Liana Brooks – Page 11

Articles posted by Liana Brooks (Page 11)

MONDAYS IN PUBLISHING – How To Write A Query Letter (the updated version)

QUERY(n) – the letter a hopeful author sends to an agent or editor with the express wish of getting the manuscript off their desk and onto someone else’s publication schedule. The query is an essential part of the publication process even for Indie Authors, it’s also one of the more misunderstood…

Writing Is Hard

Writing is hard. Publishing is harder. There’s a bell curve. The weakest get weeded out early on. They talk about wanting to write, and the book they’ve always imagined, but never actually sit down to write. On the top end you lose the truly gifted. The delicate orchids of writer-dom…

Writer Craft Wednesday – Draft by Draft: How Books Get Written

One of the first lessons a novelist learns is that writing a book is not like writing an essay in school. The dynamics are different. The time factors are different. The end results are different. The drafts are different. With an essay it’s common to finish a full draft of…

Mondays In Publishing – Setting Goals for Publication – What You Can Control & What You Can’t

It’s that time of year again! You know, the season of setting goals, making resolutions, and generally convincing yourself that this year will be different through the sheer force of your holiday-fueled determination. Everyone finds it easy to make goals when there’s a ton of enthusiasm and peer support for…

Mondays In Publishing: A Glossary of Publishing Terms

Author, novelist, writer… What’s the difference? Spelling, for the most part. I’ve never found a satisfactory definition to differentiate, although I tend to think of writers as non-fiction news people (a bias left over from my newspaper days). The real difference is between an Author and a Published/Contracted Author. When…

Writer Craft Wednesday – Deadlines and What To Do With A Very Long Book

I often say I’m a slow writer. My editor disagrees. It’s not that I write slowly, it’s that I write long. Really, really, REALLY long. In romance it isn’t uncommon to see a novel that’s 40,000 – 60,000 words long, especially over on the indie ebook side. Romance readers are…

Mondays In Publishing – Genre

GENRE It’s a scary word for some people. I’ve met people who will argue genre until they are blue in the face. I have met people who think genre is a form of gate-keeping. I have met people who think genre is a waste of time. I have never met…

Writer Craft Wednesday – Finding A Story You Can’t Wait To Write

Finding an idea is both the easiest and hardest part of writing. You want to find something that you’ll love enough to write on the bad days. There’s not BUT there. No AND. When you’re coming up with an idea you don’t need to worry about marketability and trends. “But,…

Mondays In Publishing – Seasons In Publishing

Meteorological Winter begins December 1st for the northern hemisphere (as opposed to astronomical winter that begins with the winter solstice). Just like the sky and weather Publishing has its own seasons. Seasons of feast and famine. Seasons to query and seasons to edit. Seasons to publish and seasons to sit…

How Stories Happen

Anyone who has publicly admitted to writing a book has heard the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” And, because we have a certain reluctance to admitting we pull full manuscripts from a cursed well in the forest under the light of a new moon, authors will often stumble…