I see variations of this floating around the net: Funnsies aside, here’s an explanation of why authors find it hard to write blurbs for their own books (so you feel smarter) and what to do about it (so you can act smarter). Why do we find it hard to blurb our books? This comes down […]
Publishing
At the end of the Rainbow is a Sandstone building (a new Jack Finkel mystery!)
The guys at Purple Toga are happy to announce that we are releasing this month our second anthology: Rainbows Aren’t Just For Leprechauns! Why is red so crucial for the making of Red Riding Hood? Or, how could emperors distinguish themselves without the color Purple? What would the Discworld be without octarine? This time we […]
Tools of the Trade Book
You have your manuscript all debugged edited and proofed, sorted out your cover. Before you rush over to hit publish, there’s this thing about producing your book — making the paperback and ebook files. Sure, you could just upload your Word file. In terms of book design, that’s the equivalent of using spell-check for editing […]
Indie Book Marketing (or, how to work hard for a decade to become an overnight success)
This was a rant I wrote about 3 years ago, and decided not to publish because it was too rant-y. I’m now running low on character interviews for The Protagonist Speaks, so I decided to temper it down a little and publish. So here you are. A semi-relevant, rant-ish marketing advice from a lapsed author […]
Amazon is Evil. Authors are Starving. We’re All Gonna Die! (A rant)
I’ve come across this article, and I’d like to call bullshit: The Disastrous Decline in Author Incomes Isn’t Just Amazon’s Fault, which in turn is based on this survey: Authors Guild Survey Shows Drastic 42 Percent Decline in Authors Earnings in Last Decade. Go ahead. Go read it (at least the first link) and come back, […]
Aquae et Ignis – a new, free Felix novella is here!
I’m excited to announce that Aquae et Ignis, the brand new Felix novella is here! It is a stand-alone novella in the Stories of Togas, Daggers, and Magic series, with Felix’s latest bizarre case. Though the events described are set between In Numina and In Victrix, it is a completely independent story. It makes for a […]
11 (and a half) Tips for Fiction eBook Creation
Do you want professionally looking ebooks to delight your readers? Of course you do! Following my post about the best tools I found to create and produce books and on how to best use InDesign, here are some 11 specific, highly-useful tips about how to create ebooks to the best effect! First, let’s be clear […]
14 Tips for using InDesign for Fiction Authors
Do you want professional looking print and ebooks to delight your readers? Of course you do! Following my post about the best tools I found to create and produce books, here are some 14 specific, highly-useful tips about how to use Adobe InDesign to create print-ready PDF files and ready-to-upload ePubs for the best effect! […]
Author’s tool-chain
We talk a lot about how to write books, about author’s craft and writers’ tips. This post is instead focused on the act of writing — on the recording of words. There are probably as many methods of writing a novel as there are authors — writing longhand with a Montblanc fountain pen in a […]
The Mystery of Amazon Reviews
I’ve started the year with 116 reviews for Murder In Absentia (and, I think, there were about 3-4 reviews that have been removed over the years). By now, the number of reviews is up to… <drumroll> … 110! (EDIT: It’s now back to 116, but all the new reviews are post-launch of In Numina, after […]
FELIX THE FOX MYSTERIES 