What marvelous fiction are you reading to help you get through the world pandemic?

Next to running in the park with my two best friends, spending time at the small library on the corner of my street was my favorite thing to do in the summer when I was growing up. My girlfriends and I would go there almost every other day to get a pile of books to read at some comfortable place, often a park about a mile away. We were into bike riding, too. Fast-forward a lot of years to when I started my writing career as a journalist. Then I wasn’t just going to the library to get books to read for myself or for my kids. This was a time when I relied heavily on libraries, and the wonderful reference librarians, to help me when I needed facts and figures for articles and my nonfiction books. (Kudos to the librarians at the Plano Public Library. They saved my bacon more than once.) During that time I wrote nine books for  Rosen Publishing that included Coping With Weapons and Violence in School and on your Streets, and the librarians proved invaluable in steering me towar...

Dover Books has been reissuing facsimile editions of literary classics since 1941. During March, for Women's History Month, they feature the many feminist authors in their collection. You'll probably remember some of these titles from your college literature classes. Here are some of my favorites from their Dover Thrift Collection, most of them priced for $5 or less and also available in ebook format. Buy Link Buy Link Buy Link Buy Link Other titles you will find are: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman  by Mary Wollstonecraft Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Women's Bible by Elizabeth Cady Stanton The Vagabond by Collette Woman in the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Fuller A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers And plenty of Jane Austen - I confess I haven't been a fan, but intend to change that! There must be a reason she is so popular to modern readers. I str...

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Most authors hate the idea of Blatant Self Promotion (BSP) of their novels, but it's an increasingly important part of publishing success, for indie as well as legacy-published authors. To help, simply stop and breathe on a regular basis. Here's a yoga video that can help you: https://youtu.be/N9jmO6xwFfs

I’m on Facebook. A lot, perhaps too much on days I choose to procrastinate. I am careful who I friend, but my profile is public. Anyone can read my posts and comment on them. I keep controversy to a minimum, though I do love this planet and its inhabitants and wish I could save them both. I read through posts on my stream as I sip morning tea, opening up articles I want to read on new tabs. I connect mostly with other writers, book lovers, favorite publications, writing related FB groups, a few television shows, organizations I have an interest in, and George Takei who can always be counted on for a good laugh. Facebook is useful that way: my own personalized morning magazine. I share my blog posts, all Blood Red Pencil posts, and other blog posts I find informative. Many times these posts go without likes or shares. I have no idea if anyone has viewed them. I admit my page is where forwarding schemes and chain letters go to die. I don’t want to know about your pretend...

Coming up with a good title is not easy. Ideally, it will attract potential readers, suggesting what kind of book it is and what makes it different from (and better than) other books of that kind. Good luck. My two absolute worst titles are my first Regency, Toblethorpe Manor , and my first mystery, Death at Wentwater Court , both utterly unmemorable. For the first, I have the excuse of inexperience. For the second: I had to come up with it quickly. My plan for the mystery series was to call the books Death in January, Death in February, etc., so that after sweating over numerous Regency titles, I wouldn't have to think up another title ever again. Each murder would be closely connected with the month. The first, for instance, involves a body in a frozen lake. That notion was swatted down by my editor (though I can't complain, as he bought the book), because the publisher had recently put out a month by month anthology. Just as well, in the end, as I'm n...

Writers search for the ‘right’ names for the people who populate their books (or, they should!). There are many resources available for finding everyday names, of course. At the foot of this post you’ll find a suggested list; but wait a moment before you drop down there. Why? Because here I want to invite you to consider the naming of characters living in invented worlds. Fantasy, of whatever sub-genre, generally requires names that aren’t in common use. Read any epic fantasy and you’ll find it brimming with constructed names, some memorable and others that ought never to have been forced onto the reading public. In fantasy, perhaps more than any other genre, it’s essential to invent names that don’t appear in other books, otherwise readers may associate your masterpiece with the work of another author. But, how to do it? How do you ‘invent’ names? For me, the most important aspect is the ‘mood’ or ‘feel’ of the work. When preparing the background for my fantasy A...

A few weeks ago, I had a dream. Or maybe it wasn't really a dream, but a vision. I was half awake in that suspended time before dawn. All my joints ached, and even worse, my foot throbbed from where I'd crashed into a wooden box earlier in the day, breaking my middle toes. It was just enough pain to send me over the edge. With tears streaming down my face, I whispered, "Just let me go. I can't hurt like this anymore." You can't go yet. You have ten books to write. What? The thought had slammed into my head. Not mine. It came from somewhere else, and you can bet I bolted straight out of bed! I limped into the kitchen for water, heart pounding. What the hell? I started thinking about the books I had in process, how long it might take to finish them, and how much time I actually needed to stay alive to complete this mission. Ten years would do it, I figured. I could write a book a year, and that would be generous, with plenty of time for revision and a...

I am thankful every day for many wonderful things in my life. But during this special season of Thanksgiving, I want to focus on thankfulness for books. I am thankful my dad was an avid reader and passed that love to me. I’m thankful for the bookmobile, the libraries and the bookstores that have provided me with wonderful avenues of adventure throughout my life. And, I’m thankful for the gift I’ve been given to write books. I’d like to share a few of Marketing guru John Kremer’s 32 Great Reasons to Read a Book: • To escape your normal life. • To travel to real destinations. • To explore new worlds.  • To imagine more than you could on your own • To dream a new life. • To know more than you could learn on your own. • To learn what you don’t know. • To learn what you do know. • To discover something extraordinary. • To meet incredible characters. What are some of your reasons to read? A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in North-central Arizona. He...

As some of you may know, Wednesday is Hump Day, and if we get over today, we sail on to Friday and the end of the work week. For some bloggers, like my friend LD Masterson, it is a good reason to offer some humor to help folks over the hump. How appropriate, that it is Wednesday and my turn to blog here at BRP, so here are a few funnies to help you through the day. First up is something from Pearls before Swine . In the first panel we see a bunch of lemmings at lemming's leap. One of them says, "Okay guys. It's time to end our little lemming lives. Bob you start us off." Bob says, "All right,Fred." (but the word is spelled alright.) Fred says, "Wait, wait! You yelled alright in that speech balloon but that's not a word Bob. It's all right - two words - ask anyone." As Bob is falling off the cliff he says, "Oh crap really?" Fred says, "It's a shame to go out on a grammatical error."   F...

I’m puzzled this month.  And I can’t seem to get a handle on these numbers, so I’m writing this as a question to you all: How do you find your readers? Not just seen by the masses, but in this new world of a gazillion books on the market, what’re the best ways to find the right audience for your book?   I recently read a PW statistic that absolutely boggled my mind. It stated that in 2012, half a million e-books came out.  In 2013, that number is estimated to be one million. The projection for 2014? Fifteen million e-books. Fifteen million? I mean, we all know that in this digital (and cheap) age, the perception is that anyone can write/publish a book. And, obviously, millions do! We also know that the vast writing majority hasn’t honed the craft, not put in the blood, sweat, and tears that the bloggers and reader/writers here have. We all know what goes into a great or even good book, and we know that we’re now in the rare minority of writers who still strive to ...

Anybody can write a book, no? Sure, anybody can type enough words to fill up a standard-sized bound set of pages.    But as anyone who has stuck it out can second, the initial inspiration is just the place from which you start.   The psychological aspects of writing are such that most people who continue on in the process are probably garden-variety crazy.   I mean, here’s a job description for you. Wanted, worker who will: 1). Set grandiose goals, with some insane notion of actually realizing them 2). Work all hours, especially those in the dark of night when some idiosyncratic character quirk wakes one from a peaceful and much-needed sleep, demanding to be immediately jotted down or risk the horror of being forgotten 3). Remains willing to work in complete obscurity for long periods (months into years) before anyone sees the first word 4). Can tolerate an even much-longer time frame before said product is introduced to the public ...

Over the years Slim Randles, a writer who has quite a way with words, has shared his wit and wisdom with the readers here at The Blood Red Pencil. As a way to thank him (see how I tied this to our Thanksgiving theme?) I thought I would pimp his books. Every one of them would make a terrific gift for readers on your holiday shopping list. I am especially fond of Home Country , as that is also the title of the column that he so generously shares with me to use here and on my own blog. This is a collection of humor and philosophy that speaks to the important things in life like love and friendship and fly fishing. The column is currently featured in several hundred newspapers across the United States, with a readership of over 2 million. Slim has won numerous awards for his work, the latest the 2012 Rounders Award , which is presented each year by the New Mexico Department of Agriculture to “individuals who have lived, promoted or articulated the Western way of life.”  A C...

By Dani Greer, Chief Red Pencil It hasn't been very long since the traditional publishing model meant printing a hardcover edition of a new book, then following that with a low-cost paperback edition, and maybe, if the publisher was really sharp, making an e-book available on the heels of print. In today's rapidly changing publishing environment, all three versions of the book are usually published simultaneously, or at least within very narrow time-frames. This gives readers all the options quickly, and multiplies the opportunities for sales. In the past year, a growing number of publishers have started printing new titles in only e-book version first, presumably capitalizing on the success of indie authors who have discovered the potential of feeding the e-reader market. Later, if e-book sales proved successful, the door might remain open for a print run, particularly if libraries and schools demanded the title for their shelves. But fast disappearing are the days of larg...

In keeping with our February theme of Love, guest blogger, Jodie Renner, shares her love of reading and some of her favorite books. Enjoy. I Love Reading Fiction Reading fiction has always given me pleasure, from way back in my early school days in a small mining town, where the teachers usually provided novels for us to read in our spare time. The world of exciting stories was a magical discovery for me—coming from a large, working-class family, we had very few books at home. Some of my earliest favorites were Heidi and The Bobbsey Twins series. Then the Nancy Drew mysteries, horse and dog books like Black Beauty and Old Yeller , and historical fiction like Little Women, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn —and lots more that I can’t remember. (Yes, I know I’m seriously dating myself here!) In high school and university, I discovered classics like Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird , Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22 , and others. I’m sure you can ...

Oops! My first edit of the year. Happy N ew Y ear! Some of you are probably still on holiday, but the Blood-Red Pencil editors have been busy planning the 2012 schedule. We'll continue with our individual posts the first part of the month, like Kathryn Craft's popular Busted! series. Then we'll have special guests the third week, and the last week of each month add a different new theme. This year, we'll post those topics in advance right here on the blog. If you have a contribution you'd like to make around our topic-of-the-month, please shoot us an email . Our theme for January is Conferences with Awards , and specifically we'll address how an author would use an award as a promotion tool for their book. There are more prizes and medals than you can imagine for all genres, and many are available to individuals as well as self-published authors. This is an area of publishing that is changing and expanding as quickly as everything else in the industry. ...

This nonsense first appeared on 4-5-2009. I thought it might be time for a bit of fun again. Enjoy. As we all know, writers are by nature very insecure people, especially in the early years when perhaps the only thing we get published is a letter to the editor and that's cut from four paragraphs to three lines. In fact, for years, basic insecurity was the only thing I had to affirm my credibility as a writer. But even in my moment of greatest anxiety, I never reached the heights (or should I say the depths) of insecurity as did Glenda Gibberish. She wrote an entire book on squares of toilet tissue and hid each page in an empty roll. When her husband, Harry, asked about all the cardboard cylinders lining the dresser, Glenda told him she was making toys for the gerbils. That worked well until he decided to take an interest in the welfare of the pets. She lost one whole chapter in a single afternoon. Following that disaster, Glenda resorted to stuffing the rolls in...

I asked this question of my Facebook friends a few weeks ago, and a surprisingly lively conversation thread broke out — aided and abetted in no small part by my author friend Mary Guterson , who jumped in unexpectedly and got everybody's blood pressure rising. Mary's two novels, We Are All Fine Here and Gone To The Dogs , feature generally intelligent, well-educated women who drop f-bombs like kids drop candy wrappers. But overall, in 46 responses, opinion was fairly split down the middle. Which just goes to show, I think, that there's no one right answer. Either your personal aesthetic and the perceived aesthetic of your target audience demands that you keep such language out — or that you keep it in. A sampling of responses: • Christy K., a 37-year-old Seattle author: "Any word repeated too often gets boring, especially if it seems forced or unnatural. It's not a moral thing. But if it's in character, let it fly." • Jessica R., a Florida resident ...