How to write Military and Science Fiction novels: My Learnings

#1 — It’s not every day that your book is a #1 bestseller

Just a short note to say that I’m celebrating! My book has made it to #1 in its category in the UK. Sweet! If you want to see how it’s doing on the UK site at the moment, click here.

No, I’m not selling thousands of books a day. And, no, this is not a huge category. But it is still pretty exciting.

In the US, my book has made it to #6 and #9 in two different categories. And it has made it to #1 in France, #2 in Australia, #2 in Canada and #9 in Brazil. And it has cracked the top 100 of several more lists. All that is exciting, but a #1 spot is special and not something I’ll ever forget.

Thank you to everyone who bought a copy. 🙂

3D Book Cover Maker — Fast and Free

3D book cover, 3d book cover maker, 3d book cover generator, 3D bookcover, sci fi book cover, science fiction book cover, book cover design, book covers design, ebook cover design — Example of a 3D book cover I created for free in about three minutes. This is not the actual cover of my upcoming novel…just a working example for this blog.

I stumbled on a powerful and simple way to make a 3D book cover for free. Several sites offer book cover makers, but they all seem to either want your email address, have poor resolution or offer only a few predefined views from which you must pick. I found one that with a little bit of “post production” work on your part will leave you with a very nice ebook cover or paperback book cover, much as you see above and in my sidebar. Now you can do your own book cover design, and see it in 3D. Let me show you how it’s done.

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Writing a book? Know when to share your novel manuscript

Most young writers (of all ages) share their manuscript much too often and much too early in the hopes of getting constructive feedback on their work in progress. For instance, I see a lot of writers share their work after just a first or second draft. Some share “Chapter 1” of a novel, even though chapter 1 is all they have written. Even if such drafts are free of spelling and grammatical errors, sharing a draft so early is a mistake.

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How to successfully submit your work in a fiction writing workshop

Are you writing a story (or writing a novel) to be critiqued? If you are participating in a writing group — be it a fiction writing workshop, a fiction class in school, a writing studio, or a writing seminar — there are a few, simple things you can do to help make sure your work is well received. I bring this up because I often see writers do things which predisposes their critique group to dislike their work or avoid it almost immediately. The good news is these are really easy things to do.

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Keeping my promise: Donating another $500 to help our Veterans

Sales of my novella of been good. The story is about young men in combat during the Vietnam War, and how they live with themselves and each other years later. As I promised, I am donating half of what I collect from sales to organizations that help our veterans.

With a match from my employer, today I’ve been able to donate another $500. Last time I donated $150 to the Wounded Warrior Project. This time I have donated to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Foundation.

I have now donated a total of $650.

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A Goodreads Group’s “Reviews Initiative”: How Indies can get legitimate reviews

There is no understating how important it is to get reviews to help ramp sales of your new book. And I’ve previously written about how to get great reviews from some of Amazon’s top reviewers. But I’ve just discovered this: There is a group on Goodreads that is helping authors get thoughtful reviews posted to three sites (Goodreads, Amazon US and Amazon UK) from readers they don’t know. It’s a great and simple system. How much does it cost? No money involved. You just have to pay it forward and review a book from someone else. And there is no limit; you can get as many reviews as you can give.

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Targeted Marketing for authors: Be precise or go home

In a recent blog, Neil Patel shared an article titled: “Modern Online Marketing Education: 18 Courses and Resources”. There are only a few blogs I follow closely, and Neil’s is one of them. I know of no one who provides so much value so clearly. In his most recent post, his intent is clear given the title. Too many writers don’t understand that their success has as much to do about marketing as it does about writing well. That is why most books published on Amazon never sell more than 20 copies. Writing blogs can help you write better, but you have to know who you are targeting to sell.

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Hemingway Editor + Grammarly App = Nirvana (almost)

Writers always need help with editing, so this is pretty damn cool: Two of my favorite tools are now working together for free. The Hemingway App has always been free, and Grammarly has a free version. But now, with the Grammarly Chrome extension, not only can you use both of them, you can use both of them together. It’s not the same as having a human editor, but if you are trying to figure out how to write a book, this combination can be a big help. Let me explain…

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Review: Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story

I believe we live in a universe governed by laws of causes and effects even though we don’t yet fully understand all the causes and all the effects. When it comes to art, in particular, it is immensely difficult to know what cause will result in which effect. So it is tremendously difficult in the realm of words to know which sentence, which metaphor, which plot device will resonate with a majority of your targeted genre’s readers and turn a bunch of words into a great story. Though we don’t know these things with precision, I do believe that there are quantifiable causes and effects in play.

Wired for Story is Lisa Cron’s assertion that we do in fact have (some) science in the realm of writing that enables us to understand the causes and effects of good storytelling.

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