The billionaire plot has been a familiar romance trope for a lot of years. In the usual plot line, the ruthless billionaire falls in love with a decidedly less rich heroine who teaches him that money isn’t everything. In its bare outlines, it’s close to a fairy tale: a poor woman (it’s almost always the […]
I suppose it was inevitable that editing apps would become available eventually. After all, pattern recognition is something computers do very well, and a lot of copyediting comes under the heading of recognizing and, in some cases, changing authorial patterns of language. For example, most of us have words we habitually overuse. Some authors keep […]
In my last post I talked about the trials and pleasures of writing sex scenes in historical romances, and in my introduction I said that all romance novels have sex scenes. Of course, that isn’t actually the case. So consider this post a sort of footnote to the last one. Some romance novels don’t include […]
Now that I’ve got your attention, as they used to say… Romance novels have sex scenes. That’s not a big revelation to those who read and write romance. But some writers have an easier time of it than others. Assuming your hero and heroine are consenting adults, in contemporary romance you can usually work a […]
A couple of years ago, I stopped blogging. At the time, blogging seemed like a lost cause—all the social media gurus were telling us it wasn’t worth the bother. Plus it seemed to take a lot of time. Plus, frankly, I wasn’t sure I had anything to say that anyone wanted to hear. Surely there […]
Hi Readers, I’ve got a winter treat for you. I’m one of the sponsors of the Night Owl Reviews Winter Wonderland Scavenger Hunt. During this event I’m going to help you find some great new books. Make sure to check my featured title out along the way. The grand prize is a $100 Amazon […]
My first paranormal novel, Medium Well, is still one of my favorite writing experiences. The three novels in the Ramos Family trilogy are ghost stories because, well, I’ve always been sort of intrigued by ghosts. Haven’t you? When I was a kid, I devoured every ghost story I could lay my hands on at the […]
Getting a cover is one of the most exciting and nerve-racking parts of the indie publishing process. You have to find an artist, then you have to explain what you want (assuming you know), then you and the artist have to work through a series of rough drafts before you finally arrive at the cover […]
There are two main expenses for self-publishing—covers (about which, more later) and editing. Of the two, beginning writers are more likely to spend on the former than the latter. They’re making a big mistake. I come to this conclusion from a somewhat unique perspective—I was a freelance copy editor myself for several years. At one […]
There are several steps in self-publishing, but there’s a first one that’s absolutely fundamental. Write the book. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by all the other things that are involved in publishing, but without a book you’ve got nowhere to go. Fortunately, in this case I had a completed MS. In fact that MS had […]
