Articles

Articles and opinion pieces written for this site and guest posts for other blogs.

Creating Characters with Bite

Creating Characters with Bite

I’m working on a new series right now, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about hooking readers into a series, it’s that the characters make all the difference. OK, so compelling plots will keep people turning the pages. Great prose will stop them writing one-star reviews criticizing use of commas. And you need a […]

My Top 6 Writing, Publishing and Marketing Posts of 2019

My Top 6 Writing, Publishing and Marketing Posts of 2019

Happy New Year! I hope you had an awesome 2019 for writing and selling books. I had some concrete goals: To publish five books. To sell 10,000 books, ten times more than in 2018. Here’s how I did: I published four full length books and one shorter book. I also published two box sets. I […]

Writing with an injury

Writing with an injury

So this week I was going to post another 20books Vegas update. Failing that, maybe a marketing post. Or something festive. But events have overtaken me. I’ve injured a tendon in my upper right arm. I’m not entirely sure how I did it, but I imagine it was a combination of typing about 120k words […]

20Books Vegas, baby!

20Books Vegas, baby!

It’s a quick update this week as I’m traveling: specifically, I’m on my way home from the 20Books Las Vegas conference, the biggest get together of indie authors in the world. It took place over three days but I decided to spend longer in Vegas because, well, why not? Right now I’m looking out at […]

Why You Need the Perfect Book Blurb – and How to Write it

Why You Need the Perfect Book Blurb – and How to Write it

Welcome back to my occasional series on marketing your book. In this series, I hope to help you find your way through the mass of information on book marketing and find a route through that works for you. I don’t claim to be a book marketing expert, but as someone who’s been doing this for […]