publishing Industry Dying? about how to cope as an author in the new world of media. As a writer, you hear it all the time from everyone, “You have to be on social media!” You may be asking yourself why and wondering if this is all just a fad and if
Recently, the Authors Guild published its 2018 Author Income Survey and its findings are ugly. Median writers’ income has fallen 49% from 2009 to a measly $6,080. It gets worse. Income derived solely from books has fallen 21% to $3,100. The survey points out that full time writers are earning additional income from teaching and speaking. But this only gets their median annual
Seduction has never been my thing. Not in the real world, in terms of enticing a romantic partner to my boudoir. (Does anyone even have a boudoir these days?) If you’ve seen the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, think about the scene where Kathy Bates imagines answering the door in cling wrap. That would be me on a good day. But
For any aspiring novelists out there, how many books do you have on how to write a novel? At least a dozen are sitting on my shelf, with a handful more taking up space on my Kindle – all mocking me. I probably subscribe to the same magazines that you do, and I’ve read many of the same articles that
I spent this past weekend at Creatures, Crimes and Creativity, a genre fiction con in Columbia, Md. Mystery and thriller writers are always well represented. If you were there, you might have attended a workshop on how to write action in thrillers from guest of honor Jamie Freveletti (shown at left, with author, publisher, and conference organizer Austin Camacho). You
“Geez. How can you write a whole book?” I get asked that a lot. Most people see a book as an extended homework assignment or some written report to humanity that has to be done before they take the dirt nap. It’s always presented, from those people who ask, as an obligation—as some onerous task that one has to suffer
