Graphic courtesy of  WriteOpinions.com In case you missed it, there has been a recent controversy over plagiarism that has received international news attention. A story in The Guardian outlines the major points of the issue between American author Courtney Milan and Brazilian author Cristiane Serruya, who was accused of  plagiarism. The books in question are Milan's The Duchess War and Royal Love by Serruya. There were numerous instances of Serruya taking several sentences verbatim from Milan's book, and the following is just one example of what she copied: From The Duchess War - There was a reason they’d kept their conversations to inane niceties up until this point. There was no way to talk about anything else without bitterness. They had no common past to draw on, almost no shared acquaintances. His mother had spent more time visiting Sebastian’s mother—her husband’s sister—than she had lived in Robert’s household as a child. And she’d chosen to do it. He mig...

Once upon a time—it was a dark and stormy night—Elmer Gantry was drunk. The above three beginnings are indelibly written in literary history. The first one has been hugely overused; the second one from Bulwer-Lytton's novel Paul Clifford  was dubbed by Writer's Digest as "the literary poster child for bad story starters"; the third is the opening of Sinclair Lewis' sacrilegious novel  Elmer Gantry , written in 1926 and turned into a film starring Burt Lancaster in 1960. Openings are important because they hook readers, but what follows is equally important because it keeps those readers hooked. Content makes a book enduring (surviving the test of time) or trending (focusing on trends that change from generation to generation and fall out of favor). Many of us have read—or at least heard of—William Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Danielle Stee...

Our theme for May at the Blood-Red Pencil blog is dialogue and all the ways we use it - correctly and incorrectly - in fiction. We'll talk about how to properly punctuate, when to use dialog tags, how to develop character voice, and even how to move your plot with effective dialogue. Here's an example of how to create real action and a sense of urgency through dialogue: Wiki Lt. Eve Dallas is the heroine in J.D. Robb's longstanding In Death series.  At the end of Thankless In Death , she directs her police team for the big sting. The reader knows her methods, her people, and how this scenario will go down, and the dialogue is all about setting the stage and building tension. "That's how it's going to work," she finished. "McNab, eyes and ears, Roarke security, and between you you'll shut down all electronics and power to that unit on my go. Team A - me, Peabody, Officers Carmichael and Prince, main-level door. Team B - Detectives Carmi...

If you’ve been following The Blood Red Pencil blog this month, you know that our theme is men and the romance novel. Leigh Greenwood , aka Harold Lowry, is one of the earliest and most successful male romance novelists to break through the glass ceiling, in reverse, and I’m honored he consented to an interview. Polly : So delighted to have you here, Leigh. I’m going to veer from the usual questions because many of the answers are on your website , but first give us a little history of how you became a romance novelist. Leigh : I guess I’ve always been a romantic. I like happy endings, and I insist that the bad guys get it in the neck or I won’t read your next book. (Tweet) When I was growing up, I used to read romance comic books (yes, they used to have such things) along with Donald Duck and various cowboys. My introduction to romance (though I didn’t realize it at the time) was Georgette Heyer’s These Old Shades . It’s still one of my favorite books and a perfect example of the ...

What makes a striking romance book cover? What does a cover say about the subgenre of romance book? Is it Contemporary, Paranormal, Historical, Romantic Suspense, Regency, Gothic, New Adult, Western, or Fantasy? Oh, and there are subgenres to those categories. Whew! Is your book sweet, funny, or dark? Is it erotic? These are questions every writer should ask when either choosing a designer or creating the cover, especially if s/he is self-publishing. I’ve had three erotic romances published by e-publishers, and I had nothing to say about the cover, though I fortunately liked two out of three of them. The third, not so much. Maybe bestselling authors have more input. I wouldn’t know, not having reached that status. I bought back the rights to Sexual Persuasion and redid the cover. It happened to be a cover I first used for my sexy romantic suspense, Hooked , but too many people thought it was an erotic romance. So I changed Hooked and later used that cover minus the New York scene....

I’ve always had a bit of fondness for stories with witches in them – perhaps I was one in a previous life! My personal interests lie mostly in herbal studies, and I expect most women marked as witches in prior days were nothing more than miscast healers. Such is the case with one of my favorite classic books by Mary Stewart, Thornyhold. During Gilly Ramsey’s lonely childhood, the occasional brief visits of her mother’s cousin were a delight, seeming like visits of a fairy godmother. Years later, when Gilly inherits Thornyhold, her house, she discovers that her cousin, with her still room and herbalist practices—and her undoubted powers—had long been known to the locals as a witch. Another favorite new paranormal collection is the Witchcraft Mystery series by Juliet Blackwell . Set in the modern day and now four books strong, the story begins when Texas witch, Lily Ivory, opens a popular vintage clothing store on the west coast. As one of San Francisco ’s resident...

I’m a nut for Christmas books. Every year, I get my hands on at least a half dozen from authors like Ann Perry who writes a special holiday novella. This year, I quite accidentally ended up with about a dozen Christmas books on my Kindle, from authors I never would have discovered without their free promotions through online newsletters like Pixel of Ink . Here are a few I can’t wait to dig into starting December 1 st when my holiday cheer begins in earnest:   Forever Christmas   Merry’s Christmas: A Love Story One Imperfect Christmas The Secret Christmas Ciphers  A Simple Amish Christmas   Catch That Santa I’ll probably also buy this Nora Roberts holiday book coming out on December 11th. It's a bit pricey for a Kindle book at $6.99, and more than I might ordinarily pay, but this author writes a fine tale. How about you, readers? Do you do any kind of special theme reading for the holidays? Cook...

Why should a company pay you for your writing? In today's tough publishing industry, so tenuously held aloft by shredding economic tethers, this question has never been more relevant. If you are trying to earn money from your writing, you've hopefully given some thought to answering this question. If your answer is "My book is just like Nora Roberts," you're on thin ice— Nora Roberts is already doing that quite well, thank you. What do you have to offer the world? How can you make your writing important enough to sustain you through what may become many lean years? How can you discover your true material, that story that only you can write? The following questions, answered quickly, might lead you in a useful direction. 1. Let’s say you’re going to write a fictional story. Is your main character a man or woman? Why? Humans are intensely interested in this primal question: Is it a boy or a girl? And if it's not clear, or a bit of both? Ooh, even more...