See that new widget just to the right? No, we don’t really look at the widgets, do we, and for all I know it looks totally different on your device. But my top widget is the graphic for the weekly Saddle Up Saloon feature at Carrot Ranch. If you click on that widget you will be transported to the Saloon archive page at Carrot Ranch. If you follow Charli Mill’s blog, or if you pay close attention around the blogosphere and surrounds, you will have noticed that Mondays are fun days at the ranch and that my Ranch Yarn mainstay characters, Kid and Pal, are running a saloon. Yep. Fiction is funner than facts and that’s the truth. New posts at the break of Monday, or midnight Sunday, your choice, but -ish either way.

The Saddle Up Saloon is a judgment free, pandemic-free zone, so come unmasked…

Hey, SE Readers. Joan with you on this Monday morning in April.

Before we get started, I would like to thank Victoria Ziglar for clearing up the myth of one sense becoming heightened if a person loses another (as I mentioned in my previous post). As someone with personal experience, she pointed out that her hearing wasn’t any better than it was when she lost her sight, but she is better at paying attention to it. Such is the case for most people who lose one of their senses.

This is the fifth in a series on using the five senses in writing. In case you missed the others, here are the links:

• Sight
• Smell
• Taste
• Sound

Today’s topic is the sense of touch. We are always touching something. My fingers are on the keyboard as I type this. Clothes are touching my body. My glasses are perched on my…

Ciao, SEers. Last time it was my turn, I wrote about the first step in writing your masterpiece—idea generation. Some would argue that’s the most important part. Without that initial spark of creativity, wherever it comes from, there’s no story. But is it the most crucial part? That’s hard to say. If the spark can’t be developed past its initial interesting premise, it’s no more than a compelling tidbit. It may eventually inspire something larger or become a scene in a fully fleshed-out work, but on its own, it’s useless. By all means, save it in your inspiration file, but don’t waste your time trying to turn it into something it can never be.

Easier said than done, I know. If you liked it enough to write it down, you won’t want to give up on it. So, how can you tell if it’s worth working on?

Let me…

Hi gang, Craig with you today. This is post number six in the character archetypes series. In the Hero’s Journey, there are some common characters that are likely to show up in all stories. This doesn’t mean each archetype shows up in every story, and aside from the hero, the rest are kind of optional. Almost every story will have an assortment of them.

This series is to introduce you to them. Once you’re aware of them, you can decide if they can benefit the story you’re writing.

Today we have one of the more creative archetypes, and one that’s fun to play around with, The Shapeshifter.

This character is not what he/she seems, either to the other characters, or, in many cases, the reader. They differ from The Trickster in that tricksters are up front and honest about who they are. Shapeshifters, not so much.

This is the femme…

I recently finished reading Grinders, by C.S. Boyack. I always look forward to reading new books by Mr. Boyack and I was not disappointed with this one.

The thing that struck me immediately was the mixture of imagination and possible natural evolution of the developments in both the environment and technology in the future. The book takes place in a future iteration of San Francisco which sees it’s citizens dealing with rising waters that cause them to live beneath the surface in some cases and deal with the effects of rising tides within the city.

The use of the ‘grid’ for the mobility of vehicles is ingenious even describing a sync with handheld devices to warn those absorbed in their cell phones (yes this is predicted to still be a thing in the future) that they are approaching traffic by sending a warning to their screens.

It’s these little touches…

I warned you about it on Friday, and the day is finally here. You can grab your copy of The Yak Guy Project for free today. To quote pop culture, “Free, free, free, free.”

This is my attempt to ease your isolation by offering something fun to read. I suppose you could grab a copy to read this Fall, too, if you want. Anyway, here is a cover and blurb, plus a purchase link.

Imagine waking up in the desert with no idea what happened to you. You have clear memories of situations and places, but a complete loss in personal matters… like your own name. This situation is bad, and you have no idea how to get home.

When you’re rescued by a talking yak, the situation gets exponentially worse. You’ve obviously lost your mind. The immediate needs of a ride off the salt pan and searing heat, along…

Hi again, Everyone! Marcia popping in from the Land of Sunshine. Lately, I’ve been thinking about creativity, specifically, how much of it is inspiration and how much is perspiration–especially as it pertains to those of us who write.

Being a writer is hard work. We devote countless hours to our craft in hopes that the stories we tell will touch the hearts of our readers. Or make them laugh. Or teach them something new.  But what is it that stirs us to create a certain character who looks or acts in a specific way? Or urges us to show our readers exactly what autumn in the Blue Ridge Mountains looks like? And how do we find the inspiration necessary to start our tales, continue the journey with our characters, and arrive at satisfactory–or possibly even happy–endings for our novels? 

Obviously, we are each inspired by many different things, but I’d…

Everyone is self isolating, if not outright quarantined right now. It get’s boring, even for those of us who can work from home.

Add into that, a whole bunch of people who lost their jobs and are trying to file for unemployment right now, and we could all use a break.

Reading is a good way to spend a few hours, and all authors would love to have you check out their wares. I don’t want anyone to accuse me of taking advantage, so I’m going to do a free promotion. Even folks who lost their jobs can take advantage of a freeby.

Don’t freak out on me just yet, because I set it up to run on Monday. This post is just so you can line up ahead of time, while practicing your social distancing skills. I’ll run out another post when it goes live.

I try to have…

Image courtesy of bigstock.com

Hello SErs. Harmony here.  Here is the first part of the seventh installment in the post series dedicated to taking a step-by-step look at how to get your finished manuscript from your computer and on sale on Amazon in both ebook and paperback.

If you’d like to take a look back at the previous posts in this series, please click on the links below:

Outline: https://wp.me/p7OGru-29c

Part 1 (Software for Writing) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29t

Part 2 (General Formatting Necessities) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-29J

Part 3 (Ebook Conversion) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2ah

Part 4 (Paperback Formatting) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2eS

Part 5 (Image Software for Making Book Covers) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gi

Part 6 A (Using Amazon’s Cover Creator Tool for eBook) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2gQ

Part 6 B (Making your own ebook cover to upload to Amazon) : https://wp.me/p7OGru-2hQ

To make it easy to browse back and forth, I’ve set all links to open in new tabs…

Good morning story Empire readers, PH with you today, continuing the series of posts which helps you create marketing material as you develop your book. I call this process dual usage of your meta-comment content (based on your story bible, if you will). Meta-content is basically any content use or create specifically for your book or series. Dual usage means that you’re using the meta-content for both writing your book and writing your marketing, that is, creating both at the same time. If you wish to read previous posts on this subject you can find them here at these links:

Part 1    Part 2    Part 3    Part 4

To elaborate and recap a little of what I’ve written previously, the concept is that you specifically write development material so that it is also marketing materials such as blogs posts, newsletters, reader guides and whatever…