Writer Mentorship Contests

Mentorship Contests are big in the writing community. They’re a great way to find a mentor or an editor to whip your manuscript into shape. Who wouldn’t want that? The chance of winning may be slim, but these contests offer SO MUCH more than winning mentorship! Watch my video to find out how to get…

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The Importance of Peer Review

Unleashing your writing into the world is hard, but necessary! As a writer you need to get feedback because… Others will catch things you can’t Discover how your work is perceived by others Make connections and friends Keep you in the writing mindset What to do with feedback: Take what you think makes sense, but…

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Camp NaNoWriMo

April means #CampNaNoWriMo! Camp Nano is a virtual writing retreat driven by your own writing goals. Watch my video to learn more, and to find out what I did to prep my new novel for the event. I’m going to light a fire and get typing!

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How I Took Advantage of PitMad

The goal of PitMad is to write such an amazing book pitch that literary agents around the globe want to know more about it. They’ll tap/click that little heart, validating your idea is decent, and wait for your query letter and pages to hit their inbox. But… how do you gain the interest of a…

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Iceland Fog

After my gramma’s death, I feel comfort in the fog surrounding my wooden porch. The haze entwines the trees and sinks into the mountains, looking thicker than usual. As my gramma’s stitched quilt sits heavy on my shoulders, I can recall a story she told me. “Don’t be scared, krútt,” she told me one foggy…

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New Year, Embrace You: Conquer Those Resolutions!

It’s the end of a decade, which naturally means the start of a new one. It’s often viewed as a blank slate, like a blank piece of paper waiting for a novel to be put onto it. For us writers, we know how difficult it is to put a new story down on a blank…

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National Novel Writing Month

This year for #NaNoWriMo2019, I chose to write multiple short stories with the goal of honing my writing ability. To do that, I did a few different things: I wrote a short story in first person, when I usually write in third. I’m often times too dialogue heavy, so I wrote two characters who spoke different…

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Submitting My Query Letter

I DID IT. I submitted my query letter for my novel, THE GAME OF SENET. Watch my video to see what steps I took before submitting, along with what I included within the letter and how I’m going to play the waiting game.

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Building an Audience

You’ve done it! You’ve written an amazing novel! …Now what? Well, in a nutshell, you need to get people to read it. When I started doing research on how to get published–and from my experience in marketing–I kept finding the same thing: build an audience. If I build an audience, I’m creating potential readers. Obviously,…

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The Baby Doll Dance

Swimming.  Barbecues.  A giant doll erupting in flames while dancing around in a circle as spectators cheer her on. It’s summer in the small village of Lowellville, Ohio! Each year in the middle of July, Lowellville’s Mt. Carmel Society hosts an Italian festival. In a village of 900 proud Italian residents, this is a big…

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