I’ve always heard that it’s important to learn something new every day. But lately, I feel like I’ve been learning fifty new things a day, trying to keep up with publishing and social [...]

I frequently hear about the quiet life of writing and wonder if I’m just the weird writer in the group. Writing, for me, isn’t really a quiet, still, activity. For one thing, I’m [...]

Blog Tours – A Low-Cost, Low-Stress and Actually Fun Way to Help Your Book Find Readers I had never heard of a blog tour until my novel Love in Mid Air came out [...]

Below are the writing-related links I tweeted last week. The Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine, designed by software engineer and writer Mike Fleming, makes all these links searchable—try it for searches on plotting, [...]

My friends are, generally, nice people, but they do laugh at one particular handicap I have. I can’t for the life of me describe anything to do with fashion. For a teenage girl [...]

I’ve noticed in the past that my mood influences my writing. It’s been a really busy last few days, as I mentioned yesterday. I’m trying to take things a little slower now and [...]

Life is usually pretty fast-paced here.  Recently, it’s been faster-paced than usual. Today is the first day of school for my children.  The last week has been a blur of preparations for school, [...]

I was at a local amusement park with my children last weekend and was put in an uncomfortable situation a couple of times in a row. We were in the water park when [...]

I usually have a good time naming characters, but I’ll admit that sometimes I have to go back and change names later. Or add them. My editor for the quilting mysteries called me [...]

We frequently hear, as writers, the advice that our protagonist needs to want something. As Kurt Vonnegut put it: “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” [...]

Below are my writing-related tweets from the last week. The Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine, designed by software engineer and writer Mike Fleming, makes all these links searchable—try it for searches on plotting, [...]

Is it just me, or did this week go by in a blur? In case you missed it (and I think a lot slipped by me this week), here are three different helps [...]

I’d been hearing good things about Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, so I recently downloaded it to my Kindle and read the book. I really enjoyed it. I found, however, that I kept [...]

One of my favorite things about reading a book is being surprised. (Which is interesting, because in real life, I don’t like being surprised.) This surprise doesn’t have to be anything as dramatic [...]

This is my public service announcement for the next few months. :) Y’all—back up your work. Back up your writing and everything else that’s important to you on your computer. And…back up to [...]

It’s out! Progressive Dinner Deadly, a new Myrtle Clover mystery is now available on Kindle and Nook for $2.99 . This is a follow-up to Pretty is as Pretty Dies, published by Midnight [...]

Friday afternoon my husband and I had a nice lunch together, then he asked if I could run an errand for him (he was going back in to the office) and return a [...]

Below are my tweets from the last week. The Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine, designed by software engineer and writer Mike Fleming, makes all these links searchable—try it for searches on plotting, characterization, [...]

I’ve noticed my buying habits, as a reader, are changing. Some of it is due to necessity. I’ve got several avid readers in my house and the library is, sadly, not able to [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about cover appeal. Wednesday, I went to our Borders’ going-out-of-business sale (which makes me sad) and picked up a book for my teenage son. I looked at [...]

You can usually tell when someone really loves to write. The writing seems animated, sparkling, sharp. When I volunteer at my daughter’s elementary school, there are some stories that even really young children [...]

I went to see the new Smurf movie with my daughter and her two friends yesterday. :) When I go to kids’ movies, I try to be a good sport. I channel my [...]

Saturday, I mentioned that it was difficult for writers to locate and sort through the wilderness of editors, designers, and formatters. I suggested, in fact, that there should be some ebook Sherpas to [...]

I wrote a post on Saturday that covered the different things I’d learned in the process of preparing a book for e-publishing. But although I mentioned the fact that many of my friends [...]

Below are my tweets from the last week. Hope you’ll enter this month’s WKB giveaway for a chance to win Donald Maass’ excellent Writing the Breakout Novel, from our friends at Writer’s Digest. [...]

Creating an ebook has been a learning experience. First off, for some reason I’m always surprised that non-writers aren’t really aware of the major changes going on in publishing. I guess I shouldn’t, [...]

A couple of weeks ago we visited family in Alabama. My father-in-law offered to take the kids and me to see the new Harry Potter movie. Of course they were delighted (it was [...]

Hi everyone! Today is my day on A Good Blog is Hard to Find. I’m posting about scenes that don’t work and my approach for diagnosing the problem and finding a cure. Hope [...]

Hope you’ll welcome my friend, Dorte Jakobsen, here today. Dorte has a brand-new release, The Cosy Knave, her first novel (I’m about 1/3 of the way through, and it’s a delight.) Welcome, Dorte! [...]

As someone who tries really hard to go with the flow, I’ve gone ahead and signed up on Google+ (Google’s foray into Facebook-style social media.) I’m Elizabeth S Craig there. I know…we’ve all [...]