Who, as a writer, hasn't stumbled on something interesting and thought these words? I can use this... That was certainly the case when I wrote my current Kindle Vella novel back in 2017, on the heels of the U.S. presidential election. The country was so divided, and I wondered if anything could ever bring us together again. Friendships were broken, marriages cracked, and communities were torn apart. I was quite distressed about it all. What about romance? What could possibly bring two people who were polar opposites politically and in other ways... together in that kind of toxic environment? And, thus, this book description for The Lonely Rancher   was born: Four conservative ranchers. Four feminist businesswomen. The most contentious, divisive presidential election in modern history. When a lonely rancher and a successful businesswoman literally run into each other... sparks fly...   From there, the story evolved into an exploration of what elements could overcome huge philos...

There are so many ways to begin a New Year. We can look back on the previous year and make a list of all the things we are grateful for. We can look forward and make a list of resolutions of all the positive ways we are planning to change ourselves and our lives. What are we doing at the Blood-Red Pencil? The editors are giving you a month of (insert drumroll), their PET PEEVES! Let me dive right in with the one that has been plaguing me for most of 2022. But first some background. If you're reading this blog, you'll know I jumped into the Amazon Kindle Vella publishing platform early in the year. I love it more than ever, so that's not my peeve.  But my pet peeve is related to it. You see, I had to get a new laptop and new MSWord software. And I HATE the newest version of MSWord. In Word 365, the grammar and punctuation errors are relentless. I started making copies of some of the errors in Editor and here are just a handful: I see a capital, don't you? I returned it,...

A few days ago, Polly Iyer wrote about an ugly world that started for her in 2015. Those comments resonated on so many levels for me. I don't remember what I was doing in 2015, but, by 2016 and that dreadful presidential election, my creativity had waned to almost nothing. By the first quarter of 2017, I simply crawled under a rock with 43 J.D. Robb In Death books and read them all consecutively until I was caught up. That took until early April. Then I gardened. A lot.  And tried to paint again. The creative muse didn't like that. My work was simply dreadful. Finally I cooked for a few months. And gained a lot of weight! But I didn't write. Not until I started really thinking about how the country could heal some of its divisiveness. First I wrote some letters to the editor. Then some blog posts.  And then I started thinking about fiction and stories that might help me cope... and maybe also others. I thought about all those JD Robb books, and how they saved my soul and...

Often publications that do best-of series use a format of short bullet points: The best movies, the best books, the best food, etc, All with short lists of what the editors considered listing at the top for the last year or for the last decade. Here at the Blood-Red Pencil, we've been going a little more in-depth with what we consider the best for the past decade in terms of benefiting the writer, and perhaps the best to use going forward with our writing. For instance, we're looking at the best writers websites, the best writers resources, the best instructional books, and... Well, you get my drift. Here are some of what I consider the best instructional and inspirational websites for writers. I'd be remiss in not mentioning that the Blood-Red Pencil has a wealth of information and advice , but there are a few other blogs and websites I visit frequently. The first, and perhaps my favorite, is Writer Unboxed . I've been a fan of that website for a number of ...

All through February, we’ve shared some of our favorite Writing and Critique Partnerships Ever. I’m ending the month by talking about a few of my favorite online groups, which I enjoy much more than live meetups. About fifteen years ago, I belonged to an online group called Book-in-a-Week. Every month, we posted goals, and were required to submit our word counts daily. A small team of moderators tracked and tallied all our reports. I didn’t actually work on a novel in these sessions, but cranked out a lot of non-fiction writing like newspaper articles and blog posts. Somehow, the group accountability was important to my productivity and success. I also met some really good writers there, including several of our Blood-Red Pencil team bloggers. Ann Parker was working on one of her early titles in the Silver Rush Mystery series, perhaps even the first. Before long, I became a beta-reader and occasional editor and writing partner. It was a small group of 100-200 participants in an...

Let’s just get that word out of the way now because it and all its ugly friends—worry, doubt, and anxiety to name a few—often play a role in how or why we write (or don’t). We all at some point have fears, and it seems that we creative types have them in constant, overpowering waves. As I moved into my twenties and began to write in earnest, fear was my constant companion. Every year, there is a plethora of stories published. How was I going to compete? How was I different from or better than those who were already published? Those two questions swirled inside my head all the time. Who did I think I was to think that I was good enough for other people to want to read my work? It didn’t help that some editors recommended that I “write blacker.” The fear of writing expanded to me wondering if and how I could pander to the publishing world my blackness for the sake of being published. When you let fear in, it becomes a squatter. It comes not to visit and have some tea, a little ...

Looking ahead to Father's Day, I thought it would be nice to feature a few books that would make a nice gift for your father. There is everything from humor, to inspirational, to fiction available and books always make a good gift. Maybe Dad would like that better than a tie.  I know my father did. There isn't room to list all the wonderful books out there, so I picked just a few. The Life Of Dad Jon Finkel Hardcover: 256 pages Publisher: Adams Media (May 7, 2019) Language: English ISBN-10: 1721400303 ISBN-13: 978-1721400300 Kindle $10.99 Hardcover $11.72 ABOUT THE BOOK A heartwarming and enlightening collection of advice, wisdom, and practical skills featuring an all-star cast of fathers from the popular online community Life of Dad. Becoming a dad gives men a VIP pass into the greatest club on earth: fatherhood. Its rewards are unmatched, its challenges, uncharted. The experience can reach euphoric highs and gut-punching lows. For those moments (and everythin...

This post was first published here on March 19, 2014 One of the most important elements for a writer to learn is discipline or structure or whatever else you want to call it. Discipline is different from perseverance. A writer has a story. The story isn’t working out; she perseveres until she finishes it. But what happens when she gets up in the morning to work. I can tell you what happens to me, and I hate to admit it. I have my coffee and raisin toast at the computer. My home page is Yahoo. I know, I’d have fewer distractions if I had Google or some other blank home page. I just looked at Yahoo and saw that Savannah Guthrie got married, and she’s four months pregnant. Then I got hooked on an article about Nicole Kidman’s relationship with her children with Tom Cruise, and then flipped through all the photos of the eclectic Malibu house Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell sold for 9 million, then… you see where I’m going. These were distractions while I was trying to write thi...

This interview first published 5/29/2013 and is still a challenging part of the writing process. Don't try to skip it though. ~ Dani  Maryann Miller recently wrote about her beta readers in this post . But what exactly is a beta reader? Sometimes called “first readers”, these are the people who freely read an author’s latest manuscript, usually after the second revision when the story has come together and is fairly solid. Sending a book out for critique at this stage gives the author a chance to break away from the story for a period of time, and then come back with fresh eyes and the help of trusted critical reviews to consider. It’s my observation that beta reading and subsequent revisions make for a stronger story in the final version, even if the author hires an independent editor (especially if only for proofreading the final draft). Dani Beta readers and the help they give an author make dramatic differences in the quality of a story. Today we chat with two autho...

Have you thought about compiling columns, or blog pieces, which are really columns if you think about it, into a book? I've done two so far, and learned a lot about the process. It isn't a matter of simply plopping the columns into a book. A great deal of thought and work are involved. The first book that I read that was a compilation of weekly columns was Home Country , by Slim Randles. He has been a frequent guest here at BRP with some of his humorous essays that apply to writing, and he is also a regular guest on my blog, It's Not All Gravy. I first met Slim when I was Managing Editor for WinnsboroToday.com, an online community magazine that ran for close to ten years. Slim contacted me to see if I would be interested in his columns for my publication, and I said sure. They were free. We had no budget for paying freelancers. The columns were, and continue to be, quite good. And my readership boosted his overall readership. It was a good arrangement for both of us...

Image by Rockandbacon , via Flickr Look at yourself right now. What are you wearing? Clothes of some sort, right? If the answer is ‘no’ well, that’s a post for a different time. However, let us assume that there is clothing of some type draped about your form. Work clothes. Stay at home clothes. I’m not feeling well and this is comfortable clothes. Gardening clothes. Cleaning out the garage clothes…you get the picture. Clothes are the outer signs of your role for the day or night. Sleeping? Baking? Making a court appearance? There are clothes for that. There are clothes which identify your work role. Nurse. Lab technician. Judge. Surgeon. Armed forces personnel. All clothes - not costumes. A costume isn’t your clothes. It’s something you have to get accustomed to wearing. It’s different. It could be awkward to wear; maybe it’s long or heavy. It might be something you wear on a special occasion. Whatever it might be, it’s unusual for you to be wearing it. You’re aware o...

In past years, talking about love has been fairly straightforward here at the Blood-Red Pencil blog. We mostly examined love from the standpoint of romance from assorted angles. This year, the theme of love has gotten a little more complicated, thanks to politics. Where is the love, when finding even kindness is a challenge? Maybe we need to look at the different aspects of love and how we practice it to give us some insight -  our team will do that this blogging month. For now, let's think about it in the context of our writing. What do we do to give our book characters some love? From a Facebook prompt by Gary Chapman, I applied his five love languages to a few of my characters and gained some interesting insights. I'll write more about that this month, when I review his book, The 5 Love Languages , for #FridayReads. How about love of place? Do you treat your fictional settings like a character, exploring the moods and nuances as though the location were a character...

Photo by Ali West , via Flickr I’ve never been a tidy person. My car, my bathroom counter, and my office all attest to how difficult it is for me to organize things and make choices between what to keep and what to throw away. I often don’t have the time or patience to deal with all those pesky tasks. Unfortunately, in my writing, it’s much the same. I’m fine with dumping down a long, rambling random draft, somehow finding a structure to hang it on, but I always seem to leave a lot of proverbial socks sticking out of my drawers. In writing, as in life, I can make a mess, no problem. What I struggle with is cleaning it up. I’ve been working on a new project, one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I started in earnest in October, and since it’s based on a true story, I have an overload of possible scenes and ideas. There’s probably no way it’s all going to fit into a cohesive, completed whole, but, since I believe in the method of making a mess and cleaning it up, I do...